Salty like hot dogs (and tears). Sweet like marmalade (and life).
Cuppa
Hands curve around mug
Smell of java, swirl of cream [sigh]
Pink sunrise
One warm sip, this new day begins
The breakfast of champions:
Coffee
Write a Cameo poem—a tiny, distilled moment—on any theme you choose.
“I am a lighthouse,” said the child
Hands on hips, feet firmly planted
For one so small he looked quite wild
Wild, crazed, perhaps enchanted
“When I turn on my light,” he stated
Pointing to headlamp on head
“I can change what has been fated
I can warn what is ahead.”
“I am a lighthouse,” said the child
Cars were whizzing by so fast
He crossed through traffic quite unriled
The median strip he reached at last
He stood as tall as eight years let him
Changed the headlamp to rapid blink
Though tears streamed down, his face was grim
As he boldly faced that brink
Police were called, his mom tracked down
(Frantic worry filled her heart)
Traffic there was detoured ’round
His mom tried not to fall apart
Policeman recognized the mom
“Is this the day? Is this the place?”
She nodded, anything but calm
As tears rolled down her haggard face
Trembling she said, “His sister died here.
He witnessed it and hasn’t spoken
’til today after a whole year!
Finally, something has awoken.”
This is my response to the W3 challenge this week: “Be the Lighthouse.”
For this week’s prompt, you are the lighthouse. Write a poem in which the speaker is a lighthouse guiding something away from danger, toward safety, or both.
I struggled with this. A lot.
Finally, this cheesy story came out that didn’t meet the criteria. The author of the poem isn’t the lighthouse. Also, it was supposed to be 23-25 lines. There are a 28 lines up there.
Overheard
Malicious whispers
Between two
Co-workers
My heart grew cold at their words
Squeezing in my chest
Breathing stopped
Blackness obscured sight
My fists clenched
And unclenched
Thoughts swirled like a tornado
Unholy and wild
Office chair
Calmed me in this storm
I held on
Took a breath
Straightened my back and went out
“I heard what you said”
This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge: to write shadorma poems.
The shadorma is a compact Spanish syllabic form built from a six-line stanza with a strict syllable pattern: 3 / 5 / 3 / 3 / 7 / 5 (26 syllables total). It is typically unrhymed, and a poem may consist of a single stanza or a series of stanzas.
For this challenge, the theme is Sensory Details.
Write a close-up study of a single inanimate object or a very specific moment. Think small and focused rather than narrative or expansive. The power of the poem should come from sensory observation—what can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, or felt.
Yes, this actually happened. It was a specific moment and I tried to write the sensory details of it.
“Can I have a kitty?” itty-
bitty me asked my father — rather,
my mom put me up to it. It
seems that she knew new
kitten would equal no. No,
unless she rigged the odds. Odds
are he would say yes to me, mea-
ning I asked, pleading, “Yes?” — “Yes.”
We were on an army base at the time. The family with the kittens had recently come back from Japan.
This is my attempt at an Echo Poem, this week’s W3 Challenge. An echo poem repeats the ending syllable (or syllables) of each line. That’s it. No strict rules about meter or length.
This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge: write an alphabet poem
We had two options: 26 words (which I did) or 26 lines.
Assume
Question
Guess
Look
Notice
Unearth
Examine
Scrutinize
Ponder
Weigh
X-ray
Open, Close, Test
Build
Zero in
Deliberate
Know
Verify
Judge
Misjudge
Reconsider
Hope
Yield
Forgive
Never assume, because it makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me
You hide, avoiding spotlight and regard,
Let others have their moments in the sun
Small talk, large groups for you are both quite hard
Thus you oft eschew the words, “Well done”
What creature, then, can I compare with thee?
An earthworm making soil in the dirt?
Or detritivore cleaning up the sea,
Hard-working anti-social introvert
A hoverfly works hard to pollinate
The lovely flowers everyone enjoys
Yet no one pauses to appreciate
The busy flying workers of no noise
Some people never see, will never know
The one who does, and doesn’t seek to show
W3 Challenge this week: write a love sonnet to yourself.
Let this line guide you:
There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in Yourself … that is the only true guide that you will ever have.— Howard Thurman (1899 – 1981)
For Christmas, my brother gave each of his surviving siblings a mug with a QR code on it. My QR code leads me to a trivia question each day. My sister gets the bird of the day. Another brother learns a little history from his. The gift-giving brother learns about an unusual creature each day. The other day his creature was a Sea-Pig:
Scotoplanes globosa, commonly known as the sea pig, is a species of sea cucumber that lives in the deep sea. It is considered a detritivore, or something that eats detritus, decaying organic matter. These kinds of creatures are crucial to the ecosystem, but we seldom consider them.
Out of sight, out of mind.
They probably like it that way.
I know that I do
Oh, to pocket time
It flies one season to next
Simply catch a star
This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge which is to create a haiga by pairing a haiku (traditionally about nature) or senryu (traditionally about human foibles) with a visual art form of my choice. The theme: the long-awaited shift from winter to spring.
I think this is a senryu? It is a human foible to think we can control time, right?
The artwork is a little self-indulgent. It’s a collage I made at Christmas. I also made a few ornaments along the same theme, but never did anything with them.
The W3 challenge is: let’s write erasure poems.
“Erasure poetry, also known as blackout poetry, is a form of found poetry wherein a poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the text, creating a wholly new work from what remains.
“You might begin with an existing text or poem and shape something new by removing words, or write your own piece and then erase portions of it to reveal another layer. You could even place a poem over a work of art and present it visually as an erasure.”
When my oldest brother passed away, I found a couple of books where he had been doing this — blacking out whole pages and only leaving one or two words. It was fascinating. But, then, my oldest brother was literally a genius.
I don’t know what the heck I’m doing with this. Clearly.
I muddled through books yesterday and today trying to come up with something.
Here’s one:
Al
e
x
pre
tti
fought bravely
Can you see him?
Who is he?
Then I put in this (less than) valiant effort:
I do not know
I do not know
Do you know?
No, said the farmer’s wife
Do you know?
Why yes, I know
I know
Do you know?
I am going away
all alone
Good-by!
What does it all mean? I’m with the farmer’s wife. I do not know.
Warm
My lap
Come sit here
Let me stroke you
Let me run my fingers all over you
You nibble on my fingers while I do
Yes, you want more
I feel it
My dear
Cat
This is my response to the W3 prompt and to the JusJoJan prompt which is prompt.
This week’s prompt for W3 is to write a Double Tetractys — a 10-line poem with a fixed syllable pattern.
Theme: something spicy or a little naughty. Keep it suggestive rather than explicit. Let tension, humor, and implication do the work.
A Double Tetractys is made of two Tetractys poems joined together:
Syllable pattern (per line):
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 10 / 10 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1
Yes, I have a friend with a cat that can’t get enough of me. She sits beside me, on me, nibbling at me. It’s love.
The fog comes on little cat feet
Highwayman comes riding
First loves
In poetry become heartbeat
This love is abiding
Because
The moon’s tossed upon cloudy seas
And meanwhile the wild geese
Fly home
i thank you God, for rhymes like trees
That become gentle breeze
Poem
This week’s W3 challenge is to write a Memento — a poetic form created by Emily Romano. A memento poem captures a holiday, anniversary, or meaningful moment held in memory.
The poem is written in two stanzas. Each of the two stanzas follows this syllabic pattern:
This pattern is repeated once per stanza, for a total rhyme scheme of a / b / c / a / b / c in each stanza.
True story: I wrote a Memento poem about what I thought was the first poem that I ever wrote. My mother had saved the paper witten in my blocky large first grade printing. She told me that it was the first poem I wrote. I always thought it was a pretty darn good poem for a six year old.
Then I fact-checked my mother this morning. I did NOT compose that poem. Oh, I wrote it on a piece of paper and got a gold star from my teacher, but it was not my original words. [sad face]
So, I tried to remember when my love affair with poetry began.
It was probably One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss. He still influences my writing.
But Carl Sandburg’s poem Fog is the first stand-alone, non-nursery rhyme, non-Dr. Seuss poem that I remember loving.
I memorized The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes a few years later. That was the beginning of my love affair with story poems. We had a book of story poems that included Casey at the Bat and The Cremation of Sam McGee, but I loved the melodrama of The Highwayman.
I found that story-poem book in a box recently. It was in sad shape. Such is the fate of much-loved books.
So what was the first poem I ever wrote? I have no idea.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 