Tag: W3

poetry

The Creativity Cure

Sally7 Comments

Whatever became of Sir Swellimpedeedoo?
Though his fingers were swollen, he needed something to do —
So he crocheted a chicken
And his thumbs ceased to thicken
Soon the rest of his hands slimmed down too

He didn’t change his diet
Nor did he sit quiet
This much is true!
Idle hands lead to riots
While creativity is so good for you

This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge.

POW, Matt Snyder, challenged us to write a nonsense poem with a specific structure:

The poem must have two stanzas of five lines each.

​Stanza 1 (Limerick)
Whatever became of Sir Swellimpedeedoo? (A)
____________________________ (A)
__________________ (B)
__________________ (B)
____________________________ (A)

Stanza 2
He didn’t ______________________
Nor did he _____________________
This much is true! (C)
____________________________
____________________________ (C)

The italicized words must appear exactly as they are written. The picture is to serve as inspiration.

poetry

Sunscreen

Sally9 Comments

Fair and freckled skin have I
Is sunscreen really necessary?
Just one more cream that I must buy
Fair and freckled skin have I
Forgot the sun block; cloudless sky
I look like maraschino cherry
Fair and freckled skin had I
Sunscreen really is necessary

This week’s W3 challenge is to write a Triolet.

In a triolet, the rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB. The first line repeats as lines four and seven, and the second line returns as the final line. We were further challenged to choose a summer moment or a summer theme.

My first question was “Does triolet rhyme with violet or chalet?” I tried to look it up. Three out of four you-tube pronunciation experts opted for the -et ending instead of -ay. There was one tree-oh-lay. Then then options were tree-oh-let vs. try-oh-let vs. trial-et. Go figure.


family · poetry

Gravy

Sally8 Comments

I learned from my mother
Who learned from her mother
Who presumably learned from her mother
How to make gravy
The finishing touch to a homemade family dinner

On the Starship Enterprise
The crew got their food from a replicator
They could order anything they wanted
It came out piping hot or cold, cooked to perfection
3-D printed nourishment

But
Replicated gravy
Made without love
Won’t taste
Right

Star Trek replicator

This is my response to W3 Challenge. Here are the rule which I sort of bent.

Write one three-line stanza poem that brings together a cultural tradition and modern technology.

Your poem can be playful, thoughtful, imaginative, or personal. Each line stanza may contain any number of syllables, so feel free to follow your own natural rhythm.

Structure

  • Line Stanza 1: Mention something traditional from your culture, such as a craft, art form, festival, song, food, or dance.
  • Line Stanza 2: Connect that tradition with technology, such as AI, an app, a digital tool, a virtual space, or a smart device.
  • Line Stanza 3: Show how the tradition and technology can work together, inspire one another, or create something new.

Most importantly, enjoy exploring how the past and the future can meet in just three lines stanzas.

poetry

WYSIWYG

Sally7 Comments

I never speak with candor
My words are lies — not some words, every
I am selfish to my core and care naught for any man
Look! It’s obvious that I’m not who I pretend to be!
Gah! People choose to be blind —

This is my response to the W3 Challenge, which this week is inspired by Emily Dickinson’s famous poem:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

For this prompt, write a poem in which every line is a lie — except one.

You may take this playfully, seriously, mysteriously, or emotionally. Your “lies” might be obvious falsehoods, gentle self-deceptions, exaggerations, masks, evasions, myths, dreams, denials, or things the speaker wishes were true. Somewhere in the poem, however, let one line tell the truth plainly.

Extra credit: Try writing your poem as a Golden Shovel.

A Golden Shovel poem borrows a line from an existing poem and uses each word from that borrowed line, in order, as the final word of each line in your new poem. For example, if you use Dickinson’s line “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” your poem would have eight lines, ending with: Tell / all / the / truth / but / tell / it / slant.

Life · poetry

The Pussy Willows

Sally8 Comments

Many years ago
During a very dark time
A shroud hung over my thoughts
Lost and confused   
I got into my car
And started to drive.

Like a horse that heads to the barn
When given free rein
My green VW bug drove me home
To Cooperstown.

My parents were away
The house was locked up
I knew where the key was hidden
If I had wanted to go inside
But I didn’t
Instead I walked across the street
Down through the pasture
Behind the barns

It was late April
Most of the field was brown
With the remnants of grass and current spring mud.
Fallen stalks of goldenrod
Broken by the heavy snows of winter
Criss-crossed in a mat beneath my feet

I can still feel that moment
Arriving at the pussy willows
In the spring of 1983.

Ah, pussy willows
Bare sticks with furry gray catkins attached
No spectacular color
No showy strength
Soft wet ground underneath

I absorbed their presence for the longest time
Reaching up
Stroking the catkins
Walking slowly through the little grove
Sighing
Pondering
Weeping

As the sun dipped lower
A chill settled over the field
I got back in my car
And drove back to Syracuse
Nothing had changed
Yet everything had
Thanks to a grove
Of pussy willows.


This poem is in response to this week’s prompt for W3:
When life becomes overwhelmingly busy, we often dream of having time to ourselves. … Have you ever experienced such a moment? …What did the quiet teach you? …What thoughts, memories, or emotions does it awaken in you?

poetry

Roots

Sally6 Comments

So hardy
This darn garden weed party
They send out underground shoots
Roots

I’m rooted
Genetics aren’t muted
Love for this ancestral throng
Strong

This is a deibide baise fri toin, an Irish poetic form

  • The poem and/or stanzas within the poem are quatrains (or 4-line stanzas).
  • Rhyme scheme for each stanza is a simple aabb pattern.
  • Lines one and two rhyme on a two-syllable word; lines three and four rhyme on a monosyllabic word.
  • Line one has three syllables, line two has seven, line three has seven, and line four has one.
  • 3-7-7-1

I’ve had a crazy week with little energy for writing. This will have to do for the W3 prompt which was to use the garden for inspiration and go below the surface.

family · Life · poetry

Coat of Many Colors

Sally16 Comments

Middle son put three batteries
Down bathroom sink drain (C size fit)
Then squeezed toothpaste, added water —
A disaster! I laughed at it

Then there was the time when some sons
Dammed the creek, flooded the backyard
Learning experience, thought I
As I squished through lawn water-scarred

Mud-smeared faces, markered-up arms
Colored on walls even have their charms
We moms take many things in stride
Rather than sound childhood alarms

One daughter cut her bangs real short
Before a family wedding
I shook my head, bemoaned a bit
Not seeing where this was heading

Scissors wielded by this girl
Led me to rethink and relook
’cause next she cut her dresses up
After reading one picture book

Dolly’s Coat of Many Colors
A lovely heart-warming story
Of a patchwork coat made with love
Became more than allegory

My child wanted to experience
To become one with that sweet tale
Seeing all those cut-up dresses
Is the one time I wanted to wail

This is my response to this week W3 prompt. PoW Nancy challenged us to “think about a moment in your life when something truly mattered. Perhaps it was a great success, a hard-earned accomplishment, or a memorable disaster that taught you something important. Maybe you organized a major event, won a competition, survived a family vacation gone wrong, or confidently attempted a home-improvement project that ended in chaos.“

Write about an occasion when you soared, stumbled, or did a little of both.

Guidelines:

  • Use one or more 4-line stanzas;
  • Keep each line to 8 syllables;
  • Maximum length: 20 lines; (Sorry!)
  • Humor, reflection, triumph, embarrassment, and self-deprecation are all welcome.

As always, have fun and make the memory come alive for your readers.

The joys of being a mother

poetry

Imagine

Sally8 Comments

what is it that music is trying to say
amid all the nonsense that’s happening today
amid words in all-caps, cage-fights, and tarps
imagine instead the sound of one harp

loudspeakers blare drumbeat and rage
fighters flex and spit before entering the cage
mercenary warriors with no noble cause
imagine instead one long silent pause

earsplitting raucous deafening noise
trash-talking nonsense like schoolyard boys
primal grunts, explosive, while delivering a strike
imagine instead gentle music, birdlike

music can stir us, music can calm
make us laugh, make us cry, act as a balm
instead of a claw, instaed of a fight
imagine sweet music to help us unite

This is my response to this week’s W3 prompt. Poet of the Week Artie Camenzind challenged us to use Mary Oliver’s poem Drifting as inspiration. He specified two lines we could use as a starting point.

  • “my delicious walk in the rain”
  • “what it is that music is trying to say”

The news this week has been a cacophony. More than once I’ve intentionally put on happy music to shift my thinking.

aging · poetry

Hickory Dickory

Sally16 Comments

Hickory dickory dock
Time is a melting clock
The hourglass sand
Slips through my hand
Hickory dickory dock

Hickory dickory dock
The windows need new caulk
Body falling apart!
When did this start?!
Hickory dickory dock

Hickory dickory dock
It’s getting harder to walk
No pep in these steps
Need some vodka and Schweppes
Hickory dickory dock

Hickory dickory dock
Did somebody just knock?
Dark spectre with sickle
Well, this is a pickle!
Hickory

dickory

dock


This is my response to this week’s W3 Prompt: write a poem inspired by a nursery rhyme.

I had so many ideas — Georgy-Porgy being taken down by the Me-Too movement. Mary being served a delicious lamb dinner and later finding out why her lamb had stopped following her to school. Three blind mice — what kind of mischief could they blindly cause? I settled, however, on Hickory dickory dock.

The picture was created by moi using ChatGPT

Life

Growing Up Rural

Sally9 Comments
Cows — my nieghbors growing up

Overwhelming smell
And noise [MOO!] — but gentle eyes
Smooth snouted Holsteins

My father
Bought an old farm (no bother)
In whose fields I played– a wild
Child

Farm neighbor
Dairy barn, outdoor labor
Always something more to do
[moo!]

Time changes
Local scene rearranges
I look for cows, but I’m told,
“Sold.”

Hay mowing
Then baled — where is it going?
Farms are gone. Fodder ought not
Rot

Field of purple weeds
Ragged Robin volunteers —
Bemoan? No — embrace

What was once a hayfield is now Ragged Robin.

This is my response to this week’s W3 Challenge which was to combine two poetry forms. I think of my response as a sushi roll — the Haikus (bookends) are like the nori that wraps the sushi roll. The filling is made up of Deibide Baise Fri Toin, an Irish poetic form.

A Haiku is three line moment of insight. Suggested syllable count 5-7-5. A Haiku also has clear images and a turning point.

The Deilbide Baise Fri Toin is an Irish poetic form made up of quatrains, aabb rhyme scheme, syllable count 3-7-7-1.