Tag: W3

poetry

Delilah

Sally14 Comments

My darling,
Much better than quarreling
Is this: I will stroke your hair,
Swear

Devotion
To you while you’ve no notion
(Have you?) of whose side I’m on.
Yawn

My pretty;
Sleep on my lap. I pity
Your great surprise when you wake.
Take

Care, dumb thing.
Out of the strong came something.
Sweet fool, you yielded to me
Key

Expertise
That I might put you at ease
And take from you that which God
[prod]

Had conferred
On you. Soon the deed’s occurred —
Come take the hair of this mutt!
Cut!

The W3 prompt for this week was to write an ekphrastic poem about the Rubens’ painting of Samson and Delilah.

The more I looked at the painting, the more I disliked Delilah. She’s so false. What did Samson see in her? Well, I think that’s pretty clear in the painting, too.

This is an Irish form I’ve used before: deibide baise fri toin. Syllable count for each quatrain: 3-7-7-1. Rhyme scheme: aabb. The first two lines rhyme on two syllables, and the last two rhyme on one.

The poet of the week gave an additional challenge of including a line from Samson’s riddle: “Out of the strong came something sweet.”

poetry

Geraniums

Sally11 Comments

Plants weren’t watered while I was gone
My son forgot
The geraniums were wilted
So jilted, fraught

A good watering – life appears
Or reappears
I should say – its posture improves –
Life moves, cheers

Yes, cheers my heart. All is not lost
Tiny buds burst
Within days — I am delighted
A righted thirst

The W3 prompt this week: Write a poem of three stanzas inspired by the phrase ‘A Wilted Flower’ —Rhyming: Optional

The story in the poem is true. I didn’t know I needed to tell my son to water the plants. Geraniums are so resilient. I wish I could say the same of some of my other plants.

I chose another unpronounceable Irish form: the decnad cummaisc, a form that employs quatrains with both end and internal rhymes. Here are the guidelines:

  • Four-line stanzas.
  • Eight syllables in the first and third lines.
  • Four syllables in the second and fourth lines, which both end rhyme.
  • The final word of line three rhymes with the middle of line four.
poetry

The Leap

Sally17 Comments

Exhilirating is the word I’d use
Walking on the beam to reach the loft
Yes, barefoot! I had no use for shoes
Down below, I knew the hay was soft

Walking on the beam to reach the loft
Having climbed up, up, up in that old barn
Down below, I knew the hay was soft
My brother grabbed my arm as if to warn

Having climbed up, up, up in that old barn
What we were about to do seemed unsure
My brother grabbed my arm as if to warn
But we both felt the danger was the allure

What we were about to do seemed unsure
The warm and musty hay beckoned below
But we both felt the danger was the allure
The pigeons cooed, outside I heard a crow

The warm and musty hay beckoned below
Would we do it? Would we take that leap
The pigeons cooed, outside I heard a crow
Our knees shook, we took a breath quite deep

Would we do it? Would we take that leap?
A silent prayer, a silenter amen
Our knees shook, we took a breath quite deep
And once done, we’d do it all again

A silent prayer, a silenter amen
Exhilirating is the word I’d use
And once done, we’d do it all again
Yes, barefoot! I had no use for shoes

This is my response to the W3 challenge this week: write a pantoum about a childhood memory. A pantoum is made up of a series of quatrains rhyming ABAB in which the second and fourth lines of a quatrain recur as the first and third lines in the succeeding quatrain; each quatrain introduces a new second rhyme as BCBC, CDCD. At the end, you loop and grab those A lines again.

When I was 7 years old, my parents bought a non-working farm with 100 acres and 4 barns to explore. It was idyllic — truly. One of the things my brother and I did was climb up into a hayloft in one of the barns and jump down into the pile of hay below. So scary. So much fun.

The middle barn held the hay loft where we jumped.

poetry

Oh, to be a flower

Sally19 Comments

“Please select
Me!” She wanted to direct
The gardener as he scanned,
Hand

Already
Full of flowers, gaze steady.
He looked for one final bloom.
Gloom

Just settled
Over her. Her gold petaled
Head drooped in an oh-so-sad
Bad

Way. Downcast,
Rejected, again outcast,
Passed over. But then he stopped
Dropped

His pruner
“I wish I’d seen you sooner,”
He said to her. “You are sweet!
Meet

Your sidekicks.”
[snip!] She joined the spray, transfixed
By the beauty around her.
“We’re

Delighted
You can join us!” She sighted
A welcoming rose and mum.
“Come!”

This is for the W3 challenge this week. Heather (Sgeoil) challenged the participants to do a little personification. I had an idea for a flower being plucked from the garden for a bouquet (inspired in part by the bouquet that was on my bedside table when I stayed at my son’s house). My idea involved going in that sacrificial direction of losing life for the sake of something bigger. But, as you can see, it went in a totally different direction.

I wish I understood my own process.

AND — because I like Celtic forms, I went with a Deibide Baise Fri Toin, and Irish form with aabb rhyme scheme and syllable count of 3-7-7-1 for each stanza. The first two lines rhyme on a 2 syllable word and the last two lines rhyme on one syllable.

poetry

Thoughts on Travel

Sally12 Comments

I have just
One wild life —
So should I
Avoid strife?

When roads di-
Verge, should I
Choose safe? or,
Wonder why

I paused at
All — and plunge
Headlong in
A great lunge

Of faith. I
Think I’d like
To rise, go,
Walk, swim, bike

Encounter
Life in all
Its pain and
Joy. Enthrall

In being
Alive! Yes!
I needn’t
Second-guess

Brains in head
Feet in shoes
This must be
Life I choose

Tiny nods to a few poets who inspire me.

I was beyond honored to have been chosen as Poet of the Week by Kerfe who blogs at MethodTwoMadness for The Skeptic’s Kadish W3 prompt.

What does that even mean?

  1. She liked my poem “A Dance for the Lonely“
  2. I had to come up with the next prompt (I chose an unpronounceable Irish form – Cethramtu rannaigechta moire – which requires 4 line stanzas with 2nd and 4th lines rhyming, and strict 3 syllable lines)
  3. I have to choose the next Poet of the Week

Well, I’m traveling this week, so I chose a theme of travel.

Easy, right?

Wrong!

I’ve scrapped so many poems this week! The pressure is on! Between walks in beautiful British Columbia, I’ve tried to write and the struggle is real.

But I started a Lenten devotional on Ash Wednesday based on the poems of Mary Oliver so I tried to let her inspire me a little.

poetry

A Dance for the Lonely

Sally25 Comments

He placed his right hand just back of her waist
She placed her left hand on his shoulder
They danced with hands clasped in a stiff, awkward way
Space between them? Well, it was well-spaced.
That space closed midst the dance, he leaned in and told her,
“Thank you for dancing. My wife died last year.
Today is quite hard, our anniversary day.”
Adding a hug, “Thank you for being here.”

This is my response to the W3 prompt this week: Write a San San poem.

The San San poetic form has three requirements:

  1. Eight lines;
  2. Rhyming: a-b-c-a-b-d-c-d;
  3. Repetition: Three terms or images in the verse must be repeated 3x each.

For this challenge, it also needed to be inspired by a dance or a song about dancing. The song below was my inspiration. It always gives me that ache-y feeling.

poetry

They are just boys

Sally7 Comments

They are just boys; do they understand
This greater good they’re fighting for, the issues here at hand?
What thing that draws them to this fight?
Is it some deep deep sense of right?
Or, did someone paint a picture that was golden-tinged and grand?

Ah, to fill the lists — recruitment, drafts, all planned
Each regiment, platoon, division must be manned
Focus on the good they’ll do; keep their prospect bright
They are just boys.

Send them off with pageantry — a drum and bugle band!
Remind them that they’re going to a far-off glorious land!
And never say a single word that might evoke some fright –
Pump them full of pride! Ah, ’tis such a glorious sight
To watch them while they board the ship and leave their motherland –
They are just boys.

The W3 Challenge this week was to write a rondeau on the topic of Freedom. This is less about freedom and more about war. Does it bother anyone else that here is the United States we fill our military with kids; they can fight for us but we don’t allow them to legally drink a beer!

poetry

Anxiety

Sally10 Comments

Moms tend to worry, you
know. It’s what we do
best. Especially
when a little chick
flies from the nest across
a pond — THE pond. So quick-
ly she had gone from
little girl to adult, and just
like that she flew
to London, thrust
into problem-solving far
from home where I
cannot rescue her ’cause
she must learn to fly
on her own —

To hear her voice
and see her face
— the magic of
technology —
took the worry
from my anxious
heart (thank you, God!)


Daughter #3 flew to London for a semester. While I was busy grousing about driving in New Jersey, she was boarding a plane.

We thought we had checked everything, but when she arrived at Heathrow, she found that her international phone plane with Verizon did not work. Of course, it was the middle of the night and I didn’t see her message until I got up an hour later.

I couldn’t reach her. A thousand thoughts — most of them involving disaster — raced through my mind.

When I heard her voice, I finally exhaled.

This is my response to the W3 challenge this week:

Write a jamb-jitsu. What’s a jamb jitsu, you ask?

  • Two stanzas (S1 and S2) with three rules:
    1. S1 must have more lines than S2;
    2. ALL lines of S1 must employ enjambment;
      • Enjambment is: the running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation;
    3. ALL lines of S2 must have the same number of syllables
Blather · poetry

Customer Service

Sally28 Comments

Alternate title: Smile

Customer Service isn’t that hard
Some people think that
It’s easy to smile and say hello
I understand
Your complaints — I listen and say
I’ll see what I can do about
Your situation.You’re not alone
I’ve been there. I’ve been in
Pain. I still smile
Even though I’m feeling that
The weight of life is heavy. I smile
What else can I do when
All these things hurt.

A less than stellar reverse poem — but I really wanted to do the W3 Challenge for this week which was to write a reverse poem. A reverse poem is one read forwards and backwards, line by line.

My struggle this week has been dealing with this darn shingles pain.

“Listen to your body. It’s trying to tell you something,” a friend said to me. “You’re dealing with a lot of stress.”

She’s right. I know she’s right. But I don’t know how to fix it.

The thing is that there are aspects of my job that I love. I do love greeting people — by NAME — I can’t believe how many people’s names I know now.

They stop and tell me about their lives. I LOVE that. I really do. I think I could listen to people’s stories all day every day. I heard stories about Maine and Nova Scotia, about Ireland and surprising relatives there, about knee surgeries and hip surgeries from older people who are DETERMINED not to let this hold them back but continue to live life fully.

My problem is that I am experiencing this nagging pain in my side and back from the Shingles.

And I feel like a wimp.

I don’t want anyone to come close up and hear ME complain.

So you, here, my blog-readers from afar, get to hear about it. SO SORRY!

Really close up, I’m fairly miserable. And I’m making mistakes.

I made a mistake early in the week, and my supervisor said, “But I showed you how to do that.”

Yes, she had — the previous Friday afternoon, after a full week of work and pain, she showed me this thing, which I totally forgot by Monday.

Dang.

I don’t like when I make mistakes.

I finally called my Primary Care Provider this week. I told her about this pain and she prescribed something for it. I’ve actually had two full of nights of sleep since starting it. The pain has subsided to a dull ache and I’ll live with it.

Or I’ll figure out a way to de-stress.

Any suggestions?

poetry

Judgment

Sally17 Comments

I seen what they are
I ain’t been where they been
But I ain’t gonna lie —
When they look at my skin
And see all my tats
I seen judgment begin —
But, God, they don’ know
Diddly zip nothin’

‘Cause they’re full o’ themselves
And full o’ shit too
They can’t lend a hand
To help me or you
They just bitch about this
And bitch about that
I ain’t got no patience
For those miserable prats

The W3 prompt for this week:

Write a contemporary poem inspired by Robert Burns on one of his three themes: love, nature, and the human condition. Also, try to include some local dialect.

This is based on my many conversations with one of my co-workers. He is one of the most genuine people I know — comfortable with himself, willing to help anyone in need, judged frequently by those who don’t know him.

Sad, but true — I don’t hear his dialect anymore and had to pay attention to it yesterday as he leaned on the counter and told me about his dogs (one of his loves) and the current bourbons he is considering (another of his loves). He and I share a frustration with the way people complain and complain and complain, but do nothing to make anything better.