rhymes with itchin
there once was a seaman named charlie
who traded his blues for a harley
and rides to the beach
and the surf where he’d reach
for the heights of the wicked and gnarly
NaNoWriMo Poem for April 17
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NaPoWriMo Poem Trio for April 16
Here are three poems I wrote this weekend to answer a challenge by my friend Joseph A. in our Facebook group Poets All Call. Joe’s challenge was threefold (four, if you count “Have fun!”):
Write an adult version of a childrens’ poem/book.
Write about a really bad cup of coffee.
Write about a cold, rainy spring day.
Have fun!
And here was my response:
the feline in the fedora
two children watched the raindrops paint the window
they sighed with boredom aching for a change
they hadn’t had their fun thus knees unskinned though
they’d trade unscrapedness for something strange.
as if in answer to a summons in came
an oversized and overtopped old cat
and jazzed their glazed expressions when his grin came
to prove contagious making cheeks unflat
he doffed fedora in the act releasing
two things called things who ran the household ragged
and carved the kitchen air with lightning greasing
the wheels of fun though sloppy paths went jagged
the things dived in the hat hat went ahead
and out the door of destiny cat fled
grounds for complaint?
i like my coffee liquid,
and non-corrosive too,
assertive but not armpit-strong.
unmerrily we scald along:
the serpent’s fang, the pitchfork’s prong,
the muck from cheech & tommy’s bong,
the nether regions of king kong.
this coffee makes me sick, kid,
but wakes me up, for true.
and non-corrosive too,
assertive but not armpit-strong.
unmerrily we scald along:
the serpent’s fang, the pitchfork’s prong,
the muck from cheech & tommy’s bong,
the nether regions of king kong.
this coffee makes me sick, kid,
but wakes me up, for true.
At-Brisk Children
NaPoWriMo Poem for April 15
the halfscore score
1: starting line
once upon an april
once upon cottonwood
once upon some racers
there was an event
of four subevents
marathon/half marathon/10k/2mile
and the people who came to race
were physically from willowbranch to peterbilt
and psychically from timid to attila
there was no starting gun for the 10k
just a convivial starting voice counting down
and when he got down to go we went
2: water waiters and chipper cheerers
volunteers in matching shirts and grins
dispensed water from the getgo
and walkers like me had time for a friendly passing word
hydration greases the wheels and cools the engine
but absorption by the body maxes at 8oz/15min
you don’t want your tummytank to be a sloshing
and so I was glad to see lots of stations
and sensible small cups and plenty of dropboxes for empties
races have made strides since my heyday
friends family and wellwishers lined the course at good places
three ladies seemed to be dispensing confetti
from a cottonwood tree & I thanked them
3: the theory of relative distance
there is about a mile and a half between start line and 2mi marker
about four miles between the 2mi and the 4mi marker
and about an eon of purgatory between there & the finish line
4: how it went from my end
i woke this morning with a twingey knee
thought rats this ain’t the movie i signed up for
dressed and readied nonetheless
got to the race via sweetheart transportation
got numbered got lootbagged got greeted by curtis
got hydrated got excited got started
was in a tight pack of walkers for a while
passing being passed keeping occasional pace
with a compadre or compadrette
the pack unclumped in a mile or so
i settled into a brisk but unfoolhardy fastwalk
not passing not being passed
little uphills and downhills took us to dead horse ranch park
and the unflats made me want to jog a little but i held back
until i couldn’t but i made the couldn’ts brief
there was a loop that some racers cheated past
didn’t matter; to each their own; when i looped
my fellow frontdesker and racer nancy saw me and helloed
there were live horses and riders at dead horse ranch
and i had to wonder what the horses would think
if they knew the name of where they were
more water more goodfeeling energy more limberstride loosening
jogged a little ran a very little
got airborne now and then for metaphor’s sake
another loop and a long climb through campground
a sign seemed to say norvs beyond this point
and i hoped the norv was not a vicious creature
of course it meant no recreational vehicles
and indeed the upper campground was festooned with tents
and smilers and squinters and dogs witnessed our phenomenon
on the way down i saw a fellow from cottonwood rec center
walking for him is a struggle few of us can imagine
but he has a lion’s heart and walks and walks and walks
a guy about my age and i kept passing each other
jogging and tiring with unmatching crests and troughs
he kept me from going crazy & breaking into a run
home stretch
my dear denise waves and smiles about an eighthmile from the finish
she takes a picture i will cherish
fast nice finishline with the racemeter reading 1:39 and change
handed a cup of water feeling giddy & good
in a warm broth of modest glory
Photo by Denise Huntington
NaNoWriMo Poem for April 13
The Sonnet that Crowded Midnight
Some “poems” are really essays thin-disguised.
Some essays play with ring-around-the-poesy.
Some Weisenheimers never do get wised;
There’s Curious, and then there’s Downright Nosy.
The digital’s Eleven Forty-Five.
I wrote the title as a challenge, see,
Eleven Forty-Two. And still alive
Are hopes that meaning clears, and bard’s guilt-free.
Eleven Forty-Seven. Less than twelve
Evolving minutes left, and on they tick.
The theme is easy: Time won’t let you shelve
An opportunity, so make it stick!
The crucial final couplet sums it up;
Eleven-Fifty–I can raise my cup.
Started: 11:39 PM, Mountain Standard Time, 10 April 2014
Finished: 11:52 PM, Mountain Standard Time, 10 April 2014
Denise & Athena
I was at the gym, finished with my workout, and so I texted Denise: “Bayou lunch?” (I cannot resist a pun.) She answered in the affirmative, swung by and picked me up in her truck, and since I was buying I picked the place: The Schoolhouse. Sitting across from her there, with her hair uncharacteristically swept away from her beautiful brow, I was struck with a thought of a single word: “Athena.” She looked like the goddess–wise, courageous, and ready to strategize a campaign. So was planted the seed of this page.
Here are the words of the triple acrostic:
Dispensing with hist’ry & like parenthetica
Embracing a mythos & sweet sentiment
Neglectful of nine facts & thrill’d by the tenth
It is most behooving & fitful, this scene
Suggestive of battle & spillage of spleen
Emboss’d on a column & set in Helvetica
NaPoWriMo Poem for April 12, 2014
telling
long ago i read the godfather
and learned of the word and concept omerta
translation: silence
concept: it is dishonorable to inform law enforcement of crimes
when my brother was a guest of maricopa county
and its testosterone-poisoned sheriff
he learned the doggerel phrase
snitches with faces full of stitches
you don’t snitch in tent city
not if you know what’s good for you
don’t ask don’t tell
was a buzzphrase for quite a while
yet journalists and poets are in the business of telling on the world
some are deemed heroes
here is a tale out of school:
this–what i am doing right now–is coming to be
because someone i barely know
but is a “facebook friend”
posted a photo of a woman
and said this is the woman my husband is dating;
what do you think about that?
well i never was my first and kneejerk response
she was telling on him
wow what a can of worms
but then: count on this happening more and more
and finally: tell on yourself
if you mess up fess up
hey–how about not messing up in the first place?
NaPoWriMo Poem for April 11th
emt at work
the lady fell
like a smackdown in dubyadubyaeff
no walker no cane
ninety-four years young
but old in the bones
nine one one was called
soon she was flanked by blue-t-shirted young men
one of whom did the talking.
gentle as a breeze on a dandelion he moved her legs
got her knees up and put his hand between them
and asked her to try to squeeze his hand with her knees
again and again she insisted she was ok
just a little wrist pain
and they got a cold pack for that
the emt said it would be best if they took her to er
she demurred and signed two forms
the crew were five minutes away when she found she could not stand
her smooth talking young man expressed relief that they were back
helped her feel right
got her on the gurney without pain
seven different bones had been broken
but she will be all right
Hand Held
Here is something that was thought out in advance, but executed while not feeling well. The show must go on, and I wanted to post today, but the impatience and shakiness that comes with minor illness is right there on the page. Perhaps I’ll do a do-over after I’m well. I really like the way “hand held” has come to mean something electronic, though it’s still connotative of relaxed love.
Here are the words to the double acrostic:
Holographic novelty is not quite in the flesh
And in vitro is a workaround if you’ve no crèche
NEED is forging our tomorrows but we may forestall
Datamining pseudojoy if we walk parasoled
NaPoWriMo Poem for April 10
i saw a lineman/Indian Head Penny
on the drive home from the gym i saw a lineman
I once had a penny
he was working from the ground like a boy with a part-bulldog kite
It was over a hundred years old
his string a cable affixed to a toroidal cylinder
On its obverse a headdressed “Noble Savage”
and as he pulled the bulldog slowly spun
The headband inscribed “Liberty”
a spiderline of metal in a spiral around the line
With nine feathers sprouting perpendicularly from it
and the spiderline gleamed against the dark of its captive
And the Indian had a carefree smile as if Liberty was indeed nigh
as the orange-meshed lineman pulled steadily and firmly
That year of their Lord 1859
and with the confident purpose of a man doing a just job
They are brothers in copper, the two men:
sacred to a time,
Overlaid with the invention of a stumbling civilization,
and “Indian” was never correct in the Western Hemisphere;
And “lineman” will someday go the way of “elevator operator;”
and “Head” has come to alternately mean alternate-means recreation;
And strung wire is on its way out, as wireless comes to rule,
and modern American pennies striking concrete sound, and are, worthless and false;
And Time brings a wind that whistles up ghosts.
NaPoWriMo Poem for April 9
detha of a manstunt
you’re gonna need an instand for this scene, rocko
use a dubstuntle a manstunt
for you can bet dollnuts to doughers
they’ll celcan your sureinance if you don’t
so it wasn’t the torac who strolled in on the sircoroc
it was the manstunt
looking so holepess on the hizoron
he squidten at his eniesem
they all drew at enoc
and so flew the hobbirel ahil of etbulls
migr and demintered the manstunt carlwed down the mian lien
beedling presoufely
and with his dygin bareth
stodo adn stublemd pats the twon litims
the stuntman died in the shadow of the sign
a triumphant smile on his face
for he’d run the gauntlet of confusion
and would go to his reward ungarbled
“WECLOME TO ANAGRAM” said the sign
“ETS. 8281”
One with Clay, Image and Text 