Poem a Day Challenge, Day 16

Today's prompt from Poetic Asides (blog.writersdigest.com/poetic...16.aspx ) was to use a color and write a poem on that. I chose black.

Black

It always goes back to black.

I know.
Technically, black is not a color.
It's a value.
Well then,
I am a woman of values.

But it always goes back to black.
Not AC/DC-Rock-Pop-Hip-Hop-Glam Black -
But black. Old-fashioned, worn down cotton, faded to gray
comfy with denim -
black.

Starts with green, though.
Green encompasses me, soothes and holds me.
Blue frees me and helps me fly.
Yellow makes me laugh and dance and sing,
gives me joy.
Red warms and protects, makes me brave.

Black is all that and the kitchen sink.
Black is everything --
"all things to all men" --
With black I can rule world.

It always goes back to black.

Poem a Day Challenge, Day 15

I have got to start posting these earlier.

As Robert Brewer points out, after this, we’re halfway through the Poem a Day challenge! I was going to do something from Emily Dickinson, but she didn’t, technically, title her poems. We use her first lines as titles for her poems. So, this one is from the title, Halfway Down by A.A. Milne.

Halfway In

Halfway in the bed
is a place
where I doze.
There isn’t any sleep
quite like it.

I’m not really sleeping.
I’m not quite awake.
I’m just fuzzy napping
with a Pye at my feet.

Halfway in isn’t mushy sleeping
and isn’t really up.
It isn’t really dreaming.
It’s definitely not working.

And yet when I said my prayers tonight
a whisper inside me gave me a fright.
Just when my head found the spot on the pillow
I remembered I hadn’t written my poem!
Goodnight!

Poem a Day Challenge, Day 14

Crossposted from my Blogetary (puttputtproductions.com/blogetary/ ).

Wow, almost halfway there! Since today was Tuesday, it was a two-fer challenge again (blog.writersdigest.com/poetic...14.aspx ) and we got two prompts. We could do either or both, as we chose. The two prompts were Love and Anti-Love. Here was my attempt:

Love -

Is it love?

He dogs my every move -
never far away.
I see him wherever I go -
he’s constantly on my tail.
Sometimes I look up –
to meet his baleful glare.

Ignore him though I try
as he rubs his cheek against my leg
I have to wonder why…

Is it love?
Or is it food?

Anti-love

Revelation

Bubble rises in my stomach,
as the words go on and on and on and on…
“Love inspires me!”
Bubble does its job, shoving food aside -
shoving it up inside…
as you swan on…
“I’m whole when I’m in love!”
Bubble reaches my mouth and I cough,
feel food in the back of my throat
and swallow down acid.
“Being in love is the only way to be!”
The bubble bursts.

Leaning over the toilet,
burning from the inside out,
I remember what you were like
when you were in love with me.

Poem a Day Challenge, Day 13

We are about 40% through, almost 50%. The prompt for today was to write about a hobby.

Hobby

My Garden

Good, clean earth to start,
a compost bin to keep it that way.
Rakes and hoes and gloves and things -
tools of the trade.
Seeds and starts and pots and
other stuff to grow.
Fill the entire space and no grass to mow.

I miss it.

Never had a life when I had it.

Money, time, energy poured
into a tiny piece of earth.
The world collapsing all around me,
and my bit of heaven was perfect.

I have no piece of earth now.
No life either.
Playing Farm on Facebook
just isn’t the same.

Emily Dickinson's Clothes

Thank you Joe (people.tribe.net/cush/blog ) for sharing this! It's absolutely lovely!

"Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" by Billy Collins

"First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye."

Poem a Day Challenge, Day 12

I was a little panicked tonight. I didn’t get to the website earlier and it wouldn’t let me in! I didn’t realize I was so vested in this project! But I am. It’s been fun. If you want to participate, there's still half a month left: blog.writersdigest.com/poetic...12.aspx

Today’s prompt was: “So we decided to (blank)” and go from there. Here’s my attempt.

“So, we decided to ….”

So, we decided to go for tea.

Sun on our faces, breeze at our backs,
a trip to the beach of little concern,
on a sunny afternoon.

With handbags and hats, heels and scarves
we set out on that day.
A simple tour of the seaside shore
with milky tea and scones.

But that was oh-so-long-ago.
We can’t remember when.
The time machine stopped.
The space ship dropped
into a year NOT 2010.

Instead, we’re muckin’ about
with aliens and drought,
zombies, werewolves, and worse.
It seems the time machine
crapped out at the scene;
with the apocalypse we’ve been cursed.

Poem a Day Challenge, Day 11

We are officially 30% through the Poem of the Day challenge, as it is now Day 11(blog.writersdigest.com/poetic...11.aspx )! The prompt for the day was “object.” Here’s my offering for the day:

Object

The Family Clock

Cherry wood, peaked roof, spired at the corners, tiny pipe hanging jauntily from it on a green cord --
clock stood in pride of place on the piano,
gleaming after dusting.

It arrived on a sunny day after a long distance call,
a trip to the post office in Grampa's old green pickup,
and admonitions not to touch.

Apples and pears, filigreed with leaves, chipped by time, decorated the lower part of the glass door, protecting the clock innards from dust, swamp cooler damp, and us.

Grampa kept the key. Grampa wound the clock.
Grandfather's Clock, so we called it the grandfather clock, thought it barely stood two feet tall.

Grampa's was the family that the clock was all about -
passed down from son to grandson to nephew -
men every one.

We loved that clock, my sister and I. And fought over who
would get the clock and who
the pipe,
when everyone was gone.

We didn't understand. You're supposed to be a man -
to be honored as the Keeper of Time.

Poem a Day Challenge, Day 10

Today’s Poem a Day challenge was using the prompt, “Friday.” (blog.writersdigest.com/poetic...10.aspx )

So, here’s my entry:

Friday

Then–
Friday, Fryday, Freya’s day, FRIIIIDAY!
Day of possibilities, the unopened present.
Day when anything can happen and nothing proved wrong.
Frypan food day, Freya’s date night,
Drink with friends and dance with all your might.

Now–
Friday is laundry day, stay at home eat pizza day;
Sleeping in on Saturn’s day and wondering about Jupiter’s day.

In the end, though, Friday is my day.

Poetry a Day Challenge, Day 9!

Only 21 more days to go! The prompt for today's poem was a memory: blog.writersdigest.com/poetic...+9.aspx

So, here's what I wrote:

A Memory: My Best Friend

“Mammories! Do it on mammories!”
That’s what you said tonight when I told you about the prompt.
The prompt on a memory I kept forgetting to think about it.

But I remember when I first met you.
Tangled up with snapshots of sitting in your car at Herfy’s
on a cold day,
showing up to school in matching pink shirts,
snippets of Soft Cell and Amy Grant.

Step by step we moved away from being sixteen.
But never quite moved away from each other.

I see you across the room and it’s not memories (or mammories)
but a memory.
One long memory marching down the years
from then
till now.

PAD - Day 8

I have no excuse for today’s entry for Poetry of the Day (

blog.writersdigest.com/poetic...+8.aspx ) other than I’ve been sick all day and have just finished watching Criminal Minds. Always gets me to thinking darker.

Today’s prompt was “routine.”

Routine

Just Routine

“How’s things?” Friend’s voice chirps over the phone at me. I look at the project at hand and shrug -
“Same old, same old!” I grin over the phone at the person with me in the room, put my thumb over the receiver.
“I’ll be just a minute,” I mouth at him.
“What are you doing these days?” My friend presses on.
“Ya know, the same stuff. Just routine.” And I’m anxious to get back to it.
“Well, I was just checking in. Talk to ya later!” I close my phone as my friend hangs up and turn back to the task at hand.

“Now, where were we?” I watch the man struggling against the bonds holding him tightly to his chair as I pick up the knife.

Just. Routine.