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National Poetry Month – Ricochet Challenge
April is National Poetry Month here in the U.S. I haven’t seen any mention here yet of that subject, so I would like to issue a Ricochet poetry challenge. Write a poem on any subject you would like and in any form. That is all there is to the challenge. You can post it here or in a separate thread if you think it deserves one.
Now, some might argue that the world has too much bad poetry already. But in defense of bad poetry, it sometimes leads to better poetry from the writer in the future. I’ve been writing poetry for more than 40 years, and when I started, it was all bad. Now, just most of mine is bad. Or in the words of my old friend Dave Steinke:
“Poetry is like beer. With beer, all beers are good, but some beers are better than others. With poetry on the other hand, all poetry is bad. It’s just that some poems are worse than others.”
So, I want you to be fearless, because you only have to be good enough to suit your own tastes and abilities.
I’ll post one of my own as soon as I write it.
Published in General
Try typing it up in Notepad and then cutting and pasting. It worked for me.
I doubt the fix on this one. I used to use WordPress for some blogs I had on some of my sites. It always frustrated me what would happen to my spacing. I finally just got rid of them and just use straight HTML. Not practical for something as large as Ricochet, though.
Here’s one for poets, writers, and procrastinators everywhere! Called Dreamer:
I sit where no distraction speaks,
where no leaf drifts and no step creaks.
My task lies godly on the desk.
My body stills at its behest.
But framing the world as an empty shelf
can starve no mind that feeds itself;
and mine is obliged to be free
in music, dreams and poetry.
Ha! Here’s one I wrote way back in middle school, after learning that George W Bush (governor then) had declared ZZ Top ambassadors of the state. A King To Be Sold:
As his palate perches on a foreign flavor,
A phonetic spice he’s learned to savor,
His fingers tap the stringéd beast
Whose roar presents this merry feast.
A dazzling light blinds all but him
To praise the steel, its silver trim.
Like Seraphim recalled to sound,
It finds him enveloped but unbound.
Again he lives anew, and faced
With cool-borne serfdom in a painted place,
The cries yield voices young and old —
All exaltation of kings to be sold.
With his brethren, the king shall elsewhere to sing,
Another ballroom of strange, mythical things.
But throughout, all his peoples shall know who they are;
Branded on each heart shouts one lone star.
Forms
Why do I write poetry in forms, you ask?
An act of rebellion, perhaps,
The previous generation eschewed form.
Celebrating freedom, they left discipline behind.
An act of rebellion, perhaps?
As Skelton’s generation rebelled against Chaucer,
Celebrating freedom, they left discipline behind.
And what did their successors do?
As Skelton’s generation rebelled against Chaucer,
The father is not honored, but old-fashioned.
And what did their successors do?
Shakespeare and his crew returned to form.
The father is not honored, but old-fashioned.
The previous generation eschewed form.
Shakespeare and his crew returned to form.
Why do I write poetry in forms, you ask?
Now I Axe You
If a promise is a promise
And a premise is a premise
Why, oh why
Is a surmise
Not a surmise
?
nice stuff so far
Tribal Relativity:
The tribes trapped by a paradigm pair
And the dank hollowed halls drink the noise made
Ever dance the hate minuet so fair
A parasitic co-dependent braid
Cast as evil those who would break the spell
Powers fell curse upon you whom it rules
In patience we await the dead hand tell
They bank on that ancient snare, kindly cruel
To one day break that bank is our intent
To see freedom ever free is our goal
Too much control is our most fond lament
With bread and butter you would steal our soul
The mob owns the mules & they their riders
A ball peen hammer, still the anvil rings
For each Goliath there comes a slider
Tho’ framing hammers bang the 16’s sing
Since only you matter, then here’s the deal:
If it’s all relative, nothing is real …
including you.
F.A.A. Late August, 2013
You’re a poet and you don’t know it.
But your feet show it.
They’re Longfellows,
And they smell like the Dickens.
Love this! Now, Arahant . . you’re preaching to the choir. Emboldened! I will post a formal poem with a rigid frame!
Trink,
If you ever need inspiration in exploring new forms, I have a little list.
Clueless at the Seashore
A sky a grey pearlescence
An earth a firm flat beach
Finger mists, swirl crescents,
Extend to us cold reach.
Pure grandeur, open ocean,
Horizon bare and wide –
Alas, I did not recognize
Covert change of tide.
Blue sky, a world expanded
The heavens’ vault exposed
Clear sunlight driving mist away:
Cheer for gloom transposed.
Wild billows, winds, with sea-birds
Make raucous symphony.
Alas, I did not recognize
A dear heart’s agony.
Juliane Zdrojewski
Copyright 04/2009
Wonderful link. Thank you. Here’s a little iambic tetrameter and a bit of rhyme scheme. Won me a 3rd place the 12th annual Robert Frost Poetry Contest.
Pruning
Pruning is such a delicate matter,
as we choose what must relinquish the right
to remain aloft and cling to the ladder
of the arbor where the squabbling jays natter,
about their perches for the night.
It’s the space you cleave between the branch
and the trellised bark -you know will bleed
You see your questioning knuckles blanch
with the hope you’ve measured beyond mere chance
as required by the gardener’s creed
in the dog-eared books which try to say,
about the choices a man must make
as to what must go and what may stay –
to love the light for another day.
The pruner knows his hands’ mistake
will leave the roots beneath his job,
making their peace with the fool in the air,
judging his work while his temples throb,
as he stifles regret with a tight-throated sob,
about the error for the things in his care.
I think you should still be able to deal with it by just going SHIFT+ENTER at the end of your lines. Let’s see:
These are the times that try men’s souls,When the peppermint robins go fill up their bowlsWith an ounce and a squirtof broth on your shirtyou look like your lugnuts got stole by some moles.
(Those were SHIFT-ENTERS between lines, and just plain ENTERS between “moles” and “those” and also between “see” and “these”. So maybe that’s not a solution. I dunno what to tell you.)
It works well on the edit, Jason, just not the copy/paste into the original post. Someone else suggested Notepad would work for copy/paste.
I’m no poet, but a few years ago I decided to present my girlfriend (a poet and English teacher) with an original poem a day for a month as a Christmas present. Each was frantically constructed during the 18 or so hours between the posting each morning of the Dictionary.com word of the day and midnight of that day, for the month of December, 2010. The poem could be in any style or form, as long as it included that days word.
It was one stressful month, some of the words were a head-shaking challenge. But as I read back through them now, lame though they are by Real Poet standards, I remember 31 days of intense concentration and focus on HER, and that’s nice.
I’ll throw out a few at random. From the collection “31 – Some Poems by a Knucklehead”:
So here is a poem from Notepad
For something tossed off it is not-bad
I just wanted to see
What would happen to me
If I try to import from my Thinkpad
This was the first one, arriving December 1:
palingenisis, noun;
1. Rebirth; regeneration
December
Poetic soul lies dormant in winter
Smiling muse taps on the crusty snow
Palingenesis!
I listen to Audible a lot. So, on December 8th: (Remember, the word had to appear in the poem….)
bespoke, adjective;
1. Made to individual order; custom-made.
2. Of the making or selling such clothes.
Literary Pursuits
We lie back with a fav’rite book
Yours be written, mine bespoke.
December 11
philter, noun;
1. A magic potion for any purpose.
2. A potion, charm, or drug supposed to cause the person taking it to fall in love, usually with some specific person.
Self Exam
Not coercion, nor whim,
nor chance, nor caprice,
nor force, nor design,
nor philter, nor magic,
nor conspiracy, nor luck
made me love you.
‘Twas you, only you
Sweet you.
December 15
boondocks, noun;
1. A remote rural area (usually preceded by “the”).
Where Are You?
Rented room, downtown suite
Chelsea loft, seaside shack
Friend’s crash pad, sailboat rack
Woodland shed, empty seat
Boondocks hut, mansion row
Wein hotel, hostel bunk
Cabin floor, steamer trunk
Hollywood bungalow
Rented room, tepee tent
Donau haus, winter lodge
Mountain cave, leased garage
Swiss chalet, tenement
Igloo dome, Hawthorne home
Or left ventricle of my heart
For where thou art
That’s where I’ll come.
And the next day, December 16:
liminal, adjective;
1. Relating to the point beyond which a sensation becomes too faint to be experienced.
(Arche)Typical
Yes, you have found me out
Exposed the truth of my childlike mythology
Eviscerated my gay persona, leaving only angry self to remain.
Now I am betwixt and between place
In liminal space
Girding myself to step forward into shadow pain.
I should be grateful, though
That in the end, knowing you for this short shift
Has made me feel, for better or worse, Jung again.
Here’s one I wasn’t going to include, but it reminds me of one above by Knotwise.
December 20:
ferret, verb;
1. To search out, discover, bring to light.
2. To harry, worry, or torment.
The Ferret
i let a little thief into our house
i went to make tea
and he was gone
disappeared like a pro into the woodwork
he found everything
stuff i had hidden under the covers
stuff i was keeping behind the wall
stuff that was sub-rosa
things i had forgotten about
things i thought well hidden
he found it all
he looked under the rug
saw between the lines, behind the scenes
checked under the bed
found the trapdoor
reached into the niche
read the book of dreams
he unlocked the attic room
opened the forbidden door
he found the priest hole
and everything i was counting on
and everything i was hoping for
and when he had my secret stash
he scurried down a forgotten path
picked the lock on the gate
kicked his heels and was gone
I came back in with the tea
Bruce, I don’t know what you do for a living, but you missed your true calling, sir!
Here’s one about when I met up with her in Vienna, and the bike trip across Austria along the Danube (I seriously recommend this). (The trip, not necessarily the poem…)
December 24:
chaffer, verb;
1. to bargain, haggle.
2. To bandy words; chatter.
Wednesday
we awoke in each other’s arms
same continent, at last
stopped time . . . while planets coursed overhead
then down to streudelhof breakfast
strength replenished, back to room
planets coursed overhead again,
and again, and then it was time
to go out and see what you’d been up to
we found that big clock
and that lady’s laundry
the architect’s navels
and big painted tarpaulins
we saw the big attractions
belvedere, clooneyplatz
and the secret sights
staircase, geocache
and then the heuriger
that we hiked to, where
with our friends we’d chaffer
over new wine and selzer
we put on our costumes
and sweltered as we watched
a cross-dressing fledermaus
disrobe for the haus
we lunched while sails o’erhead
furled, unfurled, furled again
-the waiter’s remote-
and for a while we were kings
one morning we awoke
and took the train to the edge of town
we climbed aboard some magic bikes
and rode off into another world….
I’ll include this one just so you can see what I was up against. I mean, c’mon – “eleemosynary”?? And I’ve got 18 hours? Anyway:
December 25:
eleemosynary, adjective;
1. Of or for charity; charitable; as, “an eleemosynary institution”.
2. Given in charity; having the nature of alms.
Christmas Day
Christmas, time of charity; reflected mercy of Heaven
The eleemosynary impulse moves to the fore.
Humility accepts the grace in that which was given
And the divine Gift is reenacted once more.
I’ll include this one, because I’m drinking a glass of gin and getting maudlin, remembering, smiling. Our relationship is sort of tempestuous. We had, I think, three fairly operatic blowups during this month, and it’s amusing to chart the drama as I move through the poems. This one was written during the last one (I think – there were still 4 days left in the month…)
December 27:
eschatological, adjective;
1. Regarding last, or final, matters, often of a theological nature.
Syntax
Oh heart, why did they give me “eschatology”?
Why now, of all times, this terminal terminology?
Is it not enough that I lie in ruin, destroyed –
must they shove me to the rim,
laugh and shout “Behold, the Void!”
What’s next, Melanchology? Devastology?
We are undone.
She is gone.
Is there not a word for sorrow – Sadology?
Agonology? Tornapartology?
[Remember, 18 hours. And I was upset. And “eschatology”? Really?]
My 12 year old son Max tried to cheer me up by suggesting I stop perseverating about it and give him a back tickle while he watched his show. That provided the inspiration I needed to get out of “gambrinus”:
December 28:
gambrinus, noun;
1. A mythical Flemish king, the reputed inventor of beer.
The Juice of Tickle
quoth baccus “in vino veritas”
gambrinus roared “in beer, cheer!”
I retort “in Pusser’s Rum, yum!” – sailors are tough.
but what is the draught of oblivion?
what is the elixir of solace?
max says he likes the juice of tickle
maybe that should be good enough.
This is my favourite, I think. (Although The Ferret makes me almost cry every time I read it. Strange that I wrote it, and I’m not sure I can say what it’s about.) Anyhoo:
December 29:
engram, noun;
1. The supposed physical basis of an individual memory in the brain.
2. A presumed encoding in neural tissue that provides a physical basis for the persistence of memory; a memory trace.
Lighting the Corners of My Mind
What is the past? The Past. My Past. Our Past.
It sounds so important . . . is it back there?
Or could it be just a story I tell myself, a jest –
like that glorious mess The Future, only more familiar?
Well, there are memories.
Ah yes, memories. Encoded by neural transmitters – engrams in the brain,
an axon fires and a minute dendrite librarian drops a file into “last Tuesday night” –
chemical Cliff’s Notes inscribed somewhere in a spiral chain.
Sure, but like high blood pressure,
and the cutaneous process that makes scars,
these are in The Present
The ever-present present. The body doing what it does.
Where’s that walk we took
that time down the field to the brook –
Zoe bounding through the snow,
or watching the boats move through the
locks that time in Ottawa,
or the bath at Mirbeau
or that sad October poem, or Blue Pain;
where’s the companionway,
or the egg sandwich you made
while I sat and watched and loved you so?
Where’s any of that
in any of that?
Damned if I know.
Because I always liked The Present, wanted to make more Presents.
Build a future out of a long string of Presents, every day renewing.
Let the past be the stuff of future poems and precious sentiments.
Imagine my surprise when the present was our undoing.
And then, as Drama decrees, we made up. And I got this word:
December 30:
dithyrambic, adjective;
1. Wildly enthusiastic.
2. Wildly irregular in form.
Bed
Lonely winter night I awake
Dithyrambic ecstasy!
Lover curled beside me