NaPoWriMo 2015 - 13/30 - Grey Dwelling

Today's prompt is another one with a photo to go along with it. Yet again I wrote a poem that may not have really been along the prompt's guidelines but I suppose the point of a prompt is creation and if I asked Ms. McKibbens, she would probably say the poem writing is the point. Speaking of the poem writing, I would love to see what YOU come up with! Post in the comments or put a link to your blog entry! Happy writing!

~~~~~

Grey Dwelling

from a throat of doors
comes a call unknown
creaking floors,
clattering roof,
whistling windows

taken over
by spiders
and mice
small snakes
creepy things

a house found sleeping
in the density of existence
in the corner of place
in the space beside life
in the bed of now

wondering the words
to the common songs
happy birthday
auld lang syne

find waiting inside it
the stuffed rabbit
that wished it was velveteen
old habits
that died hard

a structure surviving
by eating
memories
lies
dreams
sorrow

it is named Mary or Shelley
or Bela Lugosi
the simplicity of appearances
the possibility of haunting

hiding its condemned hands
under its frame

~~~~~

From Rachel McKibben's  blog:
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2009   WRITING EXERCISE # 18

I took this photo [click on it to enlarge] while adventuring with the fam deep, deep in Ohio. I love the sag and bow. The aching windows. How the corners are like a child's tippy toes, trying to reach the ground from grandpa's big chair.

What would you do if you saw this house in the supermarket? What would its voice be made of? What small and furious thing(s) have taken over? Where does this house sleep? What songs does it not remember? What forgotten things are waiting inside? What does it eat? Who would you name this house after, and why? Where does it hide its condemned hands?

~~~~~

Personal note on the process...

I have to admit that whenever Rachel puts a bunch of questions in a prompt, I want to answer them all. The list of questions is a poem in itself, and each question nearly begs its own separate poem. What I posted above is almost not a poem really, but a list of things to build a poem with, but since I am feeling less than my poetic best lately, that is all that I could muster today. :-/  If I read the poem without the prompt in mind, it has a certain amount of merit I suppose.  If I rewrite this (a rare occurrence, but it could happen), I will post a link as an update to this entry.

NaPoWriMo 2015 - 12/30 - Alive Inside

Another day in National Poetry Month, another post from a prompt by Rachel McKibbens. In case you hadn't guessed, I am a big fan of her poetry so I really like to do the prompts she came up with over the years. I hope you are attempting these prompts whether you post them or not. If you do want to share them, put it in the comments or post a link to your blog. Happy NaPoWriMo!

~~~~~

Alive Inside

The broken bricks of her stare
took space in omniverses outside
blistered bones beneath a tired surface.
Life as defined by beat and breath
continued.


~~~~~

From Rachel's blog:
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2009   WRITING EXERCISE #17

Today's ghost line is:
Wall me up alive in my own body.
_ _ _ _ _

(This ghost line is from Margaret Atwood's "Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing")

~~~~~

My personal note on the process... aka "the back story"...

I've done ghost line poems before... but somehow this one gave me trouble. I did notes on the idea... Wall me up alive in my own body... skin/scales/bricks... trapped/secured/safer?... hiding/hidden... voluntary? The imagery was in my head but would not come out as poetry per se. I turned off my usual soundtrack in an attempt to find the "her" that this poem is about... somehow it had to be a "her"... a woman inside of herself, aware of the world, but not interactive with it... I tried to read the original poem the ghost line came from. An excellent poem but not really the point of the prompt... and so... how to BEGIN???

What is her story? Rapunzel comes to mind. Trite, I know, but there it was. I didn't like the Rapunzel idea so I didn't go with it. I ended up with just the short stanza posted here. I would love to expand on this thought, but if my years of poetry writing is any indication, I will leave it as is indefinitely.

NaPoWriMo 2015 - 11/30 - Spirit of the Hare

This is another one that I don't think I did what the prompt asked for but I still like the poem that came from it.

~~~~~

Spirit of the Hare


Gentle are the days
when the lion-lamb
gives way to showers.
The bounty prevails
from the woods to the desert.

Easter held no joy
for Peter Cotton Tail
that year
when he was found abandoned
in sight of the bold sky,
the bubbly clouds, and
the laughing sun.

Mother gave kindness
to all living things,
healed the wounded
and took in the motherless.

There was hope in his new home,
a chance to survive
and begin again.

Daughter was small
blessed in youth
curious of all things.
Beautiful bunny was
reflected in brown
shining eyes of wonder.

She held him that night
with the love of a child
given to sincere exaggeration
of affection.

She held him that night
with the best dreams
until his fear broke free
escaped her embrace and
was lost in the darkness.

Fear broke the neck of hope
and crushed the possibility of more.
Daughter took Cotton Tail,
held a small ceremony
praying to a God she knew not
for the peace of his soul
and forgiveness
for her part in his demise.

Lies can hide
even in the throats of small girls,
flying out as a murder of crows,
an unkindness of ravens,
a clamor of rooks.
These birds flew recklessly
to Mother's ears.

Hidden beneath the refuse,
Mother's eyes still saw through the untruth,
the hiding of the act,
the supression of guilt.
Spoken to in hushed whispers
by the spirit of the unfortunate hare.

a detail from the painting The Vision of Saint Eustace by Pisanello.

~~~~~

From Rachel's blog:

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2009   WRITING EXERCISE #16

Ingredients:

1. what you stole

2. what you should not have let him/her take

3. what you want back


__________________


Write an apology list poem. To everyone. One per line. DO NOT list who the apology belongs to. If you broke mom's favorite picture frame, write "broken picture frame." then let that image graduate into something else, like, "cracked third grade smile." If you stole someone's car, let that graduate into, "the missing engine." see?!?!? that's IT. None of these have to be real. Except for the things you listed in #1 & 2. When referencing #2, of course, it is an apology to yourself. The importance here is in the specific details. And in keeping each apology as private as possible. And in never actually writing the word "sorry" or "apology." After all that, figure out a way to squeeze some of the lines into a poem about what you wrote for #3.

- - - - -

(This exercise was inspired by my obsession with creating new lists to mine from.)

~~~~~

My personal note on the process...

This time I read the whole instructions before writing the ingredients. Not that it really changed how I end up writing but usually I do the ingredients before reading the actual instructions.

Ingredients:
1. what you stole
    - his heart
    - her words
    - their plans
2. what you should not have let him/her take
    - my heart
    - my words
    - my plans
3. what you want back
    - my heart
    - my words
    - my plans

The above is what came to me naturally, but I don't feel like it really fits the spirit of the prompt... seems like it should be more specific. Hmmm... I couldn't really think of anything really important that I stole. Trinkets here and there from entities rather than individuals long long ago.

Thought about the instructions where it talked about breaking a picture and that reminded me of when I was 5 or 6 and my mother rescued and abandoned baby jack rabbit from the desert near our house and I took it to bed with me and it got away and I found it the next morning dead under my bed. I buried it in the corral under a pile of wood. When my mom asked me about it, I lied and said I had no idea how the little rabbit got out of the big box in the living room and suggested maybe one of the cats got in during the night and ate the bunny. I think that was my very first bold faced lie directly to my mother's face. THAT could be something to write about. So "dead rabbit" would become "spirit of the hare" or "angel bunny" or something like that...? I think.

Then I looked at the instructions about this being an apology poem. Who would I apologize to really? There are so many small infractions on a nearly daily basis, but what LINGERS? Drawing a blank. Writer's block SUCKS. Seriously.

SO... decided on "Spirit of the Hare" which means I am on an unintended "bunny" theme between this and the last poem! I also decided to narrate this as being separate from my 5 year old self who is now young "she" instead of myself.

The end result was not exactly as instructed but I like the poem.

An Explosion of Joy

NaPoWriMo 2015 - 10/30 - Wild Warren in the Woods by the Road

This prompt was yet another challenge for me. I decided to be light hearted in the end. I didn't do the prompt exactly but I did get a poem out of it. I hope you do this prompt! I would love to see what you come up with serious or funny or what. Please share your poem in the comments or post a link to your blog entry. Happy poeming!

~~~~~

Wild Warren in the Woods by the Road
(or What the Rabbits Saw)


Spring is our time
Gathering our brood beside us
We were witness to near atrocity

The clouds
floating softly in light breeze
through bright blue sky
did not give hint to the events to come.

Giant metal monsters
hold our harshest fears
rolled up in their tires
snarling across their grills.

Then it happened

The raging screech of near intervention
struck our cousin down,
stunned him into near unconsciousness!

Sunlit green leaves
chattered among themselves,
overseeing the scene of the crime.

The arrogant ones ride.
They step to the street,
lumber over to our dear cousin
as he lay.

BUT LOOK!
Our fallen cousin is risen!
He rose up to strike
and that was our call.

Generations of us
march hopped to his side,
buck teeth baring our animosity.

We are one!
Solidarity of Rodentia!
Brothers and cousins attack!
Let the arrogant upright know our wrath!

And this
is how we small
showed our power
our strength in numbers.

Don't mess with the Rodents.

~~~~~

From Rachel's blog:

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2009   WRITING EXERCISE #15

Ingredients:

1. a bad day

2. an act that requires deep concentration

3. a small space



First off, don't choose a day that has the potential to ruin this day. Cool? Cool. Now that we have that all cleared up:

write a poem or story in third person. You don't get to be "I" in your worst day story. You have to be He or She or the man or the woman or the girl or the boy or the invisible dog.

Describe the atmosphere of the worst day (#1). What fruits weren't in season? What song was caught in your hair? What animal was in the road? What word was painted on the butcher's wrists? What stepped off of the train? Which one of your teeth snuck away? If you don't remember, that's even better. MAKE IT UP. If you do remember! Lie! Perfect.

Narrate yourself through this day. What was your heart doing to avoid all of this (#2). Narrate the importance of its ignorance. Finally, pick something or someone (real or not real) that was waiting for you when you got home. Where, exactly, was it? (#3) Oh, and don't tell what the thing was doing there. This should be left between the thing and the reader.

- - - - - - -

(This exercise was inspired by A Series of Unfortunate Events.)


~~~~~


Personal note on the process...

Ingredients:
1. a bad day
     - ??? (see notes below)
2. an act that requires deep concentration
     - intricate needlepoint
3. a small space
     - kitchen drawer

Ingredient number one was a bit of a stretch for me. I've had bed days, but I tend to just move on from most things. Denial? Possibly, but the truth is that I find it hard to take my mind back to a "worst day"... but I tried for this prompt. I tried to remember the times that I wanted to just fall into a hole not to be seen or cried until I nearly puked.

I didn't want to pick my ACTUAL worst day. I have enough poems about THAT. The times I've cried until I nearly puked were usually because of a boy when I was younger (teens and twenties) and that just annoys me now so not sure if I wanted to write about that mess. So I read some of the things posted to the link in the prompt. Most of them were humorous like that is a rule of FML or something. I thought about writing a poem as an observer of one of the posts to FML... hmmmm. The starting of the poem is sometimes the hardest part.

I saw a link on FML for the best of the worst and there was this morbidly odd yet mildly humorous thing:
Prince drives 4 U
Today, while carpooling with a Coworker to our office, he began to rant on about how my underwear are always purple. I block him out until I hit a lady crossing the street, who just so happened to be wearing purple underwear. FML

and there was this one:
Warren
Today, as I was driving this morning I ran over a squirrel and as I stop to see if it was going to be ok, it got back up and started to attack me, now I have rabbits. FML

Then there was the link to where the person who posts does follow up comments. A few gems there like this horrible one:

Today, after getting a pay raise at work after 15 years and pulling a loan for a new house, I went back to work from a two-week paid vacation to find out that I had been fired two weeks ago for "no call, no show". My manager claims he doesn't recall ever signing a paper for my paid vacation. FML
I kept a copy but my boss claims it is not his signature that someone forged it. To make it worse, he claims he has never seen my face at work. This is beyond FML
-- OUCH! :-/

I decided to be more light hearted with it and chose the one who had "rabbits" for the poem of his worst day as told from the rabbits' perspective.
Voila! Another poem is born! :-)

I did forget to add ingredients two and three though! OOPS!

NaPoWriMo 2015 - 9/30 - Secrets of the Birthing Machines

I have to admit that I love the challenge of doing prompts in general but especially these prompts from Rachel McKibbens.

~~~~~

Secrets of the Birthing Machines

Do you remember the day you were born?
We do. Charged with your care, we did our duty:
Our job to care for small humans not able to care for themselves
when the others are not there to see.

--

I remember.
I recall the shock of emergence.
Stories of generations came from the spilled blood.*
All the mothers of my family since the beginning of time back to Eve
wrote their tales into my genes.

A lover's name came riding out on my first gasp for life.*
This premonition of perfection held no clues
yet I held on to it all my days.

Mama's breath was perfect on my scalp
The soft kisses she gave me told me the purest truth and
her embrace was the only home I needed.
Why wouldn't I cry when glove-handed nurses
separated me from the only place I knew?

--

Do you remember your time with us?
We were always with you.
When you slept and all the others were away
folded into chairs in the corner,
evaporated through vents in the ceiling,
turned to rolled wheels
and painted stripes on the highway,
we were there.

--

I remember.
You kept me company in the dust of midnights
until they returned me to Mama's comfort
and the soothing warm milk from her heart.
I borrowed her face and voice as mirror and echo.
Her hands held all the things I could not yet grasp.

--

Do you remember what we shared with you?
Life is electric.
The beep/beat is how you know you're alive.
Sometimes the things that help you live are cold.

--

I remember.
Papa held me as if I might not come back.
Even though he knew that I was not the one who would leave.
He would be the one to become a faded Polaroid
in the back of a dusty forgotten album.

Although I am light years and millennia away,
I still feel the things from born day.
These are the foundation for my mind
and all the things since and to come.


~~~~~

From Rachel McKibbens' blog:

THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 2009   WRITING EXERCISE #14

Remember the day you were born? Which person in that room did you trust? Which person had the coldest hands? What secrets did the machines pass to you? Who held you as if you might not come back? What lover's name came riding out on your first breath? Where did everyone go when you slept? What soothed your hunger? What stories came from the spilled blood? Whose face/voice/legs/eyes did you borrow before you learned your own?

- - - -

(With love and great thanks to the remarkably phenomenal heart and eye of Diane Arbus.)


~~~~~

Personal note on the process...

The instructions didn't have "ingredients" this time, just a lot of questions about how to describe the day I (the writer) was born. The one that jumped out at me was "What secrets did the machines pass to you?" These are the things that came to me:

- Life is electric
- The beep beat is how you know you're alive <<< This one makes me want to do a poem about how to know your alive or the things that make me feel alive or something like that.
- sometimes the things that help you live are cold

The whole list of questions could have each been a single prompt really. The next question that stuck out at me was "What lover's name came riding out on your first breath?" The very idea was intriguing to me. It reminded me somewhat of how I once imagined what if I travelled back in time and was there the day my first lover was born when I was six years old (surprisingly, I never wrote a poem about that thought). This is not the same as what the prompt question asks though. I don't know how I would express the answer to this question even though I really like the idea of it.

The next question that piqued my interest was "What stories came from the spilled blood?" My mind immediately had the image of a middle ages birth on a kitchen table with the blood splashing out onto the floor as the baby was released from her gestation home. This also reminded me of things I thought years ago. I had a vision once of the memory my blood has in my X chromosomes like a computer drive constantly gathering information (and wrote a poem about it that I now can't find). In the vision, I read the story of my mothers going backwards in time through the generations all the way to the house of David about 2000 years ago. Since I can't find the original poem, I thought I would try to put a bit of this idea in this new poem.

Rachel didn't post an example for this prompt. I know that I don't write in the same style as her and my imagery is much softer (for lack of a better word), but I like to see what she does and how she expresses the idea of the prompt. Ah well, I'm on my own this time.

So... I took the idea of the secrets from the machines as my theme and basically decided to have the machines narrate the poem and go through and answer the questions. I decided to alternate and have the born (me) tell parts of the story too. I copy/pasted the questions in a notepad and wrote a stanza from each of them. Found as I went that it was harder to answer the questions from the machines' point of view than I thought. So I wrote it like a conversation between me and the machines.

I started just answering the questions in the order that they were in the prompt but then realized that "What stories came from the spilled blood?" and "What lover's name came riding out on your first breath?" should probably be in the beginning of the poem. Then came the part where I had to find a way to END the thing. GAH!  The hardest part sometimes. I think I did OK after a bit more shuffling of sections.

Voila! Another poem is born.

NaPoWriMo 2015 - 8/30 - Watching from the Other Side

I have done a ghost line poem before but sadly I can't find it so I used the ghost line given in this prompt to build the new poem. I'd love to see what you come up with, post in the comments or post a link to your blog entry. Happy National Poetry Month!

~~~

Watching from the Other Side

Things have never been better than this
Heaving in slow purposeful breaths in dreaming
Every moment is rest and ecstasy
Resting on laurels yet earned
Each accolade whispered into the necklace's home

Is there a reason to this contemplation
Searching the backs of eyes for more

A day is an eternity

While we watch she sits quietly
Inside her thoughts with only she knows who
Needing to feel what she feels
Getting closer to the finish
Everyone watches
Donning the cap of voyeur

Woman in pleasure is beauty
Ohm or Oh are so close together
My imagination demands her story
Another life, another time
Never taking flight though obviously free

Kneeling at the edges
Next is the divine
Each is divine
Each is sin
Living here where the walls meet
Inclined to the sky
No one can take it away
God is in the details

In case we thought we mattered
Names have been erased from the stairs to heaven

The silent vigil continues
Hex and incantations imagined
Etherial and supernatural

Cunning linguists think they can break her code
Or at least get closer than any other
Running mouth marathons
Needle and thread in small strokes
Each is simple and only good enough
Reaching a summit of everything

Our minds come up with our own ideas
Fornicating softly in her heartbeats

This is nothing and all
Help us to understand, Sweet Vision
Each of us is grand in our own mind

Rich men have tried to buy her
Others tried flattery
Only she knows the key
Many have tried to get it from her

~~~

From Rachel McKibbens' blog:

MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2009   WRITING EXERCISE #12
Let's use a "ghost line," shall we?

"There is a winged-woman kneeling in the corner of the room."

________________________
The Patient
Her face is a jittery hare torn out of its fur.
The bottom of her dress is pinned beneath
one of the machines, but she does not seem to care.
We sit in the blue room together. The news anchor
is done up in lipstick and crime as the roses are dying of thirst.
There is a baby screaming down the hall,
and my old body hears her.
My breasts sulk in the trash can, shriveled
like tongues.
- - -
(From an image by the artist, Snik.) <-- color="#999999" font="">The link in the original post no longer had an image so I linked to a different article with the winged woman shown above. The artist also has a facebook page if you're interested)

~~~

Personal note on the process...

As if the prompt image itself wasn't a challenge enough, I considered doing an acrostic using the ghost line!  First though I looked at the image... I also looked up instrumetal tracks online using "winged woman instrumental" and the two most promising were Stevie Nicks "Edge of Seventeen" (Just like the white winged dove) and a Celtic mix... I prefer to use music that I am not familiar with so I started with the Celtic mix. but it didn't suite the obviously urban American image... so... to Stevie Nicks. Still no... so... just tried to see the story in the image without reading Rachel's example (which usually throws me off because our styles are so different and she is so much more edgy than I am).

What I saw:
the ecstasy
elegance
sensuality
dark feathers
cleavage
dreaming?

It still wasn't forming into a (good) poem for me yet so I gave in and read Rachel's example. She included the cleavage in her own hyper imagery way. Back to the thought palace to find out where this "angel" lives and how... back to the acrostic idea. Something about having a letter to start with seems to help. Then the poem was finally born!