A poetry journal of everyday clippings |
"The astonished muse finds thousands at her side." R. W. Emerson I made this poetry journal because I like to play with words and lines and I wanted to put somewhere some of my practice work (or first draft) in verse, written--within a very short time, probably daily on the spur of the moment, with the idea to work on the entries later--with or without the help of the astonished (should I say shocked?) muse. Some of the haiku I have mixed with senryu, not only because I am not a purist, but also because I like to do what I like to do given what I feel at the moment. |
I survive, groping around in the dark, searching for something round the bend, above the trap doors of wishful thinking, pain, betrayal, and residues of ego's primeval silence, as I long for another dream, skipping over pirated promises, so incomplete, like the stones I took for pearls, not knowing their expertise lay in words unsaid. Write a poem using the prompt “Above the Trap Doors,” quote of a chapter heading from the Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. For "Poets' Practice Pad" { |
Risky Business Stranger, you, from the dark roads, come to me every night dreamlike, creating a myth of starry hours, but I am made of solitudes, and my sorrow you cannot obscure with seizures of tenderness. Still I, attempt to spin a thin, threadlike bridge to a world newly invented with a feverish hope that my feet won’t fail me when I cross over to you. For "Poets' Practice Pad" Write a poem to the prompt “crossing a thin, thread-like bridge.” |
Haikus and Senryus the pebbles and stones want to get out of the sand needing to be thrown in awe of the earth moon’s face shimmers on water like aurora’s flame On darkened stairways walks the enemy within and I hide in words desperado seeds like sour grapes turning purple need moist soil to sprout Moon river, your name, an echo fading to gloom, whispers a swan’s song. for global warming nature gives us no reason but cancels our lives For enlightenment, I’m flying low on approach, just before landing. Night rocks her to sleep; she walks in the light of dreams on short, stubby legs. picking up their tales once more, narratives swagger in verbosity Thriving on contempt, my poems have halitosis. No applause needed. ------Found poems from horoscope----- you've got it flaunt it enjoy fruits of your labors don’t lord it over You, firecracker, you! You’re out of the starting gate. Don’t waste time, thinking. Flexibility now is the name of the game forget fears and doubts You’re just not ready. Look! Unlike a perfect start, he threatens to leave. Mars in sextile sun. Get to it and do it now. Attend local gym. Think forest, not trees. Accident not on its own; you took the wrong turn. Some forward movement Ending old ways of living Now, express yourself! Stop, look and listen. Be on your best behavior. Saturn goes forward. Focus on success, work, responsibility: All these Saturn themes. Upbeat demeanor euphoria in your heart injects levity You reach a new peak Lunar orb in Gemini Literary times Moon-Venus union Love vibrations amplify late in the evening --From “Your Daily Tarot”-- The Knave of Wands Card My power is in testing opportunities In the game of life, adventure, enterprise, fads. signs of approval. Found poems (haikus-senryus) --from the local paper on the same day-- Housing market’s plunge is a whale of a fish tale. Town needs more rentals. A doctor shortage. What can you do about this Medicare factor? Do good to feel good. Volunteering improves health, since life gains meaning. Population shifts. Tackle the issues head on, Our aging nation! “Do not go gently” young dancers appear on stage for eighty year-olds. Artistic pursuits kids perform an Indian dance Community ties Tomorrow’s leaders, kids connecting lives, dance with feet not touching floor. Our great highways, but vacation’s on weak dollar; gasoline costly. Expensive story! Euro pulls rug from under last minute airfares. Monumental stress… It’s not about the war, but The wounded warrior. Start working with vets, get active by raising funds, keep programs going. He fights unlike most. Some people think it’s cheating, but boxer has style. Fishing tournament, Third Annual Offshore Big Three. Gift bucket and prizes! Art gala scheduled capturing essence of sea by modern artists Fun things you can do in spring extravaganza at Whispering Pines Ultimate Frisbee Just bring a light and dark shirt learn a fun new game. For the ambiance Fine dining on the island Piped-in jazz music Art deco menu Casablanca wooden fans candlelight romance For appetizer yellow fin tuna and shrimp on oval platters In branch library, events every Saturday author talks and more. Marsh Music at night -banjo, mandolin, fiddle- featuring Bluegrass Bars, tables, and stools… We have what you’re looking for at Barstool Station. In obits, a man, ninety-three and from Poughkeepsie. “Please don’t send flowers.” |
Garden The flowers in tacit formation arrange the beds to their liking, as they ascend from dirt and dung, with colors like wavering constellations separating themselves from the green. But I stare ahead at the snail with horns erect flaunting courage, creeping, leaving a trail that glistens in the sunlight; like a fledgling poet, it empties its insides along scattered lines with cut-up meanings. A Shortie The feisty red yarn in a child’s hand is searching for a grandma. |
Dark practices spells to change everything without touching; shapes paled like roots climb out of the floor letting me pace among them. When icy feet bump into fierce, dreamless things, stifling a moan, I attempt to ward off--in vain-- other woes that surface in ebony waves. For "Poets' Practice Pad" |
The sun drills holes in the skyline for tipsy lights to swagger in, and I wake up from dreams destined to be untold. I should hide them in the dumpster and cover them with amnesia so they don't reek. Nothing captures me today although I could do a million things to betray any illusion on the horizon. For "Poets' Practice Pad" |
I feel the whiff of insecurity…for chaotic, lucid, stealthy jealousy nails its herringbone fangs in your frail frame, stifling reason. You whine green, eaten alive in bits, every sinew, every bone rattling with the mad fever. Pride chases shame; wrath burns in the blood. To temper it, I still want my arms around you, at this precise moment before you end the world. |
I still hear the music of her fingers tapping numbers; she does not comprehend who the child is. First, I stare long at her, without blinking, while the shimmer of a distant light from her hair--the blonde smudge on burnt umber--writhes to infiltrate my retina, mismatching the frail blossoms, rather the thistles, of young years. My tongue, burning, tastes ginger, the hidden roots of evil, and I laugh out loud with repetition, pointing a finger at her. Look, who's the tyrant now! Not good manners, but revenge is sweet, and this is the woman my father ran away with. --------------------------- For "Poets' Practice Pad" Prompt: Write a poem about a cashier. |
I have no compulsion to broadcast the details, but "I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early," inundated by protests for missing my drumroll moment. Through some ritualistic humbling with petty reasons, such as someone peeking in on my sappy romance, I left that bel canto terrain and my front-row seat with jackhammer speed to shield specific bits from the public and to kind of muddle my way through my own preposterous new plot, amid buckets of tears of dismay, so, I could survive the grueling race between fame and defeat. On to the platform I rose as if a newcomer to life, although I knew I was taking the wrong train. -------------------- Prompt: for "Poets' Practice Pad" Write a poem from any Yogi Berra Quote. ""I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early." |
She thought she was born secluded in Neptune's arms, where the fish conversed with hints and allusions like some kind of junk resembling Zen, then the waves ushered her to this mundane world. "She's psychotic," people said, but I saw her as spirit, weighed down by a label and confined by an inherent flaw, pondering the ocean's edge, her infinite softness akin to the foam on waves, searching for a potent inner life as the world waited for the invention of a conceptual cure for manufacturing minds. ---------------- Written for "Para/Poem Challenge "Open"" using 6 words: Confine Allusion Hint Seclude Mundane Usher |
With a torrent of longing, clouds disarm the folly of a spun-out summer, and the first brown leaf tries to cope with the branch's disloyalty of letting it plummet on the immaculate lawn in sincere obedience to the wind. Little does the leaf know that, from the moment of birth, all leaves are made to crumble and vanish. |
We strolled in the woods arm in arm, like an offering of ourselves, kindling hope to live within each other's dreams, until at the clearing a rusty reddish fur moved, then twisted about to lock eyes with you, and the fox, after wagging its white tipped tail, fell motionless, dying upwards into our lives; next, a phantom glow flashed from your eyes as if a dart aiming at the life we could not plan. The shock piled like the leaves under my feet; thickening my prickly blood and I marveled at your distress, letting out a sigh so fractional you could not hear. That day after the Red Fox, you left, rolling with the tide of your transformation, a lover hovering over your own image, to stare into the portent in Red Fox eyes, still bright as if alive. --------------- For "Poets' Practice Pad" Prompt: Write a poem about an animal as if it's an omen of good or bad. (Poe's Raven, for example) |
To make a madcap mockery of the full moon, the water ripples to reflect it back on the hull, macabre like a dead man's visage with a ghost's mien, meddling into the grief of the day, to appeal for aid from the dark side, as if in mimesis of a liquid fallen angel, while I think of me without you, tying up the oars. ==================== For Para/Poem using the words: Macabre Madcap Meddle Mien Mimesis Mockery |
I stagger with a single memory, dubious now through time's questioning, while night rains in transit target the dark crossroads of the sea town of my birth and a palmetto leaf's pure hands reach out to comfort the tar-stained beach. Then, as I try to recall an old guitar that once thrummed an ancient, frisky tune, someone's laugh collides into my thoughts. --------- Written for Para/Poem using 6 words: Collide, Transit, Dubious, Pure, Target, Single |
If I stand now in front of you as daring as the housefly on a frog's nose, it is because I have not done before what I ought to have done, for I am not an angel after all, and to unwrap a happier tomorrow from these frigid winter hours, I would like to rearrange the timetable of an adverse past to let a tacit scar fade away into the dead language of myth, so we both feel blessed for the warm wind's promise to transform my prickly image in your heart. Prompt: Write a poem in which you make an apology to someone without using "I'm sorry" anywhere in the poem. |
Iron and concrete poles entwine in a whimsical embrace while the doves as toppers--perched on the railing--absorb the rays of the sun. Inside twitching seasons, their days seesaw, as all life must come and go, but a dove does not scorn with a harsh, critical gaze the railing on the bridge it roosts on. (from "Para/Poem Challenge "Open"" ) |
to my son who now has posttraumatic stress syndrome, because during 9/11, he was working near Ground Zero. You are churning again like water above the falls, but I will hold your head in my hands--as I once did, when you were just a foot and a half long--to conjure up your courage and shoo away that current of fury, so you'll sail out of the radiation zone of one hypodermic radical barb. Then, somewhere from the dense memory of structures coming apart, you'll arise like a supernatural creature to hold the world aloft with your kisses. ------------------------------------ Prompt: Magical thinking is the belief that we can somehow cause something to happen in an unscientific but magical way. It's causal reasoning that mistakes correlation for causation. Whether you consider it superstition, magical thinking, or faith, write a poem about magical thinking. |
Time tick-tocks at a beach where I loitered among a thousand heads, winging shadows, tumbling into hollows of damp sand, searching; then, on the stairway where I first saw you in shaky heartbeats, although I had met you a hundred times before; in the places where you explored me, caressing in the nightlong frenzy of your game; and at the exit where you spun away, dancing into the cobwebs. Prompt: We don't always count our time in hours, days and years. T.S. Eliot's Prufrock says "I measured out my life in coffee spoons." Some count by the weeks till vacation, hours classes till the end of a school day, months to summer, regrets, For this prompt, write a poem which addresses the passage of time in an unconventional way. |
It seems to have been a while since, trusting my act in the kitchen, I touched the knife on the wrong edge, sliding my thumb. The shock of blood, rediscovered so red when fresh, spun out of the mind--with the pain and humiliation--other things that bled, while I blinked to wave off carelessness, but the pattern of the warm liquid zigzagged to fill my perverse temper with the recall of sharp-edged words that cut like cutlery when he said I was full of shit and I should watch out, as he cast off my human skin and made me bleed to a peculiar numbness. Now, I hold my thumb to the light and think, after the ointment, my blood will clot again. Prompt: Write a poem about rediscovering something |