Tag Archives: National Poetry Writing Month

Self

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I remember a time when
Someone like I
Would never consider
Myself being worth anything, let alone everything
Funny how life can change a thing like that
As my self-worth, my self-care and love of self grows

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 30

First time ever completing thirty whole days of original poetry – YAY!🎊

I end National Poetry Month, keeping it short and simple, with my first Golden Shovel poem using the opening line of Sonnet 15 by William Shakespeare

The Golden Shovel form was created by Terrance Hayes in tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks. The rules are simple:

  • Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.
  • Use each word in the line (or lines) as the end word for each line in your poem.
  • If you take a single line with six words, your poem would be six lines long. If you take two lines and the first line has 19 words, and the next has 13 words your poem would be 32 lines long in total and so on…
  • Keep the end words in order of the original poem.
  • The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.
  • Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).

Unmarked

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The spark that once set my soul alight
with fire and fight
I thought died in the embers of the long ago
killed slow
But a moment of the then returns to the now
and how
The desire for apathy crawls upon my skin
and sinks within
But I turn in tune, a marionette
who can’t forget
When words of honor marked needs
negated by dishonorable deeds
I am conjured by promises left unspoken
and now broken
In the end whose price is the one direly paid
for thoughts mislaid?
For once the Fates in their own twisted sense divine
it shall not be mine
And eventually, the pain subsides and the soul heals
from wounds surreal
Finally shelved to deal only with today’s realities
I welcome the banalities

When There Is No One There To See

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I’m imagining the you, the you you choose to be
when there is no one there to see

When the company is gone and you close the door,
are you the same person you were the moment before?

If you didn’t know company was coming by,
would left-over take-out be the only food supply?

Who are you? The you you choose to be,
when there is no one there to see.

If I open a closet, will dirty clothes fall from on high,
because when you said you last did laundry was a white lie?

Do you rage at a world you want to throttle
or silently drown your fears at the bottom of a bottle?

Tell me about the you, the you you choose to be
when there is no one there to see.

Do you blast your music because the beats make you glad?
Or simply to drown out the loneliness making you sad?

Do you put your dirty feet on the coffee table,
and run around nude just ’cause you’re able?

I want to know the you, the you you choose to be,
when there is no one there to see?

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 25 pondering who you are when no one is looking…

Somehow

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Somehow the thought of you . . .

Rushed in with a swiftness that knocked me to my knees,
Praying for a release quick in coming

Somehow the look from you . . .

Is a spark that quickly quietly – ignites,
A hot match tossed onto dry underbrush

Somehow the heart of you . . .

Peeked out one sunset,
Between the bites of peach cobbler and sips of mimosa

It lingered just long enough,

To cause my soul to sigh

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 24 has me reminiscing the first spark.

In Search of Lucidity

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I wake each morn and reach for you
Habit your death cannot control
The days they past as days will do
But it’s still night within my soul

It sears to realize how much
Our spirits were so intertwined
And now bereft of half of such
I’ve no clue what’s been redefined

Waiting to see on the morrow
Will El Sol keep my company
Needing out of this deep sorrow
That holds tight the darkness in me

In solitary soliloquy
I look for lucidity

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 23 finds me trying my hand at a Pushkin Sonnet

The Pushkin Sonnet has fourteen lines, with no set meter. The rhyme scheme is divided into one of the two following stanza formats:

abab ccdd effe gg or abab ccdd eff egg

Memories for Winter

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The dying give voice, Spring brings forth new blooms
In the day to day of life, Thriving on summer’s promise
When we lose our joy, Sometimes the boughs break
The soul is where we die first, So frail in the autumn’s wind
Long before our cold body, Leaves memories for winter

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 22 gives me a Super Tanka

The Tanka is the name of an ancient form of Japanese poetry. Tanka are 31-syllable poems that have been the most popular form of poetry in Japan for at least 1300 years. In Japan, the Tanka is usually written as a straight line of characters, but in English and other Western languages, it is usually divided into five lines, with a syllable count of 5-7-5-7-7.

The key to the Super Tanka form is that it is two Tanka side-by-side. Each can be read independently, but must work together as a whole, in the end creating three works. The more different in idea of one Tanka from the other, the better.

Emotional Sky

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I once defined my emotional sky as the darkest of cloud
Allowed its tendrils to snake its way through
True to my heart’s winding deep
Steep was the choice, but it was mine to make
Forsake all I’ve that I have ever known
Grown to believe that it was all I should be

Empty

Thirsty for that which it did not know
So I made a new choice
Rejoice! Became my mantra for each sunrise
Surprised myself, my mate, my brothers
Others as I the shed the dark cumulus
Luminous is how I now define my emotional sky

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 21 in a mood for a Rime Enchainée

This She Gives To Me

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I based my life in such firm resolve
Some say in dull absolutions
This she gives to me, to live life free
Moments sans my strict resolutions

Question everything was my style
Live a little is her ploy
To live life free, this she gives to me
I never knew the worth of such joy

Dread portent to step out my box
Thus thing is such a far cry
This she gives to me, to live life free
Not to wallow in the what or why

She dons life in ever changing modes
Restraint’s the garment I wear
To live life free, this she gives to me
That life has joys, not just pains to bear

I knew she could rein herself at need
I needed to be set free
This she gives to me, to live life free
To heave it all sometimes, just let it be

Reminds me that stars are behind the clouds
When my life seems so unsure
To live life free, this she gives to me
Be not afraid of the life’s contour

My soul shines in the depths of her eyes
Hers reciprocates in mine
This she gives to me, to live life free
Such I’ve learned in this love divine

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 17 trying to get muse to post something less maudlin for today.

Flashback Friday: April 16th

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Being that it’s National Poetry Month / National Poetry Writing Month it makes sense that today in 2011 I posted “Why?” a brutal little ditty I wrote.

Why did he have to raise his hand?
His mind just must have upped and gone
I’m not the type he could command
Forget about put his hands on!

Forgot who he was married to?
Why did he have to raise his hand?
It was a stupid thing to do,
Picked the wrong girl to make a stand

And had the nerve to say demand!
To me! A cleaver yielding cook!
Why did he have to raise his hand?
For just one swipe was all it took

For there it was, hand on the floor
And finally, he understands
The only thing you knock are doors
Why did he have to raise his hand?

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 16 shows what happens when things cascade in the form of a Quatern.

The Quatern is a French form. It consists of four stanzas of four lines, or sixteen total lines. The Quatern is a syllabic form, meaning that there are a required number of syllables per line. In this case, there are eight (8) syllables per line (or tetrameter, to those who want to get all technical), but it does NOT have to be iambic!!

The other trait of the Quatern is that there is a repeating refrain, similar to a kyrielle. In this case, the refrain is repeated one line lower in the poem in each stanza until in the fourth stanza it’s the fourth line, like below…

Line 1 (refrain)
Line 2
Line 3
Line 4

Line 5
Line 1 again (Line 6)
Line 7
Line 8

Line 9
Line 10
Line 1 again (Line 11)
Line 12

Line 13
Line 14
Line 15
Line 1 again (Line 16)

In Fate and Time

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I did not know that time could be heartless
In its impatient flight… how sad it is
I never knew the worth of you until
You slipped away one day on quiet winds
Myrna / “On Quiet Winds”

How quickly love can fill an empty space
Your presence oh so loud within my heart
If I became unglued, your love the paste
We’d have forever, if time played its part
Even with life’s curved balls that we would face
I worried not in those times of harshness
As moth to light you’ve always come to me
And for you here I’ve been and thus would be
In trust I closed my eyes to the starkness
I did not know that time could be heartless

We who are young think not of life’s avail
That Clotho’s thread will never come to end
Treating life as an ever crawling snail
The next adventure’s just around the bend
Day, week, month, year, how quickly it can sail
We don’t hurry, ignorant in our bliss
Thinking “I’m running as fast as I can”
But Father Time will merely shrug and scan
The sands that flow in that great glass of his
In its impatient flight… how sad it is

The only one of them that truly knew
Lachesis crossed two most unlikely strings
And begged unto us love, so deep and true
Despite our worst, to steer us clear of things
That did drive many who we’ve known in two
And love we did have, love beyond our fill
You did not believe in blessings and such
Not channeled by remote, I guessed as much
I knew we were blessed, but even still
I never knew the worth of you until

I felt that first graze of empty down deep
My face became a moon to absent suns
At brink of the final task left to keep
And knowing the effects once she is done
I think even Atropos dared to weep
Equal to lives saintly or ones that sinned
She cannot cater to the whom or what
Within her hands the strings of life are cut
Now silence reigns in my heart where you dinned
You slipped away one day on quiet winds

National Poetry 2021 graphic

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 15

A return to one of my favorites the Glosa (classic).