NaPoWriMo #26 - Governmental consommé

Governmental Consommé

"What recipe is he talking about?" Four hundred thirty pages and no one knows. The 1950s - they want to go back. It's like skating near a cliff. I need to keep track of them all - this model time machine has 93 million interlocking parts. There are no directions in the box, so keep stirring. It's past its expiration date. The man is an attorney and the woman is head of World Wrestling.  That is all you need to know. This could spin with history like a tire that fell off the car.  Will he ever come to the point? He's one of those persons who moves ahead by circling around. Politics is a carbuncle on democracy. Looks infected to me. It could pop and get messy. A filibuster, an old cat with hairballs you really have to watch where you step and keep paper towels handy.  I dream about a big teal wave traveling at high speed, covering everything. Could be the debt or maybe the ice caps have melted. Don't cash that check. There is no money. None. Some folks are needing a  rescue. But somebody drank the tea and it looked like Kool-Aid d to me. "Do you want soup" the social worker asks. "Oh yes," he replies. "Hot soup would be so lovely. Does it have salt? Can you have saltless soup?  The carbon traders cheat too" he says. "It's not just us bankers - and may I also have my $47 million bonus?"  Everyone is surprised. Maybe hire a 3rd party to rate the salt content of everything.  Greed lingers,  sours everything including the soup.  How long has it been here? Linda, Linda, we don't need  any more thugs, and no more glossy six page flyers,  though the sequined tights would be colorful. My glasses are broken - you wouldn't hit a old lady with a stigmatism would you? Unless justice is blond. Wait I meant blind. We'll see if the voters are....

-- Mar Walker

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THIS IS THE PROMPT"Find a poem that you started, or perhaps one you abandoned. Read it through. Highlight the lines or phrases that please you. Do not cross anything out (yet)! You now have two choices: finish the poem or take the parts you like and begin a brand new piece.

NaPoWriMo # 25 - Green Fuse Ignites!

"The Green Fuse," at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Stamford, CT yesterday, was a moving event. The name was from Dylan Thomas quote - " The force that through the green fuse drives the flowers, drives my green age..."

Put together by professor Ralph Nazareth, and Poem Alley, the event included words delivered in Japanese by two survivors of Hiroshima, Takashi Morita and Junko Watanabe who asked us all to support a nuclear free future. It was an honor to hear their words.


The program included an a cappella duet sung by Dev Crasta and Rebeka Radna.  Ms. Radna wrote the music, for words from Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” .  Their pitch, blend  and voicing were excellent. A wonderful violinist, Darwin Shea performed four works by Bach. His playing was full of precision and restrained overarching emotion. Dale Shaw told a true story about silent witnesses frozen and unable to take action, and he drew out an analogy out as to how, in the face of environmental disaster today, we react in similar fashion.  Kate Heichler lead a group sing of  Woody Guthrie's tune, This Land is Your Land.

And that was just the first half of the program.  Ed Granger-Happ of the Fairfield Review, journalist Robert Masterson, and green party guy, Richard Duffee and Ralph Nazareth himself, and many others were among the readers I missed. (I had to be in Middletown for a Shijin event, along with Faith Vicinanza who read a Mary Oliver poem in the first half..)   A music finale was by David Balzano on guitar and Lloyd Gritz on drums. There were too many performers to be named herein, -including all of the folks from the Curley's Diner Tuesday night poetry gathering, and many guests.

Below my NaPoWriMo #25
The green fuse ignites.

with gentle arms

illumined in full spectrum
light like a sycamore's pale

upper-story at dawn
singing on every breeze,
with poems and
the motion of birds and men
interweaving, going forward:
tread lightly here,

our home, our nest, the earth.

NaPoWriMo #24 - The Bitters

the Prompt was to find inspiration at PhraseFinder. Sour Grapes is my phrase.

.The Bitters

they are scaling mountains
sailing across the seas
they dreamed they would sail
they are finding love in autumn
giving recitals, getting fit,
winning awards, expanding
achieving, getting promoted
while I am digging this hole
one shovelful at a time
a little deeper everyday
Hmmm. It's time to pour
out this sour grape
into the grieving earth, open to
Merlot, Shabatz, something
with richness and body
tip my glass to
the new.

(I think I am in a mood.)

NaPoWriMo #23 - When Planning the Bigamist's Funeral

This is really a first draft. More will come. It is my 23rd poem for the National Poetry Writing Month poem a day writing challenge. For 2010 I am using the prompts at ReadWritePoem.org. Last year I used Robert Brewer's Poetry Aside prompts.


When Planning the Bigamist's Funeral,

first divide the seating into sections:
 - To the right for the wife's family
 - To the left for the other wife's family
 - and in the middle blood relations of the deseased
Up front by the coffin: the entertainment:
A juggler, agile and dexterous, with two nubile assistants
The juggler will twirll six spinning knives in the air
The assistants will sit on the coffin in skimpy outfits
Order liquor.

-- Mar Walker

The PROMPT: Write a poem in which you combine a speaker and an event that normally don’t go together

NaPoWriMo #22 - Emporium of Earth Futures

Grey Heron in Bethel CT

Emporium of
Earth Futures

History is the track
of a flying planet
hurtling around a star
boisterous with life.
Where can we land?
What will we eat? How to
make a nest? Look!
In this fierce unfolding
we fit our lives into
what is already here,
nudge it with our living,
into something slightly
changed, die away into
what has already been.

- Mar Walker

For Earth Day 2010. Words used from the prompt include Emporium and Fierce.
I took this photo in Bethel CT last summer. Out of sight far in the lefthand foreground was an aeration fountain. The pond sits in front of an industrial building.

NaPoWriMo # 21 - Taking root

Taking Root

Abandoned on Osborne
a once handsome house:
plumbing doesn't work
no electric, no heat
doors boarded up
mold greys
the stucco now
no paint in decades
caved in roof
makes way for sky
welcomes rain.
A helicopter seed
twirls down on the wind
finds a home
grows unnoticed year
after year seeks
the light,  presses
against the still
unbroken glass
reaches through shingles
to open air, sky, sun
and this year  another
helicopter seed is released
to carry on, carried on
the streetside breeze.

Life grapples, insidious.
In imperfection: opportunity

- Mar Walker

The prompt was to write a poem on imperfection.  I took this photo a decade ago on Osborne Street in Danbury. I first noticed the tree's leaves pressing against the glass, a year before it came through the roof. It grew like that for another year or so. Sadly it's gone now, though it did reproduce - the evolutionary hallmark of success. The house still stands, looking much the same - though less interesting without the lovely tree. I used the picture once in an issue of Bent Pin Quarterly, but hadn't ever gotten around to considering a poem of my own to accompany it. So thanks ReadWritePoem for the prompt!

NaPoWriMo #20 - In praise of weeds

In praise of weeds

In junkyards, behind the garage,
through cracks in sidewalks,
in abandoned rails - life carries on
every day without applause
bent by wind, pulled up, thrown away
never nurtured or admired.
Yellow, purple, triumphantly blue
blooms, fluffy seeds come into being
despite human silence
despite our strange greed
for perfect, pampered crewcuts
of monoculture green -
when all around us the wild flowering
tirelessly fights, finds
water in stony soil,
recreates itself in borrowed light.