NaPoWriMo # 13 - Poem Starting with a Line from Norman Dubie

Poem Starting with a Line from Norman Dubie
--- with a nod to the wind ---

"The pearl slapdash of the moon is on the water"

The brutal wind assumes
its superiority to all poets and other vapors,
These unlucky clusters of cloud gossip, but
wind knows all the ways to break them apart:
how to seem sincere and comforting,
blow softly out of the west with just the right
warm lies told with a charming smile and
such concern, skitter about, uncover
what needs to be hinted at - as if the gods
had only half told it, barely whispered our unlit secrets.
This wind knows how it feels to win, and that is
the only moon it knows, very high
and so cold.

- Mar Walker

THE PROMPT: (FROM READ WRITE POEM) For this prompt, take a Norman Dubie line to jumpstart a poem of your own. Your poem should be titled “Poem Starting with a Line from Norman Dubie.”  (A dozen of his lines were offered as possibilities)

NaPoWriMo #12 - few, too few

 few too few

Blue do-bees, two-stroke oil
Rusted nails, cumpled foil
guarded rails, hacked macadam

angry oysters? Never had 'em

glossy matte, tainted glass

plastic pellets, plexi- pass

brown paper neon or blueberry clam

whiteout this pathetic pedestri-enjam

-- Mar Walker

YIKES - I am grasping at straws here.  The Prompt: Make up a secret code. Begin by writing a few nonsense sentences, like “The raindrops tap out a cry for help” or “The dandelions are saying all at once, ‘You are overwhelmed.’” The formula is easy: come up with a message and assign it to something unlikely. Remember, of course, that inanimate objects can speak and that signs and symbols may be nonverbal. Once you have a few sentences, select the one that is most intriguing to you and use it to start a poem.

The photo is an accidental (nonsense) shot, looking down on a guard rail on route 34 near Stevenson Dam. 

NaPoWriMo #11 - Half of life is just showing up, oh well

Half of life is just showing up, oh well

Yes I often stay at home.
read a book or give the cat a lap
curl up in a quilt and take a sumptuous, stolen nap.

Think of all the wonders I might well have seen
were I a more ambitious chick
and less agoraphobic queen.

I 'd have taken all the workshops,
heard the concerts, seen the shows
won laurels on those days that I declined to even go.

- Mar Walker

------
OOH --   I seem to have way too many "what ifs"  so chosing one for the poem was over my head today.  Don't like this result and may write another later...

The Prompt:

Everyday we make choices. Some are small: English breakfast or Lipton? the highway or back roads? Some are more significant: convertible or mini-van? farmhouse or condo?

Some choices lead us straight into the life we’re living, but for this poem, think about one of the things in your life you didn’t choose.

Be concrete. Pick an object — something tangible* — and write your poem directly to it, as if you were writing it a personal letter. Explain why you didn’t choose it. What could things have been like if you had? Talk about what your life has become without it. See where the “confession” takes you.

*As an alternative, dig a little deeper and write your poem to a person you left behind.

NaPoWriMo #10 - Audience of Dolls

Audience of Dolls
     a poem from an exhibit of art dolls*

All around the dining room and down the hall, dozens of smiling
Carmen Mirandas in every imaginable outfit witness this meal:
They watch the diners tasting, the payers and the waiters bustling
watch Mr. & Mrs. with red wine in shining glasses, enjoying

the bouquet, the color, the dry spark of it, not caring if the legalists see.
Carmen and her sisters listen, ears peeking from wrapped
hair, smiling artfully, hopeful, as the beautiful youths speak
of their effusive readiness, so eager to leap into possibility's lap.

And the dark haired friend of the family, with his I'm-still-alive smile
innocent in it all, saying little, enjoying the occasion.
All around the dining room and down the hall
the talk winds on, in French, in Spanish, a hint of German

English in multiple accents, and food, such food. And the
Auntie in her white-haired frailty, tasting the chocolate cake
and the cousin in her exuberant reserve, looking back at
the dolls looking, listening to the doll talk  from their painted mouths

as they survey humanity with artist eyes looking
all around the dining room and down the hall.
And it was good, the dolls agreed. It was all deliciously good.

- Mar Walker

*The dolls were and are an art exhibit of "Spirit Dolls" created by artist Paula Brinkman which are on display at Carole Peck's Good News Cafe.

http://www.good-news-cafe.com/Gallery/paulabrinkmanmarch/    See the picture---> which is a webshot from of the Good News Website:

The prompt was to write about a celebration. I chose to write about the most recent celebration I'd been to which was on Easter afternoon. We were celebrating a new job for my cousin's son who was moving  out of the country with his lovely wife. (and has already left I think) . (Since I am a heathen, I was not celebrating the religious holiday, can't speak for the others, I think they were...) We didn't cook, clean or wash up, or have left overs that aren't on the diet.... And Carole Peck is a culinary genius .  The food is complex, fresh, delicious. And I didn't have to dress up, and I didn't have to pay the bill,  (thank Zeus' tail for that or I'd still be washing dishes.... Zeus is a cat I know...).

NaPoWriMo #9 - Survivor's Epilogue

Survivor's Epilogue

We persist like sentinel chimneys
teetering  alone when the house has burned.

Hazmat walkers sift pumice and ashes on the fringe,
sort remnants, ask questions, circumnavigate the wounds.

We sip coffee bitters all night, startle easily, but do
the next task, massage our bruises in silence.

A jug of rain,  a pail of tears cannot wash this.
Through coming years, we bloom

like mower-schooled violets in the lawn
heads tucked, eyes open.

-- Mar Walker

NOTE: I  only used nine words from prompt rather than 12. -- down to eight now that I changed the title (I also misspelled Epilogue originally. Coffee bitters was the flavor, silence was the sound. the lawn violets image was was from a previous poem I tried to write that didn't work out...  I took the photo six or seven years ago in New Milford, CT. I have changed the title three times. who knows what it will end up....

The PROMPT:

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to: Use at least twelve words from this list: flap, winter, torch, pail, jug, strum, lever, massage, octopus, marionette, stow, pumice, rug, jam, limp, campfire, startle, wattle, bruise, chimney, tome, talon, fringe, walker; Include something that tastes terrible; Include some part (from a few words to several lines) of a previous poem that didn’t quite pan out; and Include a sound that makes you happy."

LECTURE NOTES: Not Enough about Einstein's god, too much about Tippett

*****In retrospect: IF I had read the book before attending the lecture I would not have had the following reaction to it, since I would have already heard what she had to say on Einstein.****

Krista Tippett who hosts the National Public Radio show "Speaking of Faith" gave a lecture on Eintstein's God in New Haven tonight.

$30 was way too much for the lecture - unless you went because you are a Tippett fan and most people there were by the sound of the thundering applause. I went hoping to hear a detailed lecture on Einstein's concept of god, (which Tippetts did at least say was an impersonal overarching nature) --  and I was very disappointed there wasn't more on that subject. Though I guess she had covered it already in her book. And it is my fault for going without having read it....

So unfortunately the talk wasn't just about Einstein, nor actually about god either. People fans, had submitted a bunch of questions about Tippett and she endeavored to answer them.

She also quoted a few scientists, including Einstein and Darwin, and kept saying that religion and science were compatible -- apparently through the mechanism of a sort of new age niceness with a little scientific awe thrown in for good measure. Compatible as long as you don't mention specific doctrines, as long as you are talking to the theologians, who prefer verbal fencing, to strap-on bombs. As long as you are alluding to passages in scientists writings that sound vaguely spiritual or that refer to beauty or infinity. Still I doubt many main stream theologians would count that as 'god' even with a little g.... Sure its all compatible as long as nobody talks details. The devil is in the details they say. For good reason they say that..

Of course asking people about their faith is what Tippett does for a living. She wants her guests on her NPR show to reveal their journey of belief - yet she did not welcome a question about her own belief during the Question and Answer session. Her reply referenced her need to get people to interview for her show. (I guess all these fair minded religious folks she chooses for her interviews might not talk to her if they thought she was really a non-theist.) So in the end -  it's about continuing her personal mission in life,  which she can't do without the other people, ( not a bad thing I guess all in all)  and maybe selling her book Einstein's God. Can't blame her for that I guess.

I thought she gave rather a too high regard for the scriptures of various religions, ascribed wisdom to them without any qualification. No mention of cutting off the hands of thieves. Or subjugating woman. Wonder how she defines wisdom.... and I wonder if it includes forbearance -- during the Q&A Tippett called Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins bigots.  Live, In the Shubert Theater . Hmmm. I guess niceness only goes so far.

NaPoWriMo #8 - Drifting

Drifting

A little heat rises
from a tube of dried leaves clenched
between my lips. The breath
is mine. The fire too.
The sad, distracted smoke?
All you.

-- Mar Walker, curmudgeon

Love is a figment. Figs are preferable. But I hate figs too.
The prompt was to find a metaphor for your current love. What current love I might ask....The photo was taken at a high school play. It's a little over exposed, sort of like love....  Just for the record, I don't smoke either.