Field Recordings

My participation in the Poetic Asides Poem A Day Challenge has been fun, but for the most part I feel somewhat uninspired. I must correct. Still engagement with words is uplifting. April is a busy month with T-ball, AP exams, school play, reviewing for the Delmarva Qrtly... prompt 12: complete the line: So we decided I like these prompts, and stuck with the first thing that came to me wee head this morning--early--8:00ish (normally I post late at night) Untitled So we decided to keep fucking and ignore the storm With the windows crying like hurt flappers As the wind blew the curtains back like lashes As drops peppered our hot skin. And fresh spring Rolled out on the ends of your nipples And hung on the ends of your hair So that it felt, and so it became, that you were the ringing cloth twisted into the hot mouth of a starving man, the water speeding his lips and mouth, his body clenching and thrusting to consume what it needs most, your skin, your taste, your water. Prompt 11: object p...

For those not keeping score (do I blame you for not?...No.) I'm participating in a poem a day composition challenge (for no prize other than the experience) in celebration of National Poetry Month. It's cool, and forced, and fun, and I'm jazzing on the vibe of just playing with words. Which is the art of verse and prose. So tonight's challenge was to write a poem about a routine. I name dropped the Beatle's Doctor Roberts and spun up a lyrical night of work. DOC ROBERTS FRIDAY NIGHT SHIFT With the moony latch unlocked the handle of my bags find my softened sick hand. Oh the medicine, the pills, the pie, the bandages that must be wrapped, dressed and perfumed; to fix the broken bones, the shattered vessels of the heart. One must always wrap tight and true and nightly cover wounds, which in some cases is whole body and brain and like a mummy the patients wander back and forth to the bathroom, to the fridge, in various states of dress. And under the clock I must rush a...

While undertaking this challenge I've enjoyed sound play, and frankly, I've enjoyed not trying to hard to finish the poem. Liken it to mining. Stream of consciousness, etc. It's calming. The prompt was to write a dirty or clean poem (in all of it's permutations) Getting dirty building a treehouse Oil and grease, gaps in the gunk where pink shows right on up to the sun, and the aluminum glint across the skin where the screws shaved and were gutted as the drill pounded and roared. The skin glitters with aluminum sparks. There are ticks tucked behind ears and knees so long did we crawl and swing the wood to build the frame and straighten the structure. A tree house raised into the air, into the blossoms How it will transform and enlarge the play of the children it will house, bite and rest.

Today's challenge was to write a poem about something missing...So I whipped up some lyric phoenix image thang, witha dash of Stevens thrown in for measure. I do like the longer lines here. It needs a tad more flesh before being completed, but I think this is skeleton poem. As for today's prompt, I like the theme, and it's broad enough (like them all) for mucho lee-way. Missing My New Life in Seattle To identify what is missing it is better to identify what is not: Brain, humor, nerves, neural networks, lungs. Give me eyes, bone, and breast, and let heave my breath into new flesh, and ash will fill my mouth and orphans will bring me new names, wrapped in butcher paper. Give me hair, and clothes, and leave me in a small town, in the middle of another coast. From there I will report. From there the truth will be told

The prompt for today was Landmark--real, small, imaginary. I chose Warhol's factory as a cultural/art landmark. Some of this I like and no doubt will return to edit the later bits. Tighten up the form, if I can, etc. The Factory How the films unspool and unspool and fall like wet spaghetti at his feet, his dainty feet…like they crawled off some Christmas elf and got stranded on his stumps. And Candy’s eats the air like a heavy hail coming ‘cross a field and Joe and Holly and Jackie crunch pills and silver pies and everyone waits for a fat silence to spread, but there is only gossip and pick-up lines and endless soapy singing, and thick branches of smoke, and so many promises and too many people loving all alone. Soon the sun will swallow everyone up. Where did the girls go? Where is the phone? And who will clean all of this up? And the parties end like they begin: phone in the hand of a mirror man, hot cigarettes on the lips of beautiful, like wicks on rail yard dynamite sticks.

http://www.deadmule.com/poetry/2009/04/s-scott-whitaker-%e2%80%93-three-poems/

Day four into Poem a day challenge: I enjoyed the last time I participated in the PAD challenge, and just enjoyed playing around. I'm feeling that less this time around. Perhaps it's just work is tre busy and I'm generally exhausted. This prompt is another 101 workshop prompt. Broad and general. And RLB's got a hard task to come up with 31 prompts and make it accessible. This was one hard for me cause I was feeling the topic.... but being Saturday, at least I didn't have to write a sonnet, or sestina. So far the experience has been kinda like watching a brainless, but entertaining, reality show. FOX IN THE HEDGE She comes every night when the warm air bakes against the house, and she snatches scraps from the neighbor’s slop dish, her musk edges the cat under the porch, the dogs bark and squeak, bark and squeal. In lamplight her fur ages nightly and like a movie star she is silver, she is orange. Her head cocked with a dash of drama, her tail sprung for surprise. The...

This prompt didn't thrill me. A CW class exercise of the most basic order, but still, it's general enough to bend it to your will. One was to take the phrase The problem with and fill in the blank. I fiddled around with syllabics, but eventually allowed my ear to take over and gave up on formality. Again not great, but it satisfies the exercise and gives me fodder for future days The problem with flesh The problem with flesh is that it doesn’t turn into what you want: lean frame, muscle, new marrow, head of hair. The problem with flesh is that it’s water, and like a dirty fishtank becomes a kind of theatre for those who observe as we flitter and flake about stones and kelp. The problem with flesh is it must be fed and walked. And left up to its own devices burns like a fast wick on summer days.

Outsider poem BOY. PARENT’S ROOM. FIRST EXPLORATION. 1971 Light from the window is the color of linen and the satin underthings hang like earings upon the dresser. Atomizer, ribblet, shoehorn, gossamer scarf, and rings, rings, rings. The wineglass moons upon the stain, and the wineglass itself like a masticated spider turned up in the dust. Where is father? There is no sign, his dresser as bare as a button, shoes tucked like so many dead men under the bed. The books have been replaced with magazines curled up at the ends like smoke. And her ashtray is stale, and printed from her thumb smeared with make-up, powder, blush, blush, and blush. It is still The air dull, almost as if it were an instrument that had not been tuned for years. He dares not open the closet, for fear of moth spider wing and bat, and instead runs his fingers across her pearls, her stones, her bracelet made of bone. He is sniffing the wineglass when downstairs someone stirs a knocking and backwards returns, only late...

Prompt: an origins poem. My inspiration: my first T-ball practice Cocoons, T-Ball, March spring Weeds rise out of the skull of a batting helmet, and the old farmer agrees again to take the mound of his rusty tractor to sweep the field of purple clover. Above the gummed and besticked benches wasps crawl and neck, their eyes as slick as new baseball bats, their wings as hairy as a scrape. The cocoon rots off dusty wings in the hollow reaches of the stands that bow like a broken bough, that both beam and hoard darkness, damp, and darkness. note: I got tired at the end...it was freaking 10 pmish and Lost was on... I do like the gothy rotting vibe...

Poetic Asides, a blog by Robert Lee Brewer, sponsors a poem a day challenge, open to anyone, to craft a poem a day based on a prompt. I competed in one of his PAD challenges in the fall and enjoyed the mental exercise. Though much of what I wrote did not fit into my overall vision (of my current evolving manuscript) the exercises were helpful in another way entirely. It's important for artists to flex their muscles. I can understand the snide academic attitude many may feel about the quality of much of the entries, and the idea that writing a PAD might be beneath them, but the contest gets back to an essential cornerstone of writing: having fun with words. And if that isn't why we write, then I'm a table lamp. The format is easy, and there is a contest, though I believe no prizes are involved, and he's assembled many a fine judge. So if you be not of the house of Montague come and crush a cup of wine.