Saturday, April 30, 2011

NaPoWriMo "Grand Finale"

Since I've been around the kiddos below for the last few weekends, I'll finish my NaPoWriMo efforts with a very short, very rhyme-y poem for each of them.  Just little nibbles from my wind-fried, pollen-soaked, sun-spotted, sleepy little online-class-burdened mind.

O
She's getting betters
With letters
These days
She knows what some say.

G
He will create
What he imaginates
Unless he is screaming
For a screen

Ba
Smiling she checks to see
if she must do what you said to do
she pauses and proceeds slowly
In case she doesn't really have to

Br
Smiles and smiles
for miles and miles
but smiles get thin
when the teeth cut in!

J
Jayden is a dancer
A booty-scooting prancer
Shaking and hip-hopping
Running-man no stopping

P
Cherub-cheeks
and G's are D's
Who would guess the potty
Is where she pees?

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

NaPoWriMo Poem #17

Friends

synapses that spark
after years of the dark
our paths have diverged
but the way back
is like making our way
to a childhood home
from before we could read
the street signs
we do not know the map
but we know the turns
that will lead us there
and we run the last few steps
in joyful recognition.

NaPoWriMo Poem #16

#16

Regret

Regret is a lie
you tell yourself
because
it is easier to believe
that things
could have been different
if only

Regret
unlike revenge
is a dish best put into a plastic container
and carried around in a lunch bag
and forgotten in the bottom of a backpack
or behind the driver's seat
until it festers so
that you fear to pry the lid off
and whiff the vinegary remains
of what used to be
a simple tug of the heart
and so you toss it


Tuesday, April 26, 2011

NaPoWriMo-- Desperate attempt to get close to 30 poems! How many is this?

Pop flies at practice

The park rings with the ping of the metal bat.
Young boys with sweaty heads under their caps squint into the late afternoon sunshine.
The boy in the red shirt whistles through his fingers to his teammates
or maybe just to entertain himself at shortstop
experimenting with his grungy fingers to his lips
Looking around to see who might be admiring his efforts.
Ping!  Get ready!
His glove reaches to the sky
a foot from where the ball comes down.
Or comes down an inch above where the ball rolls by.
The boy behind him goes for it
and the boy in the red shirt goes back to his whistling.
Ping!  Foul ball.
Ping!  Pop fly.
Ping!  Another one passes him by.

#
Facebook 4/26

Dreading chi chi smasher tomorrow

bird nest in the electric meter box
lovely day
But only because of the picture
I would highly encourage everyone to vote
earned my brownie points today

chained themselves to the dais before a planned public hearing
Stinkbugs suck. 
da bulls.
T Ball!
Karaoke

cohort peeps

SHE MUST BE BROKEN!


pass the omnibus gun bill allowing guns in public places like libraries
not very good in the pool


Woohoo
Woot!
Yikes
OMG!
Hopefully
Okay

Amber Alert

Chained Ethnic Studies Students Take Over School Board in Tucs
on

Smoke and ash.  New fire.
now friends

we see things as we are



 


Monday, April 25, 2011

NaPoWriMo Will I ever catch up?

Way, way behind.  But here we go...   Ginsberg, Goldberg, etc. all say first thoughts are best thoughts so maybe quick, quick poems will somehow lead to something, right?

Quick, Quick Poem...

Tombstone Heritage Ranch

On High Lonesome
along a long two lane road
through the high desert scrabble
of what used to be grassland
and now is tufts punctuating
mesquite
four stone signs
false oracles of the American dream
a development that never developed
lots that appear as the unbroken mesquite lands
parcelled out in imaginary acreage
the roads literally lead nowhere
and metaphorically as well
but those who do not travel on the roads
but across and among the mesquite and grass-tufted high desert
have paused next to, behind these false stone oracles
that proclaim Tombstone Heritage Ranch
and have opened bean cans with pocket knives
drank water from gallon jugs
and have left behind the refuse
and travelled onward toward a new American dream
punctuated by other oracles
who may prove false

Links for Backpacking Aravapa Canyon Wilderness

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

NaPoWriMo Day 14

Wow, am I behind!  Luckily I wrote quite a few haiku and pwoemrds!  I feel like that is slightly cheating, however.  Not cheating, but it has been since last week that I wrote any poetry. 

Ah, so today...  this will be quick.  Must revise later.  More brainstorming than anything.

Poem for Catalina High School at Night

The orangey lights fade in at the push of a button.
Guys in their fifties who have just changed from button-downs
compete at tennis.  They're still pretty fit. 
They run the court and get the ball.
They have good-quality athletic shoes.

One by one, the roller derby chicks show up.
They have short choppy layers in their hair.
They pull pink wheeled carry-on suitcases.
They wear t-shirts sloganed with rude sentiments.
They put on stickered helmets and go through their paces,
changing up to the whistle
while bald guys with funky little mustaches
and dusty children look on.

I run up the stadium steps. 
I walk the track with all the middle-aged teachers
and moms taking me-time
in stretchy work-out pants.
Some guys in their twenties show up in their running shorts
and start timing themselves doing sprints.
One of them holds a pit-bull on a leash.
A local homie walks the track in a sweatsuit
too hot for the weather
the hood hides his headphones

On the football field, a man kicks a soccer ball with a toddler.

three kids play basketball on the darkening courts

on the other skating rink a teen boy practices
subdued tricks on his BMX,
meditatively rolling forward between each one.
A roller-blader with his hockey gear skates circles
around him, warming up for the rest of his team.

the sun has disappeared, and the light continues to go.

I run up the rusty stadium steps and look west
over the top as I breathe and wait
for my heart-rate to rise
to make sure I'm not dizzy before I head down.

Friday, April 8, 2011

NaPoWriMo Day 8

Haiku for the Desert in Spring

Poppies and lupine
may sprout from winter showers
remember and watch

Prickly pear paddles
droop grey along the roadsides
survivors destroyed

freeze has flung all leaves
mesquite tease, bare limbs shadeless
wait to see what lives

Thursday, April 7, 2011

NaPoWriMo Day 7

Potty Talk

crotch crotch crotch crotch
a poet says a writer is careful of what she reads
because what she reads is what she thinks
so what happens to a mother
who listens to crotch
potty pooped big poop flush
butt oh yeah tooted
fart stink potty outside
potty chonies and pee pee
peed the bed pee pee stink
doggie pee throwed up
diarrhea potty potty
butt stink?


Not sure if it's a poem yet, really.  But hey.  I wrote today!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

NaPoWriMo Day 6

Haiku for the Library Atrium

filtered sun dapples
above fiction leaves, memoirs
hearts, minds wandering


View from My Office Area

























More later?
Writing in forms seems to be an easy way to set a goal for the day...

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

NaPoWriMo Day 5 (My second attempt)

during the untimed 30 minutes
 
gabriel numbly stares
celina checks for comma errors
these are the players
michael thirsts and hungers

celina checks for comma errors
luis fingers a device in his pocket
michael thirsts and hungers
veronica counts rubber bracelets

luis fingers a device in his pocket
gabriel checks his fauxhawk
veronica counts rubber bracelets
two boys mouth out fauxtalk

gabriel checks his fauxhawk
vero graphs positive correlations
two boys mouth out fauxtalk
siu recalls the order of operations

vero graphs positive correlations
lisa wonders if she is pregnant
siu recalls the order of operations
ben swears time is stagnant

lisa thinks she is pregnant
celina's lips are moving
ben swears time is stagnant
he feels the time he is losing

celina's lips are moving
gabriel numbly stares
he feels the time he is losing
and these are the players


From Poetryfoundation.org:
Pantoum

A Malaysian verse form adapted by French poets and occasionally imitated in English. It comprises a series of quatrains, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the next. The second and fourth lines of the final stanza repeat the first and third lines of the first stanza.






Monday, April 4, 2011

NaPoWriMo Day 4 (Day One for Me!)

Because I got started late on this, I'm going to attempt some pwoemrds (Inspired by NaPoWriMo website entry for Day 3 and Geoff Huff's InterNaPwoWriMo).

It's where you create one-word poems that can be visual plays or two words shoved together.

Here are a few I came up with today.  I just learned the form, so not quite sure how to incorporate the visual elements that mess with your brain, but it was fun trying:

palktotty
rasthpthppbberry
addefisorder
basknetbOll
vedgecation
inspitfire

30 poems in April should be pretty easy, because this counts as six, right?