Terminus

In honor of the final day of NaPoWriMo 2017

photo by J. Lyman

This is the final stop;
you must disembark.
The bus won’t go…
The plane doesn’t connect…
The ship can’t sail…

A last breath.
The final hurrah.
Today is the day.

Ensure the lamps you douse
when you discover
you are the last to leave.

The Great Blue eyeing
our sad, drying pond, sighs.
He spreads his wings, gives
a hoarse squawk, lifts
off for a better lake to fish.

April, making a curtsy, hoists
her skirts and makes for stage left.

And poets across the world
are left to flounder –

…as poets so often do.

Day 30 of NaPoWriMo 2017:  I felt the need… the unction to lay this month to rest.  There are many directions I could have gone; so many prompts strewn about the internet.  This just called my name, winked at me from a dark corner, and — well, you’ll just have to fill in the rest for yourself.

Midnight Drear

photo by Charley

Shadow
Over me cast.
Dimness dreaded.
Ghost shape drawn.
Spirit black dreamt.
Darkness spread.
Shape drawn.
Cast shade.
Respite.

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is “…take one of your favorite poems and find a very specific, concrete noun in it….  After you’ve chosen your word, put the original poem away and spend five minutes free-writing associations – other nouns, adjectives, etc.  Then use your original word and the results of your free-writing as the building blocks for a new poem.”  I took shadow from The Raven.  Not necessarily my all-time favorite poem.  Honestly, I don’t know that I have one favorite poem.

The Limerick Twist

One2One Network

I heard of a loan shark named Lars
who worked in the seediest bars.
Thirty percent per day,
and if you didn’t pay,
He’d shoot off your kneecaps, of carse!

So, tonight at dVerse Poets Pub, the innkeeper is serving up glasses of Irish and pints of our favorite brew.  In my case that would be Murphy’s; although I acknowledge the preference of many to that other purveyor of stout.  Anyway, in payment we are being cajoled into sharing a limerick or two.  Here’s mine.

Limericks

 

Inside the Dipper and the Inch to Polaris

On a carpet of tall grass floating
I extend my arm and measure
the minute intervals with finger-span
and am amazed at the size of the Earth,
how gigantic I am in this compact universe.
The night sky constricts like last year’s tee shirt.

Next month I’ll have chocolate cake,
turn five,
and start Kindergarten.

The NaPoWriMo prompt for today is space.  Specifically, a small space.

Stolen Moment

Charles M. Conlon / Sporting News Archive via Getty Images

 

the great
Cobb steals
third evermore
the baseline
judge blurs
focused as he is on the call
stasis forever
dynamic explosive
still that haunts
dramatic moment
that breathes
still we are
too colorized
to relive the moment that lives
meditate on it hold
still

Faced with two challenges — NaPoWriMo wanted us to write a poem of ekphrasis (I’m leaving out the medieval marginal stuff, but, you know…), and the barkeep at dVerse Poets Pub gives us the Quadrille, using the word still.

Quadrille #31

Dull Ache – Sharp Jolt

from the movie Marathon Man

Backscattered echoes
of words casually tossed,
emotions impacted –
the enamel is eaten
through, and the nerve pulses
hotly – torment
me to write.

A root canal of the psyche; drill
deeply into the chagrined
flesh.  Eliminate the offense,
or at the very least, expose
it.

How do we paint our obsession?  Our need to write… whether poetry, fiction, commentary… whatever?  I can’t speak for others.  I feel the necessity to write as keenly as I have felt (God help me) a toothache.  It’s not quite air.  Closer to chocolate, actually.

Leaves Me Wanting

photo by Charley

Tome
Voluminous read
Between my hands
Why not more concise?
Satiated

Gluttony
Greedy excess
The book store
Can’t make a choice
Tomes

 It is a horrible addiction.  You cannot sympathize if you don’t have the habit.  Fortunately, I am one of the few who actually read (most of) the books I buy.  At least… the ones that don’t lose my interest about two thirds of the way through.

This is my double Elevenie for NaPoWriMo 2017.

Six Word Saturday

April 22, 2017

photo by Charley

Hopefully anticipating a day of rain.

Earth

Photo by Charley

Furrows grow
along the hillside
in layers horizontal.
They will hold
the rain, the soil.

Our garden is set to feed
the family and friends that gather.

The she-wolf only takes
what she requires for her and her cubs.
Never have rabbits… nor eagles
biggie-sized their meals.

Squirrels disdain cling-wrap.

While legions strive
pursue
debate
the virtues and evils
surrounding oil transport
over and against
lithium strip-mining,
we ride our bikes out
into the countryside to enjoy
the rejuvenation that comes
from rubbing shoulders with the dwindling….

For Earth Day and NaPoWriMo 2017.

Buffaloed

My great uncle Charles Judson Fuller

Trained a bison
to be a nice’un.
Rode the bison
over a herd of bison
from Sioux Falls
to the big shouldered
city.  Who ever heard
of a herd being herded
by a man on a bison?  How
absurd.

True story.  This is Judd Fuller: Cowboy and circuit preacher.  I met him when he showed up unexpectedly at my grandparents farm.  He was in his nineties, tall and lean, and wearing a sharply tailored Western suit.  He roared up in a fire engine red Oldsmobile 4-4-2 convertible.  For two days I was given a taste of the Old West.  He taught me to shoot a six gun.  He told me to seek the answers to the questions I asked him in the Bible.  Then he drove off in a cloud of dust.

He really did ride a bison over a herd of bison.  Family mythology also has it that he toured with Buffalo Bill’s show on their last days.  But you know how families can be….

dVerse is having a postcard poetry night.  https://dversepoets.com/2017/04/18/tuesday-poetics-wish-you-were-here/