NaPoWriMo Prompt #8: Unusual Love

I’m trying to catch up with the prompts since I’ve missed 4 days now!

Day 8 we were to use an unusual metaphor for a current love, obsession or the one that got away.

This is pretty much about one person that is all of the above: a current love, a slight obsession and certainly one that got away…I’d wondered if I would ever write about him and I’m glad I could use a single unusual metaphor to finally do it.

The Poem:

Milk

White. Fresh.

At your best when

served tall

cold

alone and straight up.

But you were good for me sometimes

I -

Your coffee.

Your molasses cookie.

Your vodka.

I don’t understand how you could change –

why there had to be a separation,

a curds and whey conflict

in you

that left a sour taste in my mouth.

I cried when you spilled – rushing to fill

the surface with the fact that I

no longer had your heart.

NaPoWriMo: Prompt #7 – Humor in Love Tanka

The Prompt:

Write and capture humorous incidents related to love in a 5-line love poem called a tanka. (You may even decide to create your own tanka journal for love poems!) Here’s how to write one:

1. Describe in concrete terms one or two simple images (two or three lines) from your humorous love encounter, not just what you saw but also what you tasted, touched, smelled or heard.
2. What were you were thinking at the time this love encounter happened? Write that down, too, as two or three lines, so you have five lines in total for the poem.
3. Think about making the third line of your poem into a pivot line, so that it links to both the previous two lines and to the final two lines.
4. Test the tanka by dividing it into two parts so the third line acts both as the last line of the first part and as the first line of the second part. Does each section make sense separately, and then together?
5. Think about reducing — and even avoiding — capitalization and punctuation because a tanka needn’t be like a sentence or merely a flat statement.

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What the rules don’t say is that a tanka is formed by a pattern of five lines containing 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. I couldn’t think of anything funny “ha-ha” but there is that funny feeling when you ask someone out for the first time and so…

The Poem:

“Elated”

tall bookish stunner

clumsy coy conversation

“Let’s go out sometime…”

nervous shy girl takes a chance

on cloud nine when he says yes

NaPoWriMo: Prompt #6 – Photo poem

Kaleidoscope baby

Right arm up, left arm out, and    t   a  k  e    a     s  p  i  n

Sprightly darling

making a primary-colored whirlwind

Can I catch you? Will I win

A hug, a kiss, a happy grin?

A look from jolly mischief sparkling eyes?

A stop, a laugh and yell, “surprise!”

Silly mommy, guess what you’ll get?

A barefoot buoyant pirouette!

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My little 30 minute poem. The photo above is of my daughter Lillian when she was about 20 months old.

NaPoWriMo: Prompt #4 – Inside Out/Lonely

Once again I combined prompts. I used RWP of taking the outside in or taking the inside out, plus I used Poetic Asides’ Day 1 prompt to write about loneliness. I threw in a little Spanish so I’ve provided the translation below the original poem. No title…yet

Untitled

What I should have confessed when you called to ask if todo esta bien

Aunque dije bien, bien, bien…

was how the disappointment of an empty room astonishes me –
as if the wooden threshold could be Arkansas mud
and the next room ought to be an open field of blue bonnets
en ves de encontrar un cuarto desnudo de tu luz

Quise decir to you, confess

I’m lonelier than I let on and too cabeza dura to mention
that I sit and meditate on the swash of tires trekking the wet roads
foolishly convinced a tempestuous surf was lashing my walls
and I was caught in a sea storm never to see you again.

La verdad es que

This solitude occupies me like swallows in the south during December.
Solo en ti pienso and I fly down a hallway too narrow for these impatient wings,
desesperarda when the phone rings that it might be you.
I must tell you I am lonely, lonely, lonely

Sin ti.

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Translation:

Untitled

What I should have confessed when you called to ask if everything is good

Although I said good, good, good

was how the disappointment of an empty room astonishes me –
as if the wooden threshold could be Arkansas mud
and the next room ought to be an open field of blue bonnets
instead to find a room naked of your light

I meant to you, confess

I’m lonelier than I let on and too hard headed to mention
that I sit and meditate on the swash of tires trekking the wet roads
foolishly convinced a tempestuous surf was lashing my walls
and I was caught in a sea storm never to see you again.

The truth is that

This solitude occupies me like swallows in the south during December.
I only think of you and I fly down a hallway too narrow for these impatient wings,
desperate when the phone rings that it might be you.
I must tell you I am lonely, lonely, lonely

Without you.

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Hope I redeemed myself since yesterday’s post! Hope you like my take on “outside – in”

NaPoWriMo: Prompt #2 – RWP Acronym

I read through the list of 30+ possible meanings for acronym RWP this morning and I disliked just about all of them. Also this morning I was sitting on the floor in the guest bedroom of a friend’s house (where I’ve been staying)  putting on my shoes and noticed she had a stack of books on the floor. Looking at the stack the first title to catch my eye was “Random Winds.” Ding! Ding! Ding! “What do Random Winds do,” I thought to myself, “…Propel, perhaps?”

And there you have it:

“Random Winds Propel”

Random winds propel.
They do! Spring consents –
they come — Dispel
nature’s brumal remnants

Blossoms in the mid-day
breezes do whirl and rain
a flower fragrance spray
upon the green terrain

Random winds do rouse
with grace and howling might –
shake branches, fence and house
and whistle through the night

Channeled Emily Dickinson on this one and wrote a happy poem about Spring. Somewhere on Carolee Sherwood’s blog she describes these napowrimo poems as raw material, sloppy messes or instant mashed potatoes. I agree with these descriptions. I want to go in and edit the heck out of yesterday’s and today’s poem but I need to resist and take the raw material for what it is.

Oh and that book “Random Winds” is about a dramatic extramarital affair. Of course. lol…