WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 30 - Work Poem

Day 30

by Ingrid

Work Poem

Sadly, today is the last day of April, which means this is the last prompt I will be posting for National Poetry Month. I hope you have enjoyed the challenge and encourage you to send your poems to wordparty@gmail.com

I also hope that you will come to the WordParty on May 15^th and read some of what you wrote during the challenge.

Let’s face it: writing poetry is hard work. Revising that darn poem for the 23^rd time, trying to find the right word, sound, rhythm, meaning, yes it can be challenging. But as poets know, the unnamable mystery, beauty, and magic that a poem can offer is so worth the work.  

So, for this last prompt, write a “work” poem. Take it however you like: don’t have a job but want one, did have a job but lost one, have a job but hate or love it. Write about how you avoid work, or how you are always late to work, or someone at work you admire or dislike.

With Love and Poetry,

Ingrid

FAILURES IN INFINITIVES

by Bernadette Mayer

why am i doing this? Failure

to keep my work in order so as

to be able to find things

to paint the house

to earn enough money to live on

to reorganize the house so as

to be able to paint the house &

to be able to find things and

earn enough money so as

to be able to put books together

to publish works and books

to have time

to answer mail & phone calls

to wash the windows

to make the kitchen better to work in

to have the money to buy a simple radio

to listen to while working in the kitchen

to know enough to do grownups work in the world

to transcend my attitude

to an enforced poverty

to be able to expect my checks

to arrive on time in the mail

to not always expect that they will not

to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or

to continue

to assume them without suffering

to forget how my mother taunted my father

about money, my sister about i cant say it

failure to forget mother and father enough

to be older, to forget them

to forget my obsessive uncle

to remember them some other way

to remember their bigotry accurately

to cease to dream about lions which always is

to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth

to assuage its anger, this is not a failure

to notice that's how they were; failure

to repot the plants

to be neat

to create & maintain clear surfaces

to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down

and not a table

to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk

to listen to more popular music

to learn the lyrics

to not need money so as

to be able to write all the time

to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills

to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as

to be free of expecting care; failure

to love objects

to find them valuable in any way; failure

to preserve objects

to buy them and

to now let them fall by the wayside; failure

to think of poems as objects

to think of the body as an object; failure

to believe; failure

to know nothing; failure

to know everything; failure

to remember how to spell failure; failure

to believe the dictionary & that there is anything

to teach; failure

to teach properly; failure

to believe in teaching

to just think that everybody knows everything

which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure

to see not everyone believes this knowing and

to think we cannot last till the success of knowing

to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes

to write a thousand poems in an hour

to do an epic, open the unwashed window

to let in you know who and

to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns

to just let us know, we will

to paint your ceilings & walls for free

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 29 - Memory Poem

Day 29
Memory
by Ingrid


Write about an event you see differently now that a little time has passed. Perhaps you have grown in some way that makes you see the situation differently. Perhaps not. What and how do you see the situation now? Has the memory faded or is it still clear as daylight?


Perhaps the event is ....the time you called up an ex-boyfriend after 5 margaritas to tell him what you REALLY think about his new girlfriend, listening to gangster rap while at your grandmother's house, your wedding, a friend's wedding, birth, death, anything really goes here!


Swoon
by James Tate


One of Daniela's breasts fell out of her blouse
during dinner in our favorite restaurant. I liked
looking at it and didn't say anything. The waiter
liked looking at it, too, and just smiled. The other
diners tried not to stare, but some of the men couldn't
help themselves. Daniela takes a certain pride in her 
breasts, so perhaps it wasn't an accident. I knew I
should say something to her, but i was also getting
really turned on. It was as if I had never met this 
woman before. The public aspect of breast exposure
had a mystery to it that I couldn't name. I said,
"The fileto tre pepe was exceptionally good tonight."
I stared at her breast as if it were about to speak.
"The gnocchi was delicious," it said. "You're looking 
especially beautiful tonight," I said. "It's good
to get out and see the people," it said. Daniela
had gone into a swoon or trance of some kind, and the 
breast had taken over. When the waiter came for the
bill, he said to Daniela's breast, "Very nice to see you tonight."
The breast blushed, gently swaying in the candlelight. 

Sleeper Wave

by Ingrid 

The chill was damp, deep in your bones

there simply was no warming up.

Memorial Day at Dillon’s Beach

was filled with grey hues:

the sky darkening

sand cool to the touch

salt in the air, everywhere

the sea a darker shade than the sky,

the sea like a rabid dog

waves foaming at the mouth along the shore.

My family members never seemed to notice

the froth and intensity.

I ran up the beach

playing in the dunes.

They turned their backs to her,

and she raged, higher and higher in the sky

The water was a wall coming toward us.

I screamed “LOOK OUT”

but no one listened to a 5 year old

it overtook, swallowed them like small fish.

I sucked in my cheeks

jumped up and down

held my breath

counted 1-2-3-4

they were all still there, when the water receded.

Laughing. They were laughing!

My mother with her head swung all the way back,

her wild and free belly laugh,

wobbling on the wet sand like a drunkard.

Aunt & Uncle dripping

with the sea’s ravishing act,

one helping the other up.

Missing-in-action,

my Father’s red and white plastic flip-flop

the cheap kind from Walgreens

eaten by the ferocious jowls of an angry sea.

WordParty Challenge - Day 26 - Love poem

Day 26 

Love Poem
by Ingrid

This prompt is meant to be playful: Write a love poem from your right hand to your left hand. Or, from your left hand to your right hand. What does one hand do for you that the other cannot? Vice Versa? Look at the appearance, skin, color, nails, scars, and write about it. Which one is dominant? 

A HAND 

By Jane Hirshfield 

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.

Nor is it palm and knuckles,
not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow,
not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins.

A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines
with their infinite dramas,
nor what it has written,
not on the page,
not on the ecstatic body.

Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping—
not sponge of rising yeast-bread,
not rotor pin's smoothness,
not ink.

The maple's green hands do not cup
the proliferant rain.
What empties itself falls into the place that is open.

A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question.

Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.

MY FATHER'S LEFT HAND

By David Bottoms 

Sometimes my old man’s hand flutters over his knee, flaps
in crazy circles, and falls back to his leg.

Sometimes it leans for an hour on that bony ledge.

And sometimes when my old man tries to speak, his hand waggles in the air, chasing a word, then perches again
on the bar of his walker or the arm of a chair.

Sometimes when evening closes down his window and rain
blackens into ice on the sill, it trembles like a sparrow in a storm.

Then full dark falls, and it trembles less, and less, until it’s still.

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 24 - Recycle a Line

Day 24

Recycle a Line

by Ingrid 

This prompt is inspired by a longtime WordParty friend & poet, EK Keith. Every year she takes a poem-a-day writing challenge. This year she's not only writing daily, but using one  line from the previous day's poem and writing a new poem.

Yes, like an exquisite corpse poem, though I would rather call it recycled poetry.

Here's the prompt:

Take a line or lines from any of the previous poems you've written during the challenge, and write a new poem! You can use multiple poems and/or lines. 

Worrying about the Future

by  E.K. Keith

April 22 and 23 2012

 

In an infinitely expanding universe every bellybutton is the point of dead reckoning

as we drift as we shift towards the future while we look at the still twinkling lights of long dead stars

I stop worrying about the future as I understand in a twinkling

the overlap of the future and the past is the present

Our hands touch

I'm worrying about the future again because the past failed to prepare me for the present

and I'd give anything for a time machine with anti-lock brakes to keep us from crashing into the future like a drunk on a joyride on a moonless night no headlights car crumpling fenders buckling

the smack the impact I swear I don't know what happened and I never saw it coming

Send your poems to wordparty@gmail.com

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 23 - Favorite Word or Letter

Day 23

by Ingrid

Write a Favorite Word or Letter Poem

We all have them, favorite words, letters, phrases. Today's prompt invites you to write using those words and letters in a poem. 

Here are some examples:

Saying Things

by Marilyn Krysl

Three things quickly - pineapple, sparrowgrass, whale -
and then on to asbestos. What I want to say tonight is
words, the naming of things into their thing,
yucca, brown sugar, solo, the roll of a snare drum,
say something, say anything, you'll see what I mean.
Say windmill, you feel the word fly out from under and away.
Say eye, say shearwater, alewife, apache, harpoon,
do you see what I'm saying, say celery, say Seattle,
say a whole city, say San Jose. You can feel the word
rising like a taste on the palate, say
tuning fork, angel, temperature, meadow, silver nitrate,
try carbon cycle, point lace, helium, Micronesia, quail.
Any word - sa y it - belladonna, screw auger, spitball,
any word goes like a gull up and on its way,
even lead lifts like a swallow from the nest
of your tongue. Say incandescence, bonnet, universal joint,
lint - oh I invite you to try it. Say cold cream,
corydalis, corset, cotillion, cosmic dust,
you are all of you a generous and patient audience,
pilaster, cashmere, mattress, Washington pie,
say vise, inclinometer, enjambment, you feel your own voice
taking off like a swift, when you say a word you feel like
a gong that's been struck, to speak is to step out of your skin,
stunned. And you're a pulsar, finally you understand light
is both particle and wave, you can see it, as in
parlour - when do you get a chance to say parlour -
and now mackinaw, toad and ham wing their way
to the heaven of their thing. Say bellows, say sledge,
say threshold, cottonmouth, Russia leather,
say ash, picot, fallow deer, saxophone, say kitchen sink.
This is a birthday party for the mouth - it's better than ice cream,
say waterlily, refrigerator, hartebeest, Prussian blue
and the word will take you, if you let it,
the word will take you along across the air of your head
so that you're there as it settles into the thing it was made for,
adding to it a shimmer and the bird song of its sound,
sound that comes from you, the hand letting go
its dove, yours the mouth speaking the thing into existence,
this is what I'm talking about, this is called saying things.

O, The Fifteenth Letter of the Alphabet

by Ingrid Keir

for David Meltzer who took the time to ask:

“Do you have a favorite letter?”

O, big letter

sandwiched between N and P

suspended in alphabetic space.

O, O, O,

groaned

during the sweating waves of passion

under the tendrils of surprise.

O, O, O,

your single never-ending ring

an infinite song, bellowing—

O, O, O,

boredom, flickering white fuzzies

behind the glass of the television.

The Story of O read by lovers

wrapped in the slippery sheets of ecstasy.

O, O, O,

zero, nada, zilch,

you can make me feel low, low, low.

O, O, O,

heavy, weighty,

so much on my tight shoulders

so much on my mind.

O, O, O,

that poem is quite intriguing,

can I hear a little more…

O, O, O,

yes like that!

O, O, O,

I would not make it

without your help

this vowel round and fat

O, O, O,

I want to O you to death,

with words like POETRY,

Obama, Oprah, Ophelia, Oboe,

Ontario, Tip Toe, Vertigo, no-no,

YoYo, Mistletoe,

O say can you see

Ommmmmmm

O, fifteenth letter of the alphabet, I ode you.

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 20 - Commuter Poem

Day 20

Commuter Poem

by Jennifer & Ingrid

When we lived in NYC, we were always happy to see poetry in motion while riding the subway. In March, the NY MTA and the Poetry Society of America relaunched the poems inside the subway cars.

See here: http://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/blog/by_popular_demand/

Today's prompt is to write a Commuter poem. 

What do you see and experience while driving, biking, walking, riding the bus or train, from here to there? What images move you? What do you see around you? Take us along and help us see the commute through your eyes.

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Writing Prompt #17

Day 17
Erasures
by Ingrid


Erasure poetry is created by taking text and editing it into a poem. 


A few years ago I endeavored to do this with Poet & Editor of Wave Books, Joshua Beckman as a nontraditional interview and his poetic response. (Unfortunately this info was housed on our old website so I cannot link to it, but if you would a copy of the interview & pdf of the response, please email me and I'll forward it).


Wave Books has a great method for doing this online on their website. Another option would be to take an actual text and paint or whiteout the words on the page you don't want to use for the poem. I've seen poets make visual poetry in this way, using the book as an art poetry piece. 


Most of all, have fun! 


Cheers,
Ingrid
ingrid_keir@yahoo.com

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Writing Prompts #12

After many years of writing free verse and spoken word, I found something curious: I enjoy form. I like the rules and the specifics being dictated. Writing this way is like solving a puzzle.  Now you can take it or leave it, make this as difficult or easy as you choose, but these next few prompts are meant to challenge you with the limitations of form. I'm including a few examples as well for you to reference.

Prompt #12

by Ingrid

Sonnet

Write a Shakespearan sonnet, or some variation of a sonnet. If you want to make it particularly challenging, write it in iambic pentameter.

Let's review some of the features of a sonnet:

• 14 lines
• A volta, or turn toward the end of the poem
• Iambic Pentameter (but you can also write a great sonnet without it)
• Rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg

Some examples:

SONNET 43
by William Shakespeare

When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
   All days are nights to see till I see thee,
   And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

LUCIFER AT THE STARLITE —after George Meredith

by Kim Addonizio

Here's my bright idea for life on earth:
better management. The CEO
has lost touch with the details. I'm worth
as much, but I care; I come down here, I show
my face, I'm a real regular. A toast:
To our boys and girls in the war, grinding
through sand, to everybody here, our host
who's mostly mist, like methane rising
from retreating ice shelves. Put me in command.
For every town, we'll have a marching band.
For each thoroughbred, a comfortable stable;
for each worker, a place beneath the table.
For every forward step a stumbling.
A shadow over every starlit thing. 

THE ANGER OF WOMEN

by Garrison Keillor 

The anger of women pervades the rooms
Like a cold snap, and you wait for the thaw
To open the window and air out the anger fumes,
And then a right hook KA-POW to the jaw!
And she says three jagged things about you
And then it's over. She bursts into tears,
The storm spent, the sky turns sky-blue.
But a man's heart can hurt for many years.
I have found the anger of women unbearable.
And when my goddesses have cursed the day
They met me and said those terrible
Things, I folded my tent and stole away.
I yielded to their righteous dominion
And went off in search of another opinion.

FOUNTAIN PEN
by Ingrid Keir

A faded blue box full of dusty bones,
or so I presumed until I eased the lid off
to find gleaming tools, colored gemstones.
My Grandfather’s fountain pens—cast-offs
from a legendary man I know little about.
I hold each slim piece, gently draw off the cap—
the arrow shaped nib, black ink spout,
eighteen-karat gold, the point enwrapped.
The distinct sound his pen makes on paper—
like a dog’s toenails scratching hardwood.
This slim tip—perhaps was his biographer,
ink sucked to the automatic cartridge like blood.
I dream of knowing the secrets within his pen,
what I’d learn if his thoughts were actually written.
 

And these do not follow the Shakespearan form, but I had to throw them in for good measure:

BLACKBERRY EATING
by Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry -- eating in late September.

SONNET IN PRIMARY COLORS

by Rita Dove

This is for the woman with one black wing
perched over her eyes: lovely Frida, erect
among parrots, in the stern petticoats of the peasant,
who painted herself a present--
wildflowers entwining the plaster corset
her spine resides in the romance of mirrors.

Each night she lay down in pain and rose
to her celluloid butterflies of her Beloved Dead,
Lenin and Marx and Stalin arrayed at the footstead.
And rose to her easel, the hundred dogs panting
like children along the graveled walks of the garden, Diego's
love a skull in the circular window
of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow.

SONNET XVII
by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Writing Prompt #10

Day #10

List Poem

by Ingrid

List poems are one of my favorite forms.  Here are some examples with varying, lengths, styles and ideas for list poems:

• Signage on the highway (don’t do this while behind the wheel)
• Facebook or Twitter messages
• Items/label in your pantry and/or bathroom
• Questions
• Take lines from various poems/songs
• Business jargon
• Academic jargon
• Warnings your parents gave you

I love these Richard Loranger poems:

I WANT A POETRY and WE HAVE TO BECOME HUMAN

http://www.esquemag.org/2012/02/04/richard-loranger/

THINGS NOT TO SAY TO A PREGNANT WOMAN

by Ingrid Keir

Are you having twins?

At which hospital are you going to give birth?

When are you going to pop?

Looking at you makes me tired.

Is that baby here yet?

I really don’t like that name. It reminds me of an old person.

Wow you are big as a house!

My friend was in labor for 40 hours and had a 12 pound baby. You should call her to talk about her labor experience.

You look really uncomfortable.

How much longer until that baby arrives?

You are just acting this way because you are hormonal.

Can I touch your bump?

Wow your boobs are huge! Hopefully they won’t get too saggy.

Should you be drinking that?

Do you know what you’re having? Is it what you wanted?

Are your ankles swollen yet?

You ARE waddling aren’t you!

TO-DO LIST

by Jennifer Barone

pay rent
lose 10 pds.
do laundry
open a 401k
cash checks
figure out what to do with your life
sign up for meditation
meditate
become a better listener
call your friends back
take italian lessons
get italian citizenship
move to italy
stop obsessing over that boy
type up and organize your poetry
organize your whole house,
especially your papers
go to the dentist
try to relax
practice yoga
learn ayurveda
get to sleep at a decent hour
stop being late to work
eat healthier foods
drink more water
take your multi-vitamin
fix your portfolio
quit your job
stop worrying so much
get a pedicure
sell all your stuff on eBay
get health insurance
update your website
become a samurai warrior
practice positive thinking
stop being so negative
buy a plane ticket

GOOD NEWS

by Dan Brady

 

I want some good news people

No, not that “born again”

Bible humping bullpucky you’ve heard tell of … nope

I want good news … and not just for a minute here or there

Like you get during a KPFA fundraiser

Not what you get on Faux News during a slow day

No, by God I want the real deal

I want a whole workweek stuffed full of it

With each book-ending weekend fit to bursting

I want to know what it’s like turn on the TV and feeeeel good

I wanna feeeeeel good very time I think about … anything I can think of

I want to be double dipped, full up, schmeared, with good news

I tell you I want to look at the sky

And not think about “chem-trail” conspiracies

I want to feel the wind in my hair

Without wondering what kind of toxic crap is being carried along in it

From the sewers of India, China’s deserts or Japan’s nukes

I want to wake up, turn on NPR and hear about wonderful things

Expanding forests, glaciers coming back along with fish populations

Safe cell phones that pay YOU to use them

Free food being given out, rent reductions running rampant

I want to hear Obama talk

About giving back trillions of dollars to the people

Closing Guantanamo, giving up on nuclear power

Bringing troops home from Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Kazakhstan, Balochistan,Turkmenistan, Nepal, Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico and the other 123

I want to hear him go on about perp walking Bush

And his whole suffering asshole crew

Placing a stay on every act that rim jobbing bunghumper ever made

That prisons are being shuttered

Because millions of people have decided to care of each other

That godless heathen multi-nationals are hiring shit loads of people

Because they’re bringing rock solid, plan your retirement on them

God blessed union jobs back the good old US of A and by the millions

I want to hear about green houses, green cars, green factories,

Green make up, green jobs and a greening self-sustaining world

I want to hear about how every person entering the job market

Says the same ding-dong thing,

“Gee, I don’t know which of all these jobs I want?”

AND “Say, why don’t all you companies take a number for crissakes!”

And, mind you, I want the good news to go on every frickin’day

I want to hear how millions are giving up smoking

Taking up Pilates, volunteering for charity work

That everyone has two chickens in every pot

A good, well-built, American car in every garage

And by that I mean one that gets 500 miles per fuel up

Takes a 50 mile an hour crash with no damage

Or injury to its passengers

Last as long as you frickin’ want to keep it

And gets free tune-ups, brake jobs and tires while you own it

I want to hear about scenic passenger trains making a come back

How scientists are being listened to … Hello!!!

Got global warming on the run

Replaced oil, nuclear power and natural gas

Found a way to prevent alcoholism

Using the cure for cancer that we already have

And have begun to terra-form the Earth for god sakes

I want to hear day after day of good news

So that by the time the fourth day dawns

I’ll have some idea of what life is like in a world that makes sense

So that I’ll be looking forward to the next damned day

So that I’ll be glad to wake up

Donate to good causes, of which there’ll be thousands

And every one of them will be doing very well thank you very much

I want all the guns in the world to be turned in

Broken up and melted down to make … anything else!

I want to hear that every soldier, intel wonk, officer

Commando or insurgent

Has renounced violence and are getting busy …

Building shelters, planting trees, cleaning beaches

Counseling hopeless, caring for the needy

Handing out bread, bringing in water

Giving emergency care to the destitute

Rescuing cats from trees and kissing babies

I wanna see them all get busy

Fixing every leaky toilet, broken window, noisy refrigerator

And every god blessed pothole in the known universe

That they are working with farmers to grow more food

Unlocking potential, opening floodgates

Applying bandages, splints and helping, helping helping!

I want to hear about bastard banksters making micro loans and giving grants

That defense departments have been shut down!

That research and development funding

Is going to making better computers

Cars, planes, trains, tractors, shoes, lights, batteries, houses, cities, colleges, schools, basketball and food courts!

I want to hear about better understanding

Between religions, races, politicians, historical enemies

I want to hear about borders being erased, hatreds evaporating

Ignorance giving way … reason running rampant

And every form of love being accepted by everyone everywhere!

By god, I want a week of such good news

As people have never ever, ever, EVER had

So when I go outside

And get my free cup of fair trade, organic, sustainable coffee

And an organic “everything” bagel with a wild caught salmon schmear

Everyone will be walking about more than a bit dazed

More than a bit confused

But each and every one will be happy, happy, happy!

Hallelujah,

Brothers and sisters, but I yearn, dream and pray for such a week

I say I want a week of good news

A flood, an ocean, a sky full of wonders

So that every memory of this time; this horrific, festering butt hole

This stupid-assed, jack shit, fucked up universally acclaimed

And God awful world of unholy, rank, festering, pustulant oozing scabs

Is gone.   I say I want a week of good news, my friends

I say, I want a week of such good news

That glory unbounded I know, I say, I just know, we all want to see!