Tag: poem

Poem 20150405

crow6 Comments

Day five’s challenge from #NaPoWriMo:

Find an Emily Dickinson poem – preferably one you’ve never previously read – and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now, rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of it!

Ok, here’s the original, lifted from the Poetry Foundation’s website. Picked at random, as in, i had my eyes closed.

I would not paint — a picture — (348)
BY EMILY DICKINSON
I would not paint — a picture —
I’d rather be the One
It’s bright impossibility
To dwell — delicious — on —
And wonder how the fingers feel
Whose rare — celestial — stir —
Evokes so sweet a torment —
Such sumptuous — Despair —

I would not talk, like Cornets —
I’d rather be the One
Raised softly to the Ceilings —
And out, and easy on —
Through Villages of Ether —
Myself endued Balloon
By but a lip of Metal —
The pier to my Pontoon —

Nor would I be a Poet —
It’s finer — Own the Ear —
Enamored — impotent — content —
The License to revere,
A privilege so awful
What would the Dower be,
Had I the Art to stun myself
With Bolts — of Melody!

Now, mine:

i would not paint a portrait
i mean, what’s the point
i don’t have the skills
to capture a living spark in oils
and anyway
my hands shake whenever you come near me
and my pictures look like they were done
by a child
not paying attention

i’d rather be the one to be painted
why not want that for myself
it’s a bright impossibility
that will never really
be mine
but to dwell delicious on the idea
is a fine taste in my mouth

i wonder how the fingers will feel
holding the brush
mixing the palette
wielding the knife
cutting through layers of paint
cutting through layers of me
scraping the canvas
to get to the bottom of things
to get to the bottom of me

to tear open the sky and glimpse
that rare celestial clockwork
a sweet torment
a sumptuous despair

Poem 20150404

crow4 Comments

Today’s challenge for day four of #NaPoWriMo–write a love poem without using the word love.

—-

it’s all in the eyes
not her eyes,
not the way she looks at me
or the the way her eyes catch the light
in the room
when she smiles
or the way a room becomes a chilly place
and dim
when she’s angry or sad

it’s all in the eyes
not her eyes,
not the way they follow
the rhythm of a story or joke
or lower
half-lidded
when made drowsy with desire
or the satiety of desire

it’s all in the eyes
but the eyes are mine
and they watch and they see
what shivers and trembles
they watch and they see
what moves and breathes
they watch and they see
what stretches and reaches
they watch and they see
every atom swirling

Poem 20150403b

crow

I didn’t know it was National Poetry Writing Month!

I don’t know how many of these challenges I’ll try. I’ve missed the first two already. Today’s challenge is a fourteener, a poem with lines of fourteen syllables.

—–

the fox and bear were famous friends, at least that’s what i heard
until the fateful day the fox threw caution to the wind
and dressed in finest reds and whites, a top hat on his head
he came to court the lovely lass, the bear’s only daughter

‘this is an outrage,’ shouted bear, ‘you’re more than twice her age’
‘my age has nought to do with love,’ said fox, severely grave
‘i seek her hand and she seeks mine; do not begrudge us this
‘why you yourself are thrice my age and yet we still are friends’

‘we’re friends no more,’ the bear cried out, ‘you seek to ruin her”
‘far from the truth you wander, friend, and farther still you stray
‘if she’ll have me, she’ll be mine, the devil take your blessing’
so fox and the bear’s only child strove to run away

—

okay, no rhyming and it’s kind of a fragment.

Poem 20150402

crow2 Comments

the cat
sits at the glass door
not making a sound
just watching
moving only her head
as the hummingbirds
zoom in
and
out
of view
her ribs rise and
fall
and she watches the phoebes hop in the grass
and up into the limbs of the young avocado tree
sporting their little black mohawks
and she thinks–
if cats think like this–
if this door weren’t here…
if this glass weren’t between us…

Poem 20150401

crow

everything starts as a seed
buried in the warmth of earth
buried in the dark of the earth

they say that we struggled out
of the sea
millions of years ago

that may be the truth
but it is much more true
that we break through the crust

of soil, climbing out of darkness
reaching for the yellow light
reaching for the heat
and gazing at the blue expanse

Poem 20150329

crow

so impatient and greedy
for words
the reader clicks
and clicks and
clicks

and here they are
a few lines
meant for the hungry reader
lines etched in photons
that disappear
when the window closes
but leave their ghosts
trails on the backs of your eyelids
like fireflies
the night cannot hide

you could feel them
with your fingertips
if you could just
make
it
dark
enough

Poem 20150328

crow

the rooster said
that’s a joke son
a joke
i made a funny
but it went right over your head
too fast for you
you gotta keep your ears open
ears i say

and i laughed
and my dad who was sitting in
a recliner, almost sixty to my
ten years
laughed
laughed so hard that tears
ran down his face
laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe
and that to me was funnier than
anything the rooster said

Poem 20150326

crow

there’s something wrong
with a road made of concrete
that forces you to drive
in a single
straight direction
as fast as you dare

–faster than the driver in
the lane next to you because
by god, he’s not going to beat you

in spite of the fact
that you don’t know him
and you have no idea
or interest in where he’s driving
or when he has to be there

there’s a lack of freedom
on a freeway
with its straining arteries clogged
by lipid, adiposian cars
all racing toward
one giant cardiac event