Category Archives: Poetry

Day Five Poem: What Were the Members of the Donner Party Hungry For Before They Set Out on the Trail?

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KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

What Were the Members of the Donner Party Hungry For Before They Set Out on the Trail?

And why are pizzas round, and do trees dream?
These questions keep me awake at night, as do
thoughts of decades decanted and refined in memory,
their solids discarded with no consideration of retention.
Last evening we dined at an Indianapolis restaurant
for the first time in eighteen months. My steak
was pink and juicy. Tender. The Russian River pinot
bore flavors of cherry and dried herbs, with perhaps
hints of moss-crusted sonnets and mislaid intent
underscored by regret. But tasty, reminding me
that first impressions are truly lasting, and that
I should have bailed five years into that marriage.
Would I eat human flesh? Lord knows I gnawed
on that wolf-trapped foot for years. Lately
I’ve been making rectangular pizzas, in the Detroit
style, with peppered salami, crushed San Marzano
tomatoes and Wisconsin brick cheese, but if I
were to cook myself, toughness (due to age) would be
an issue, and I’d recommend a slow braise in wine
or sake, with parsnips, carrots and minced serrano
peppers. Served over sticky rice, of course. I wonder
if the oak misses me. Though we lived together
for thirty-five years, my roots never dug deep,
but instead spread out just enough to hold on
and stay in place. Until it was time to let go.
So I ask: what does the oak think of me? Do I exist
beyond that first impression of the awkward 25-year
old, or does it recall the older one who tended
its wounds and broken limbs, who watered and fed it
poetry? My hungers have changed with age,
but I still want the same things.

* * *

Many thanks to Jilanne Hoffman for sponsoring this poem and providing the title.

If you’d like to join in on the fun, see my September 5 post for sponsorship details. Give me a title, provide some words. Or think of another challenge! It’s all for a good cause: Brick Street Poetry, Inc. 

Tomorrow’s poem is titled “Scarecrow’s Wealth,” and is sponsored by Charles of Words and Feathers. 

Poem a Day Mini-marathon Winding Down

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Reflections

This poem a day mini-marathon to raise funds for Brick Street Poetry is winding down. I’m so pleased that we’ve surpassed the original goal of ten sponsored poems! But, as I’ve not received any sponsorships in the past two days, the challenge will end with Sunday’s poem (unless more sponsorships come in by tomorrow evening). Thank you, everyone, for reading along and providing inspired titles and words. This has been great fun, and we’ve earned a few bucks for Brick Street, which was the idea, after all!

Day Ten Poem: I’ll Have the Body Sandwich, and Hold the “Me,” Please

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I’ll Have the Body Sandwich, and Hold the “Me,” Please

The story of my life, as they say. Being that fleshy lump
held between cold steel and granite, blue flame and skillet,
or that subject of inexpert experimentation in a sterile
bedroom funded by military contractors or accounting miracles,
I am no longer startled by my irrelevance to the economy.
I can assemble IKEA furniture, manipulate words, slice
salami, calculate volume in terms of books, chain saw
trees, fabricate shelving, repair PVC, curse in three languages,
prepare quiche from scratch and compose poetry (sometimes
simultaneously), to mention just a few skills, and all with great
humility, and, alas, no pay. In a previous life, I administered,
tended budgets, said “no.” Now, I want to say “yes,” but no one
will listen. My in-box is littered with ads for portable
oxygen, leaf guards for gutters, herpes remedies and geriatric
dating services, with a few funeral home missives and phishing
expeditions thrown in. I’ve been sized and assigned to a particular
box targeting a certain demographic which I may or may not
belong to. The story of my life, as they say. Whoever they are.

 

* * *

 

Many thanks to Ron Throop for providing the title. If you’d like to join in on the fun, see my September 5 post for sponsorship details. Give me a title, provide some words. Or think of another challenge! It’s all for a good cause: Brick Street Poetry, Inc. 

Tomorrow’s poem is titled “His Hand in Her Hand,” and was sponsored by poet Ivor Steven, whose book Tullawalla is out in the world! 

 

Day Four Poem: Pondering Perpetuity

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Truchas Morning 2

Pondering Perpetuity

If I close my eyes
will the owl
creep into my sleep

or linger out of sight,
beyond earshot
and the swirl
of grief
painting the chapel dome

of my eyelids?
Sometimes I balance wants with needs.
Nothing contains me
but I am held tight.

I never thought I was a beginning.

Sometimes I feel more than I can share,
and I scatter ashes and estranged words,
look for signs on the ground.

I am the opening
between jar and lid,
a grounded fledgling,
a promise,
unfilled.

But hope swells in morning clouds
and the first birdcalls.

In the orb spider’s dewy web.
In the blurred gasp of memory’s lapse,
in the owl, as it awakens

and folds its wings
so cautiously around
my buried
dream.

 

* * *

Many thanks to Jazz Jaeschke for sponsoring this poem and providing the title and these three words: balance, swirl and awaken.

If you’d like to join in on the fun, see my September 5 post for sponsorship details. Give me a title, provide some words. Or think of another challenge! It’s all for a good cause: Brick Street Poetry, Inc. 

Tomorrow’s poem is titled “What Were the Members of the Donner Party Hungering For Before They Set Out on the Trail” and is sponsored by Jilanne Hoffman.

Day Nine Poem: Whoops… by guest poet Stephanie L. Harper

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Forklift

Whoops…

by Stephanie L. Harper

Dear Autocorrect: Thank you
for your patience & support
in my kite. I rely on your
spelling sand predictive text
features many things easy day.
If I couldn’t trust you to etch
my typing, I would be a little
more honest about the times
I’m in the bathroom. I beam,
really, the last thing I need is
for people to judge me because of
where I might be dotting if all I’m
frying to do is confirm the time
of our nesting. A few fats ago,
my husband texted me from
the hardest store to ask if I could
use any more bridges for fainting
in the bedroom. Nob makes almond
anything come acrylic as romantic,
so things started jesting up a bit.
Lettuce nut say, it was with all
your extra kelp, that I was doom
scrolling his puzzle, so he had to
duck behind a dorkloft parked by
the election law tools. It was the mist
excrement wither of us remembered
having since I went shipping last
Christmas for a new wonton hacker…
Anyway, I thought I’d pet you now
how much your rusty cervix beams
to me. Your fiend, Stephanie.

 

 

* * *

 

Many thanks to Stephanie L. Harper, poet extraordinaire, for writing this piece, and Jazz Jaeschke, who sponsored the poem and provided the title and these three words: trust, judge, puzzle. If you’d like to join in on the fun, see my September 5 post for sponsorship details. Give me a title, provide some words. Or think of another challenge! It’s all for a good cause: Brick Street Poetry, Inc. 

Tomorrow’s poem is titled “I’ll Have the Body Sandwich, and Hold the “Me,” Please,” thanks to my favorite artist, Ron Throop. Was it something I said, Ron, or do you just like to make me squirm? Ha!

 

Day Three Poem: We Do What We Must

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Sink Drain

We Do What We Must

How to reconcile
the German in me

with the Irish, the Japanese,
and those birthrights I cannot claim?

Cleaning the bathroom,
I twirl the toilet brush, curse in Italian,

and consider cooking Szechuan beef.
Sponges make me laugh

in French. Rice is gohan in my house.
I often say potatuh instead of potato,

and then there’s tomatuh. I may mispronounce
parmesan, but never parmigiana.

In Hawaii everyone looked like me
but I drawled like a true Texan

to avoid a beating. I say domani
when putting off chores,

but dishes must be done immediately
after dinner and during meal prep.

My mustache is red, as are some of my eyebrow
hairs. I am a man of many shirts, many excuses

and contradictions. I prefer washing by hand.
Spüli, I say, when filling the sink. Spüli.

* * *

Many thanks to Plain Jane for sponsoring this poem and providing the title and these three words: toilet, brush, and Spüli.

If you’d like to join in on the fun, see my September 5 post for sponsorship details. Give me a title, provide some words. Or think of another challenge! It’s all for a good cause: Brick Street Poetry, Inc. 

Tomorrow’s poem is titled “Pondering Perpetuity,” and is sponsored by Jazz Jaeschke, who sponsored the title and asked for three words: balance, swirl and awaken.

Poem a Day Mini-marathon Continuing, but…

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Literary Cat

The mini-marathon of writing a poem a day to raise funds for Brick Street Poetry is continuing, but we could use a few more sponsors! I’ll keep going for as long as you keep sponsoring poems, or until month’s end, whichever comes first. 

I invite you to join me in this project and help out by reading, commenting, heckling, encouraging, insulting, cajoling, praising and yes, if circumstances allow, sponsoring me and donating funds (to Brick Street, not me). This might not be of much interest if the poems were simply going to languish in a file somewhere, but such is not the case. They will be posted online daily, warts and all, for the world to peruse. That’s right – you’ll see my daily work, unpolished and raw, finished or not. Thus far, I’ve not been reduced to whimpers…

I’ll post each day’s offering sometime in the morning, and will leave the poems up for a few weeks. I consider these poems drafts, and will eventually revise and send some of them to journals/anthologies for publication consideration. Many journals consider poems posted on personal blogs to be published, thus I’ll take them down, so as not to violate their sensibilities (odd though they may be).

Like many nonprofits, Brick Street Poetry, Inc. depends upon donations to augment their projects, which vary from a monthly poetry reading series and podcast, to placing Borrow a Book boxes in state parks, publishing a literary journal and various anthologies, and establishing a neighborhood literary art park (to offer free workshops), just to mention a few.

This month they’re raising funds by asking people to vote, via PayPal donations, for favorite haiku in a just-published online anthology.

I’ve decided to help out by — what else — writing poems. See my post of September 5th for details.

Why am I doing this? I love poetry. If I, poet, reader and book buyer, don’t support Brick Street’s mission, who will? 

Day Eight Poem: Another Sunrise, Another Moon

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whale tail

Another Sunrise, Another Moon

 1.
I have no more lies to tell. Everyone
laughs when I say this, but I saw
the whale breach that day
and though nothing changed,
in that instant the world
stopped spinning and I rose
above that battle gray deck
to join the low clouds,
molecules fluttering,
cells dispersing, but only
for a flash,
before I came to,
standing,
gape-jawed,
22-years old
and finally, aware.

2.
Texas lives in my rear-view mirror.
Could I have stayed on my land,
harvesting those sour persimmons
for jam, watching vultures soar,
napping in the heat of day
in hopes of observing cliff frogs
at night? Would that have been
a life? Would that have been enough?

3.
I didn’t come here to die
but the possibility remains.
Will my ashes soil the streets
of Indianapolis? Soon the grass
will turn brown. Trees will bare
their branches to the wind’s icy
fingers. Snow will blanket
the cornfields, and I
will bake bread and pies.
Make pizza and rich stews.
Touch. Talk. Dream.
Sing. Read.
Love.

4.
Another sunrise           another moon           which follows which?

 

 

* * *

 

Many thanks to Tara of Sacred Land Sage, who sponsored the poem and provided these three words: persimmon, nap, flutter. If you’d like to join in on the fun, see my September 5 post for sponsorship details. Give me a title, provide some words. Or think of another challenge! It’s all for a good cause: Brick Street Poetry, Inc. 

Tomorrow’s poem is written, with the sponsor’s approval, by special guest poet and budding superstar, Stephanie L. Harper, and is titled “Whoops!” Thank you, Jazz Jaeschke, for providing the title and these three words: trust, judge, puzzle.

 

Day Two Poem: Poetry in the Dark: A Speed Reading Nightmare

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razor

Poetry in the Dark: A Speed Reading Nightmare

In this dream you have fallen in love
but have never met the object of your affection,
who, as it turns out, is a fake-blonde with a tongue
like a straight razor and an attitude so negative
even shadows freeze at her feet. Life is good,
you say, but might I have a moment to dispel
this notion of poetry in the dark? Every word
blossoms bright flares, each syllable unfolds
the night, peppers the air with lightdrops
and the aroma of shed falsities. And then
your love steps in and desiccates the atmosphere.
Drops a few F-bombs, slices nerve endings,
stomps out expectation. What do you see in her,
I ask. It’s not about vision, you reply, but what I
hope to find. Think of purgatory, of broken
door knobs and the party next door. Think about
time capsules and nested dolls and what might
live around the corner, if only you believe.
Then an auctioneer starts reading your poems,
and no matter how you struggle, you can’t
describe the lure, the power, the beauty,
the insurmountable, undeniable, ineffable darkness.

 

* * *

Many thanks to Ken Gierke for sponsoring this poem and providing the title!

If you’d like to join in on the fun, see my September 5 post for sponsorship details. Give me a title, provide some words. Or think of another challenge! It’s all for a good cause: Brick Street Poetry, Inc. 

Tomorrow’s poem is titled “We Do What We Must,” and is sponsored by Plain Jane, who, six years ago, forced me to write “Your Armpits Smell Like Heaven.” 

 

Make Me Write a Poem!

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Reflections

I’m trying to raise funds for my favorite local literary nonprofit, Brick Street Poetry, Inc., and am hoping that some of you might be able to help. This month, Brick Street has published an online anthology, Haiku for Hikers, and in an effort to raise funds, is asking people to vote on their favorite haiku from the anthology via PayPal donations. Disclosure: I have two haiku in the anthology (on pages 47 & 48), and it’s been announced that the poet who generates the most income will receive a monetary award. To this I say: please don’t feel obligated to vote for my poems, AND if I somehow happen to earn the most donations, I promise to donate the award money back to Brick Street. The goal is simply to earn funds for this stellar organization. And, as luck has it, during September, Brick Street will also receive matching funds for all donations!

So I’m pledging to write at least 10 poems in 10 days, from September 8 through September 17 (as of today, we’re scheduled through the 18th, and will continue if donations come in). If you have the time and inclination, please follow along (I’ll post the new poems daily) and consider supporting poetry by making a donation. Every bit helps, especially with matching funds. To make this fun, and with hopes of enticing you, I’ve instituted a few incentives:

Name That Poem! For a $15 donation, you provide a title, and I’ll write the poem during the mini-marathon. Be imaginative. Make the title as long or as interesting as you wish – consider this a dare! But this incentive is limited to only ten titles (unless forced by demand to extend the challenge). Titles from previous challenges ranged from one word to upwards of 80, and also included such atrocities as “Calvin Coolidge: Live or Memorex,” and “Your Armpits Smell Like Heaven.” These were, of course, among my favorites to write.

Use These Words, Poet! For a $16 donation you can offer 3 words that I must use in a poem. Why only 3? Because I’m (a) chicken (pawk, pawk!), and (b) I hate relinquishing control of my poetry’s language. Yes, yes, I know. This says horrible things about my character. But look at it this way, you could combine the first two incentives (for a $25 donation) to force me to use your title AND three words that I likely wouldn’t use otherwise, which is about as much control as I’m able to give up (shuddering). Be kind. Or not. But it would be nice to produce  publishable poems…

Isn’t Broadside a Military Term? Well, yeah, but in this case it’s also a printed poem. For a $10 donation, I’ll send you my broadside of “Mayflies” or “The Loneliness of the Last” — your choice — or perhaps one from the current challenge.

But feel free to donate any amount. These are just suggestions.

Brick Street has provided this information for those interested in voting:

Please check out Brick Street Poetry’s new anthology “Haiku for Hikers” and help the author of your favorite poem receive recognition and monetary reward.

Instruction for voting for “Haiku for Hikers” Poems.

Readers can access the online version by clicking on “Anthology” at the top, far-right of this Brick Street Poetry webpage http://www.brickstreetpoetry.org/  Reading is enjoyable & free!

Then vote for your favorite poem or poems by clicking the Pay Pal Donation Button and making a donation of any dollar amount and placing the poem’s number for which you are voting in the comment section. You may vote for as many poems as you want but need to describe the split of funds in the comment section or make a separate donation for each individually if voting for more than one. Donations of less than one dollar can’t be split. If more than one # is listed without splitting instructions, all money will be credited to the 1st poem listed.

Poems receiving $10 in donations will be included in the printed version of the work, and the poet will receive 3 free copies of the printed version. The poem with the most public support will receive an honorarium equal to half of the donations received for that poem.

Your support will mean a lot to the poet for whose poem you vote and it will mean a lot to Brick Street Poetry too!  We thank you for reading the work of the poets included in our anthology and for your support of your favorite or favorites.

Thanks very much for considering this!