parting

Erotic, Haiku, Lovers, magic, Poetry, Water, Wolf Woman Whispers

 

damp

lips break

silence into kisses

.

messages

liquified survive

without wasted words

.

Oh!

god! kiss

me a river

.

april 10

btw

http://www.napowrimo.net

Glopowrimo / Napowrimo 2020

 Day 10:-Today’s prompt (optional, as always) is another one from the archives, first suggested to us by long-time Na/GloPoWriMo participant Vince Gotera. It’s the hay(na)ku). Created by the poet Eileen Tabios and named by Vince, the hay(na)ku is a variant on the haiku. A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words. You can write just one, or chain several together into a longer poem. For example, you could write a hay(na)ku sonnet, like the one that Vince himself wrote back during NaPoWriMo 2012!

School Feeding Pts 1 & 2- un-formatted

acceptance, anti-racism, Barbara Turney Wieland, Beginnings, Belonging, Birds, Change, Endings, Food&Wine, Napowrimo, nostalgia, Poetry, truth

SCHOOL FEEDING pt 1

England

 

The bell’s gone. We are wide-mouthed frogs, riveted like cracked open birds waiting for worms.

 

Stand in line. Wait your turn.

 

line

line

line

line

 

A boy’s socks fall down while standing upright.  It’s my itchy thick tights that go south. My mouth waters. We inch forward.

forward

forward

 

Will there be custard? Mysterious pudding lurks beneath. Make no sudden moves.

 

Being served from the hatch where the dinner ladies skulk takes its toll. More than one child this term has lost control of a bladder.

 

You wonder, will there be bread rolls today or squishy buttered Wonderloaf. Bread’s the best bit.

 

I hate gravy i hate gravy i hate gravy i hate gravy i hate gravy. Lumpy

 

Big boys pull my pigtails. They pick their own scabs and eat them. Big boys laughs. What does this mean?

mean

mean

mean

 

Hunger is constant, factually. Something pure in the strange world of the dinner hall. I am very small.

small

small

small

small

 

 

SCHOOL FEEDING pt 2

Australia

 

Change of continents entails change of lunch habits. It’s not even called dinner here.

 

Crack open a window, Let the heat out, matey. It won’t go. Lumpy

 

Hey you, pinkie, say sommat. ( pause for laughter) Are ya Pommie or sommat? Ya gotta be kiddin’.

 

Drones on. The teacher. The flies. The booming swells of air that’re as solid as the sweaty upper lips and arm pits of kids.

 

It’s clear I only remember summer dinners. They were perhaps the hottest. 1976 was the longest.

long

long

long

long

 

I’m shameless in my envy. Clots to the colour of thick meaty gravy.

 

How we stay friends when she gets her name scrawled on a greasy paper-bagged tuck-shop order, I’ll always wonder. She sinks her tiny teeth in. I get none. Hoarder

 

i must not swear. i must not swear i must not swear i must now swear

sook

sook

sook

pom

pom

pom

 

The smells of Balfour’s piespastiessausagerolls wafts in form the corridor. Enters the stifling classroom, bows, lift up out of the crates, breaks my heart, makes me levitate.

 

My package of sandwiches (fritz and sauce), sits limp, squashed, tepid at the bottom of my school bag. I hunt them out with foetid fingers when the bell goes off.

 

Released into the quadrangle, we squabble over frozen Farmer’s Union iced coffee. Vying for a lick, it is eaten granita stylie before my envious eyes and dried up lips.

 

Seagulls circle overhead, gawping, squarking, diving bins. My stomach gnaws.

 

April 9 2020

btw

 

P-s Why won’t WordPress accept my formatting!!!??? aargh!

 

http://www.napowrimo.net

Glopowrimo / Napowrimo 2020

Day 9.- Today’s resource is Kirsten Kaschock’s chapbook, Windowboxing. Kaschock, a dancer as well as a poet, titles her poems using neologisms or portmanteaus, and each one proceeds as a series of essay-like sentences. The poems are interspersed with drawings, and some are even formatted in the shapes of boxes, forcing the reader to turn the book (or their head) and engage with the poems as they move through space.

Our prompt for the day (optional as always) is inspired by Kaschock’s use of space to organize her poems. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a “concrete” poem – a poem in which the lines and words are organized to take a shape that reflects in some way the theme of the poem. This might seem like a very modernist idea, but poets have been writing concrete poems since the 1600s! Your poem can take a simple shape, like a box or ball, or maybe you’ll have fun trying something more elaborate, like this poem in the shape of a Christmas tree.

Unlike swans, i dance

Beauty, Belonging, Birds, Dance, Dream Imagery, Narcissus, Poetry, Sadness, Sylvia Plath

http://www.napowrimo.net

Glopowrimo / Napowrimo 2020

 

Day 8:- asks you to peruse the work of one or more of these twitter bots, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem.

Today’s poetry resource is a series of twitter accounts that tweet phrases from different poets’ work. The Sylvia Plath Bot, as you might expect, tweets snippets of Plath.

Plath snippet :- Unlike swans,

 

Unlike swans,

i dance

what a lovely creature, a swan

quiet, sedate, white

what wings, so neat

folded, elegant

until they beat

water rhythmic

in an effort to lift

their bodies, but only just

 

listen, a swan

thrums,

thrum thrum thrum

if only i was one

aloof, untainted, unthirsty

untouched unless by chaste water

unmated, unruffled, undusted unless behind

cabinet glass, perhaps, an unwanted gift

a vision

 

what a fine thing, a mirror

smooth, unopinionated

divested of majestic longing

though learns to listen for the longings

of reflexions of others

unlike me

 

i dance before this

song of a swan

an ugly thing

lifting distance

only just

a drift of pale gray feathers

falling

 

April 8 2020

btw

 

 

Menu, for the discerning Connaisseur, svp

Drinks, Food&Wine, Fun, Napowrimo, Poetry, Recipes

Day 7:-a poem based on a news article.

http://www.napowrimo.net

Glopowrimo / Napowrimo 2020

 

Monsieur, pray

be seated

for the feast may

commence à l’instant

the wine is poured

 

Here for your dining pleasures

an array of curious pairings

guaranteed to enhance tastes

and delight base yearnings

 

to this lofty destination

may we make the following suggestions

in no particular order

 

 

Malbec goes well with baked beans on toast or marmalade ladies

try it with salted porridge posset or cherry blossom brandies

 

Riesling goes well with fluffy white rice

Sauvignon Blanc is perfect with delicate spiced mice

 

a chilled glass of Zinfandel

is the accompaniment, one can tell

for a handful of rocky mountain oysters*

shaken, never stirred

 

a prairie oyster**, on the other hand

would seem quite bland without the pre-requisite exquisite

packet of Tim-Tams***, slammed+

 

Cabernet sauvignon is quite a song

when drunk along with faggots or haggis

Pinot Grigio goes a treat sipped with

Jammy Dodgers**** or cheesy maggots++

 

If you’d care for a nibble of witchetty grubs*****, Monsieur, crispy grasshoppers or such

or a feed of fried spiders or wasp crackers, then please match these, their oily crunch

with an appetizer of Chai Lattes or Mai-Tai’s, well sucked

 

Perfect appeal, Mint Julep with June bugs on a hot summer’s night

Cold frosted beer with silky whelks and sticky eels, well congealed

is just right

 

Don’t you think?

Monsieur, are you feeling alright?

 

You may enquire, what’s the correct drink for stink heads****** and picked eggs?

A violet, violent, crimson rich Syrah with good legs, perhaps

 

While, à l’instant, Monsieur, we notice your sudden sickly smile

perhaps

you would care for a simple tisane of mint and chamomile?

 

 

 

 

n.b

 

*Rocky Mountain Oysters:  deep fried, battered bull’s testicles

 

**Prairie Oysters: raw egg yolk, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar and/or Tabasco, salt and black pepper. Popular cure for a hangover

 

***Tim-Tams: chocolate covered chocolate covered biscuits from Australia. +Tim-Tim Slam: sucking tea through the filling of the biscuit, before the biscuit dissolves in the hot liquid

 

**** Jammy Dodgers: Jam filled shortbread biscuits from the UK

 

***** Witchetty grubs: Native to Australia, large, white wood-eating larvae eaten by Aboriginals

 

Crispy grasshoppers, deep fried spiders and wasp crackers exist. Asian delicacies

++Maggot Cheese is Sardinian. A sheep’s milk cheese containing live insect larvae. Called Casu Marzu

 

****** Stink heads: fermented head of king salmon , buried and left underground for weeks. ( omg!)

 

 

April 7 2020

btw

 

Café 7, St. Prex

Switzerland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

heavenly azured delights

Beauty, Birds, Dream Imagery, Fun, Napowrimo, perfumes, Poetry, Sky, The Garden

Day 6:- prompt is ekphrastic in nature – but rather particular! Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famous (and famously bizarre) triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights.

 

All I could see was blue. So, i ignored the earthly delights and went heavenly instead.

 

http://www.napowrimo.net

Glopowrimo / Napowrimo 2020

 

here lies an ekphrastic thingy

from a snippet of the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch

 

 

azured space powdered up high

 

so, the mountains aren’t true blue in close up

nor, i appeal, are they true mountains in close up

 

look, they’re peel & skins & diverse crockeries

chaotic crazinesses overlapped to look like what they’re not

frolicking on horizons tucked up, booked

jacketed & coated in pelts in different hues

indifferent to what you think

what you feel is blue

 

even so, below, there are pink & green constructs scented on puffs of

various prancing dancing warthogs & other such stuffs

look up

 

off in the distance, mountains are sprouting & casting off

shapes of water, in discs & leaves, blooming from heavings soft

on skies & lines from which are strung songs of suns and moons

look back

 

so, the trees, that seem real, aren’t trees at all

nor are they blue, either, are the whispered hushes that issue from them

nor are the bushes, ensued in blues, that call in small calls & scented glints

 

there are no bluebells no blue irises butterflies birthday cakes blue buntings blue jays blue eyes hiding from view

all this blue was painted in illusionary tones long long ago recedingly exceedingly

lapped at the landscape backed at murmurations capering so

lazy as amniotic calm in cobalts & Prussians, turquoises & Persians, watered down

perfumes

 

so, all there is to do is to lean all the way back surrender to this

in bliss and immerse yourself in this balm in this

tiny portion of a portrait that isn’t about blueness at all

 

April 6 2020

btw