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 |   Poetry in April -- in celebration |
 This is my Second Book of poems. I may not have eaten the plums from the icebox, but I am guilty of writing poetry without thinking too much, without laboring over words and lines. This Is Just to Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold by William Carlos Williams You, too, forgive me for I only love the writing process; the result is secondary...And please never mind that I am also aping William Carlos Williams's false apology.    From where does the title Beetlebung and Kettlehorn come from? The name Beetlebung and Kettlehorn has to do with ancient whaling practices and Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. During the nineteenth century, because of its dense white wood, the tupelo tree was used in whale oil casks made of copper. Beetle was the mallet made from the Tupelo tree and bung was the stopper in the cask hole. In Martha’s vineyard, the Tupelo tree is still known as the Beetlebung tree, and at Chilmark there, is a Beetlebung Corner, with shops at Chilmark Center, from where roads lead to other interesting points. Kettlehorn, as well as being an ancient surname, refers to a piece of equipment resembling to but much bigger than a shoe-horn, used to stir the hot blubber and separate the fine oil from the denser particles. Whale oil was a popular commodity and, as a fuel, was used for lighting the dark, burning to provide heat and as an aid in cooking. After the whale was hunted, men in a boat cut strips of blubber from the whale's back, tied them together and rowed ashore. There the fat was cut into smaller pieces to be boiled into oil in large copper kettles. In addition there exists kettle corn in Cape Cod which are corn chips fried in kettles and sometimes mistakenly called kettlehorns. For some reason, way back when, the words Beetlebung and Kettlehorn were used together and, at one time or another, were given to shops and other things that go together as titles. I adopted the name for my on-the-spot poetry in reference to the idea of blubber. "Poetry the shortest distance between two humans" Lawrence Ferlinghetti |
| I took a walk alone to meet myself today but didn’t ask if I had enough courage to look behind the curtains didn’t ask why I could not figure out the way this world works or how deep the wounds can go did I think of me as a martyr on display? ---- Prompt: Questions I should have asked |
| from memory’s landscape afterlives creep underneath the edges reeking of rot and mold as if savage stinkweed in synchronized clusters, nebulous fury, and spellbound disgust things you’d rather forget woe, the massive slaps received at age eleven for the mouse you saved from the trap, but so worth it… or was it an adult’s predatory hand beating below your blues or her dying wish you ignored? worse, the day you walked with a tear in your pants into glass doors and still, you talked in idled intellect and ghostly gothic --your default mode-- to a monstrous audience from a shrouded podium the worst, a futile dignity gnawing on your skin when you fled barefoot dripping blood on groundless gossip you, the washrag wrung out wrong, rejecting the pain in his defenseless eyes ==== prompt: something (things) you might rather forget |
| right and left his footprints so small ten toes on wet sand, blest be all he looks back to see me behind just for this moment’s ease of mind with feisty motion like the wind his tracks ripple, the knees are skinned he gets up and shrugs with laughter for hugs’n kisses to come after then, of far-away times I dream when he’ll aim for a life supreme he’ll search his way on many trails either like eagles or like snails spiky slopes, gravel between toes he’ll love the world wherever he goes ------- Prompt: April 1 a pair of anything, or things in pairs |
Silly Love Song his heart should stand still yet he mustn’t croak wild desire, yes, but no kill let the lips lock but don't poke love on the fence, pearls on your neck just a magnet for a crazy old guy he calls you a sublime plum then sky falls and you cry no longer a fervent flame lost like a candle in sunshine can he still play the game your heart swells out of line love on the fence, pearls on your neck just a magnet for a crazy old guy he calls you a sublime plum then sky falls and you cry ------------ Write a poem that relates somehow to a movie or movie title. (Here, the prompt itself relates to a wacky comedy from 1966.) Put the movie title and IMDB link, if possible, after the poem!! Not a Conquest, Reviewer! you who act like my favored Columbus cannot praise my joyful songs in drunken delight when, after a long trip, you mutilated the remnants of my tribe and inferior verse do you wonder why while you hide your many sins of florid prose my paradise ignores you polluted though it is and driven to madness by my gassy poem? 1492: Conquest of Paradise http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103594/ ======================= If you want an early challenge, write a poem in any form or in free verse about how March came in where you are, as lion or lamb or some other creature...?! March in Florida I can forgo the fizz power and your flimsy whimsy if you could only stick to it but then you prowled around my yawning windows and roared, showing your fangs the worst part of you, your claws of ice scratched and sank into my home with no rhythm or verse alas, you’ve embarrassed me March, as my month of birth worse than my widening girth --------- |
| Wishing to do something worthwhile, concrete assorted structures you studied, neighborhoods you explored sorrows you reshaped as joys and vice versa, and you waited changing, though not changing, but living in purgatory. You thought, at the end you’d figure out all the answers filling in the blanks perfectly frolicking, craving in a world of lost brain cells collapsing unto itself. How patient you were! And what came off your wish? An empty rhetoric and your huge shock! ======== Prompt: getting there, a destination, an outcome |
| Is this a cosmic joke or a sign of our penultimate days with no escape to a floating space while we watch the theatrical spectacle of fissile demolition on this maddened planet going down within its finite, closed system? Salvageable or not, recycled or not, can anyone tell how fast? Are we all insentient and blind? ====== Prompt: the penultimate |
| Under the apple trees I stare at the limbs with new shoots hearing their composition built on last season’s memory while the wind rustles leaves as chorus. Perched on a branch, a blue jay calls in arpeggios, lonely plaintive pleas sending out a sequenced tune, then pauses to hear a seductive chirp; yet, without a reply, it lets out a wailing cry, then takes off in a flurry of wings. After it, I open my eyes to the sky where something circles a little too long without a song. Was it a reverie? It could be, but no surprise since when I squint, through the sun’s light, dust columns arise and play dizzying tricks, and unsteady on legs, in the garden’s solitude, I spread myself on the grass like fallen fruit. Does the earth want me back? ============= Prompt: a favorite specific tree (in honor of Arbor day) |
| where the ocean’s affection is with the winds, you tiptoe, shoes in hand, at water’s edge on glittering sand stretching out for miles, and you relish the waves’ gift to your toes, akin to white-winged lions of foam sailing from Atlantis or your botched up past with failed dreams, still, the memory is sweet where the sea breaks at shore line as far as eyes can reach and time turns liquid in translucent blues to define indistinct edifices, where you played catch among periwinkles and whelks, now you feel abruptly aware of mythical days when you clipped your own wings with random apathy, no matter that you wanted more but was scared to say. ====== Prompt: an outdoor setting, anywhere in the open |
| In the afterlife of a workplace I wake up at night and recall what once felt larger than me, and I sneak peek at the papers that blanketed my days composting, meaningless now, within the barriers of the walls, walls slate gray, as they change colors according to who toils inside, a cubicle, mine had festered into a shiner’s purple where I crafted dreams amid griefs and longings amid talking-tos and clocks ticking amid my futile attempts to forget the world. ============= prompt: an office setting, or office politics |
| It feels like someone else’s life, now, the day grandpa took me to the fair when the house was full of guests celebrating in hairdo helmets and pinching my cheeks in fakery. Happily, I was Grandpa’s cover story and alibi in flight from playing nice, the same old pretense repeating without sense at each holiday. And I, affixed on the swing with nose full of snot and drowsy, felt, at arm’s length, his pain excruciating, his world winding down, as he, with tightened brows, weighed the universe he wanted to save me from, I, the rebel with cotton candy and full of tantrums, stunned by mindless faith recitals. We were a team, resilient yet in a tizzy, as grandpa shot at the elephants in the rooms and I sensed them as if they were of white-washed plastic in a deviant kind of carnival, and as the swing rose high, I set off a radioactive snort at the kid near me, with red-pepper face, taking up too much space. It feels like someone else’s life, now. ========== Prompt: a remembered holiday |
| You start writing that e-mail thinking your heart should open when broken, and you gather your guts and enough words in your mind, words soft as cornsilk, words he can wear like a lambskin coat, words as lucky breaks, words to bring him back. But in your swift recall the raised eyebrows, remarks marking rifts, lips without smiles, the sight of the back, all this, his as he left in the opposite direction. Unhinged, your resolve sinks, you delete and start over, despite your fermented pitch, disconcerted rhythm, and agitated insight. But your river of tongues have run dry, and your lines shift choppy, no more than trifles carved out of shadows. Not good, this crunched voice rising inside like lava on postwar ruins and scorched bones. Thus, your new resolve, there is no starting over and you’d better shut down the screen, opting now for that brackish silence, delicate yet brutal. ========= prompt: starting all over again |
| She’s not a maniac, blue blood, nor cur, To dash and dart, she yips and brays in play; The moon’s pale light gliding against her fur, A blur on gray asphalt has made her bay. She’s pulling on the leash through keener sense, Delinquent? No. Yet, her growling jeers, in grudging wit, an alien offense; The rascal’s in my charge, pricking her ears, And now, she howls to mourn a dead old rat Lying in dark shadows behind a shrub; I romp along, but fear she’ll spot a cat. Wagging her tail, she eyes me with a snub And sniffs around to find a cozy tree To hear me cheer “Good girl!” lauding her pee. Note: Coco, a lab-hound mix, is my daughter-in-law’s dog, now watching me write this sonnet for her, while her real owners “daddy and mommy” are off to a concert. ===== Prompt: a sonnet (traditional or a contemporary variation) |
| He has a double mouth on active duty, bilingual, swearing and singing, eating and drinking, kissing and spitting all at the same time. His shadow doubles, too, his words, verdicts, and when he talks slow and choosy, curses or endearment no matter the angle, spectators tremble for he is the wound and the cure and an incomparable dancer alit with outlandish magic bearing byzantine moves in doubled pleasure hissing and whispering “Fun!” since he is in politics, for the long run =========== Prompt: two of something, doubleness |
She thought she could cope with that growing up in a multitone town in the swell of knowing and unknowing winter eyes taking in raving battles in faraway places and she heard of things on fire, passions, words, shrill sounds… Yet the sun always came up and the sand danced with the water where she played as she watched her mother weep, bittersweet, and for running out of words, she thought to invent a new life, new words, logic without logic. It was a war after all. She thought she could cope with that the cool breeze on her face the autumn shadows in a hazy dream a yellow leaf floating down, a memory of Mama’s song fragile as the air, music clotting inside her silenced grief and learned stuff, voice tones, changing moods, interruptions, hiding behind what she couldn’t see, keeping herself in check, grinning to be living but then, words gushed out of her, blue and gray, the day she got on a plane and left, growing up quick in a big splash and coping. It was a war after all. ==== Prompt: a coming of age poem |
| Why did I let the stained earth heave and groan foaming at the mouth and yesterday’s roses to dry out, their thorns piercing my skin? Although I’ve escaped on broken paths and posed questions to no answers, this flight became my only life and I mourned a lost full moon as clouds never left. ===== Prompt: a lingering fear or regret |
| I am only a passerby inside a boat cast off the beach to the tideline amid ebb and flow, sniffing the briny scent, the ocean’s self-blessing. I am only a passerby and my reflections, akin to satin dolphins leaping over ruffled waves, splash on my cheeks warning me not to come crashing down on myself. ===== Prompt: in the middle of something or somewhere |
Dear Son, The good news is all fall leaves are on the ground, whirling, swirling changing partners dancing triumphant rusty, musty, testy spreading all around in a quickening pace. Tantalizing, though, my approach may be, please, don’t take my scrawl as an ancient’s bad memory fortified by a full moon because there’s no mistake as with certainty I recall your promise to rake and I have to convey a safe bet that bad news has hit, and last autumn is now a flash from the past, and soon will be here - for certain, I must say - the month of May. =========== Prompt: good news or bad news, maybe in letter form |
| What a Monday, exposing me, the wilted one with petals falling out! To live through this surge-after-surge day, one needs a conquistador’s sword and mapmaking abilities. This should be the twenty-four hours that never existed or a day with nothing brutish, nothing with a jagged rhythm, nothing that makes me run on jet fuel, want to harpoon a whale, or bare my scorpion stinger. On this hectic day, I’m everywhere I have known well, but that everywhere is somewhere I’ve never been to, and I am wrapped in awkward drafts, hurrying, timorous and meek. Contradictory to the alleged notion, the meek inherit nothing, but the rushed muddle up everything, and how I undulate in my swirling, creased outfits--with hair askew and expletives escaping from my animated lips--does not necessarily point to a kinky Aphrodite revealing herself. And the point of my calefaction is, now, at the end hours, I rather need a gift, a gift of the infinite as a prize for my plight, empowering me to gather words without thorns. ========= Prompt: a blue Monday or a manic Monday |
| The color of delight is amber like the perky forsythia bush waking up the backyard into spring for daffodils to bloom rapt in awe, butterflies to float on wings of yellow dust, pollen shaking free to push for life such as baby chicks dipping beaks in ground corn and canaries crooning arias with lyrics blurred. And as you search to find me when I am lost in the wind, amber sparkles in your eyes to lift me up high to catch the sun. ======= Prompt: explore the color of an abstraction |
she fidgets at the desk writing checks locked inside herself guarding the money the task her karmic gift but the balance can be scandalous since she patrols on the same lame feet blaming the beat hold back or yield, yet she knows time is not what she owns as the cash she has amassed sifts away between the pen and her fingers ========== Prompt: money |
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