So, I thought that I'd do a little poetry prompt this evening. I selected the one for today from over at Poetic Asides. The point of the exercise is to write a poem "that plays with the idea of disguises. There are physical disguises, of course, but also emotional and psychological disguises that most people wear to some extent every day."

Here it is.

My Everyday Masks

I try to keep it at bay, the romanticism that gets me into trouble
I hold out my hands, pushing back others' bubbles. 
By trying t...
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The NaPoWriMo challenge for day six involves incorporating an oxymoron using the Serendipitous Oxymoron Maker. I decided that I would use the results from the tool as the title for today's poem.

Putrid Miracle

Never was there a thought that freedom would be such bliss.
But now on the precipice of renewal, 
I look toward my own salvation
Between pillowcase and sheets 
Sleeping alone once again--
But I embrace it - never once was there a question 
That I wanted to reach out
To help people
To lift others ...
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Today's NaPoWriMo assignment asks participants to write a poem in response to another participant's poem. In order to do this, as there are many very talented individuals participating in this internet meme, I randomly selected a participant's site by scrolling through the list with my eyes closed. The site I selected was Cloaked Monk's Blog. The poem I'm responding to is http://cloakedmonk.com/2011/04/02/april-2-challenge-postcard/.

It Must Be Beautiful

It must be beautiful to sit
at the base o...
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Well, the NaPoWriMo assignment for today involved writing a "pwoemrd." If you're as confused as I first was when I saw this genre title, you should now it's not as complicated as it sounds -- but it is more difficult to create than it would seem. A pwoemrd is a one-word poem. While this can be done by simply writing one word, it can also be created by combining two or more words into one word. 

Here are my pwoemrds. See if you can figure out what words went in to creating them

Difeaficultsy

Depu...
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Technically, it's April 4th. I came home from participating with my church in a 5K walk to raise money for poverty relief organizations, so, I needed to take a nap. The event was a success. Many people participated. What it meant for writing was that I didn't get a chance to work on the assignments until in the evening.
 
The suggestion today for NaPoWriMo's poem for the day asks to write a poem predicting death - kinda morbid, and I don't know about the "predicting" part of it - but, I'm going...
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Today's NaPoWriMo assignment was to write a poem that incorporates the titles of three books I have in my house into the
body of the poem. 
 
My Philosophy

Buried underneath Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Next to Designing Your Own Tarot Spreads
and on top of Justice and Judgement
My own philosophy lies --

dormant
excitable
waiting to be extracted into a treatise of my own...

 ...someday
 
I lay intertwined with reason
Logical constructs float in front of my eyes
If X then Y...
Y has to be true only if X is ...
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I'm participating in both NaPoWriMo and the Poetic Asides April PAD Challenge this year (April is National Poetry Month, after all). I was thinking about whether I would be into doing just 30 poems or if I want to participate in poetry prompts from each challenge each day. I suppose the way it works out will depend heavily upon time and what else is going on. For this first day, at least, I'll participate in both. At the end...I'd have 60 poems...that would be...pretty sweet and would accompa...
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Here's today's prompt - to title the poem "The Last ____."

The Last Slice of Pizza

It sits in the box 
Greasy, cheesy, 
Filled with meats and vegetables 
Two sets of eyes stare upon it
Each says “Go ahead, you take it." 
Two hands go reaching in 
Surprised the other is doing the same 
“Oh, no, it’s okay!” 
The hands reach out again 
And the cycle repeats 
Until finally he picks up the 
Slice, tears it in half
And one becomes two.
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This poem assignment from the Poetic Asides blog was to write a horror poem.  Here's mine (inspired by the people upstairs)

Stompers

What are they doing up there? 
Bowling
Moving Furniture
Dragging bodies from another mafia kill? 
Perhaps it’s a zombie scraping around on a hardwood floor 
Arms out in a caricature of itself saying “brains” 
Maybe it’s a swarm of elephants, ready 
To crash through my ceiling at any moment 
Perhaps it’s Vlad Vampire 
Moving his coffin to a new place
Or the Tom...
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The youthful glint in the eye
The energy to run and jump and hide 
While I’m not that old, 
I’m no longer that young either, 
Instead stuck somewhere before the middle 
Wearing black jeans and a t-shirt 
My hair cut is way too short 
And as I pick myself apart 
I remember how much I like being me
How Hollywood tells us we have to be young 
And too-thin
And too-tall
And too-rich 
And too-self-absorbed 
In order to be “ likable” 
And “popular” 
And “stylish”...
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Today's PAD Challenge from Poetic Asides relies upon titling the poem with the name of a tool.  Here's my attempt at this prompt:

Heidegger’s Hammer

The carpenter swings his arm

Slamming its metal into the nail

Our tools are our bodily extensions

Engaging in the world

Ready-to-hand

Until they break

And we become aware of them

As they are present-at-hand

Beckoning us to question their

Essentiality to our projects

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Poetic Asides' prompt today involved writing a poem titled "Until _____."  Here's my draft of this poem:

Until Forever

Arms lay across my chest

Wrapped around me

Opening my eyes takes an eternity

As I come out of the sea of warmth

Slowly and the dreams fade

Into the distance behind me

I become aware of the breathing

In sync – breathe in, breathe out

Repeated

The brown blanket raps around us

Creating pockets of heat

Skin upon skin

Hands clasped

We awaken

Slowly

Drifting fro...

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Today's poem a day challenge was to write an "ekphrastic" poem from one of two artworks. An ekphrastic poem is one that uses a non-literary work of art (usually visual) to inspire a poetic response.  Below is mine, based upon Goya's Flight of the Witches..

Levitation

They carry me, against my will

Lifting me towards the heavens

Dunce caps on their heads

Out of total blackness, a donkey

Does his dance

Following a beggar covering herself

In a white sheet

The horror leads some to bury

...
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Today's Poetic Asides poem prompt asked participants to write a "TMI" poem. Since there's always that person at the grocery store announcing to everyone the details of his or her life, I thought I'd use that in a poem...Here's the draft.

THE GIRL ON HER CELL PHONE IN THE GROCERY STORE LINE

“Omigod!” She shouted into the metal device, attached to her head

“Whatta jerk, dontcha just wish he were dead!”

“Well of course, you dummy, can’t you just see?

If a guy treated me like that...

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Day four of the Poetic Asides PAD Challenge had us create a "history" poem - here's my draft!

History of Me

Derrida once said something about how he can only give facts

How he couldn’t explain "how", when asked about how

He met his wife

As we tour the world that is me

Colored by impressions,

I think of his quote, “As soon as there is language,

Generality has entered the scene”

I hold hands with my husband

In the place we met

History is a funny thing

Both fuzzy and changed ...

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Over at the Poetic Asides blog, Robert Lee Brewer is running a poem a day challenge for the month of April, national poetry month. The theme for the second day was "water."  Here's my poem for this challenge:

Water

Under the surface you exist

A thick substance separates you

From the world around you

Ripples reflect reverence,

Reality, rights

No one understands

The beauty that is you

Hydrogen, oxygen, combined

Together in a chemical bond

Without the two built together

The e...

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Over at the Poetic Asides blog, Robert Lee Brewer is running a poem a day challenge for the month of April, national poetry month. The theme for the first day was "loneliness."  Here's my poem for this challenge:

At Sea

Stranded in a boat with no destination

Alone in my thoughts and in my hesitation

Life floats around me, people with gay smiles

I’m not quite sure where I’m going, won’t know for many miles

Lights are off in the eyes of the other

Fear sets in, but not the kind that...

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This poem comes from a poetry prompt given by Robert Lee Brewer at Poetic Asides. The assignment was to write a poem backwards - either numbers, or days or backwards in time.  Robert wrote a poem using the alphabet in reverse order.  Here's the result of my tinkering with the exercise:

Sdrawkcab and Forwards

Life scribed for us in a mirror
Daeh pressed up against a wall
Daisies eid and life sdne
Feeling all crazy and pu-dexim
Walking forwards, sdrawkcab gniklaw
Crawling at complete standstill
Windows...
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I'm finally on track with these, here's day 5:

Quicksand

 

His supple lips

Stood out in a plethora of people

I watched in fascination

As he moved,

Careened around corners

Tripped himself in a line

Of quicksand

Sinking in, hands opened

Towards the becoming

They all stopped to stare

Crowds unabashedly gawking

At this man

Screaming in a moment

Of insanity

Listing reasons we should listen

But then stopping help

When others reached out

Silence cascades over this cityscape

The...

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Day 4's Poem:

Overcoming the Block

 

She touched her foot to the computer chassis,

Not knowing quite what to write this time

Life dripped away like wet paint

Keeping a beat to the steady passing of time

Her fingertips pounded over random keys

She looked back at past successes

Life kept twinkling in front of her

While she kept passing opportunity by

 

The calendar screamed at her

Pay attention to experience you won’t find

The day that you can repeat

After all, Groundhog’s D...

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Here is the third poem inspired by PoeWar's 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge:

Little Box of Normal

I will never fit into your little box of normal
I’m sorry for this But the box really is too small
There’s no room for my creative energy
For spontaneity or fun
The corners are really too sharp,
For they jab into reason and thought and questioning—
All activities I long to do
And when I ask the infamous gadfly question,
“Why?”
The lid of the box is closed entirely too tight
It suffocates...
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Here is poem 2 from PoeWar's 30 Poems in 30 Days challenge:

Why?

Why? I wonder, eyelids still glued shut,
Hanging on still to the last molecules of the
Dream that now lingers somewhere in the foggy distance
The warmth of my husband surrounding me
 I reach back for some vestige of dreamland
Grasp at it with a butterfly net
Hear the kittens pawing at the door
Mewing to explore
Jackhammer sounds outside the window
 Screaming as it decimates cement
 “I’m the boss!”
People shout downstairs
 Peopl...
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I decided to participate in the 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge over at PoeWar. This is day one's submission, based upon using the word "patterns" in the first line of the poem.  The other 3 (since we're on the 4th day of the month) will be up soon!

Love Patterns

The shadows on the wall make patterns

Our hands clasp and rise over shadow heads

The light glimmers through the blinds

It peaks from behind the blanket we hung

To keep out this early morning light

We lay together, silent, your he...

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Here is my poem I wrote inspired by the poetry prompt over at Poetic Asides.  The theme was "Returning."

Coming Home

Brown corrugated cardboard makes a fortress in my living room

Painted porcelain packed perfectly wrapped in tissue and bubble wrap

Computer completely placed in its own over-sized box

Files upon files upon files of poems for you

For him

For life

For peace

And short stories

And philosophy papers

Stack silently in the confines of a small shipping parcel

The Beanie Bab...

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In addition to the [fiction] Friday prompts over at Write Anything, I've decided to participate in the Poetic Asides Blog's Wednesday Poetry Prompts.  This week's prompt asked participants to write a poem about something I've been through.  Here it is, in rough draft form:

“Graduate School Comps”

The light cracks in through the window

The book is in my lap

The cat is on his pillow

Taking his nightly nap

 

A pencil is my hand

And the computer screen glows

I try to keep my eyes op...

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