NaPoWriMo #30: Thirty Days

Thirty Days: A Haibun

It is day 30 and I am so pleased to say that I managed to write 30 poems. You may be pleased to hear it– knowing that you will not be inflicted with another poem tomorrow. This month has past and during it I was challenged to confront difficult new forms, wrestle with rhyme schemes, pin down the right words, and to burst through that seemingly unbreachable wall of my writer’s block. Each day’s challenge was vexing and today’s no less: to write a poem in a foreign language, or make up a language and write a poem. Once again I will exercise my writer’s right to break the rules. I will not write in language of another land; I will write in a traditional form from another land: a haibun. Those of you who know my writing know I like this form: a prose poem ended by a tangential haiku. I started this month with a Japanese form– so I end it with such.

Wrinkled, tangled sheets
Mourning doves at my window
The war is over.

Ljgloyd 2016

Click here to read my other haibun.

NaPoWriMo #29: I Remember

I’m in the home stretch. Two more days and two more poems. Today’s prompt is ” to write a poem based on things you remember” with a specific focus on details.

I remember

I remember my mother shaking me awake so we could,
in hurried hushed voices, sneak off in the night like thieves.
I remember my father’s 68 Olds with its new car smell
As we sped across the desert in the darkness.
I remember having breakfast in places like Barstow
And Bakersfield and– eww– towns like Fresno.
I remember the colors of the Grand Canyon,
The herds of elk, and the bears
Peering through car windows in Yellowstone.
I remember the summer where we explored, it seemed,
every cave and cavern between Carlsbad and California.
I remember our kicks on Route 66
My family and I on our yearly road trips.

Ljgloyd. 2016

NaPoWriMo #28: Going Forward with Rilke

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem backwards.  Heck, I have enough trouble writing them frontwards.   This will be the first time that I buck the challenge (which are optional) and write something else.  Fortunately, this poem is in absolute line with The Daily Post’s prompt to write about Solitude.

 

Going Forward with Rilke*

Rilke said
Go to the deepest roots
of your heart.
Make a confession
that you will not part
from your calling.

Rilke said
Withdraw from the world
and in your solitude
write of experiences
from which you seclude
Then you will know you are a poet.

ljgloyd 2016

Based on text from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/solitude/

NaPoWriMo #27: Long Lines

The charge this morning was to write a poem with very long lines. Long lines do not work well on blogs, since they tend to wrap around at inappropriate places thus changing the visual impact of the page. To minimize this impact, I wrote this poem in declining line lengths starting with a long line of iambic octameter and moving down to a single foot.

On Meditation

It is no easy task to go and find that spot to sit and ground,
A place that moves and lives and yet in time in stillness stops.
I find that place just down the hill where land meets sea,
Where surf, like drums, a rhythmic meter beats,
Where gulls suspend themselves in space.
It’s here I come to breathe,
A state of mind:
The beach.

Ljgloyd 2016

NaPoWriMo #26: Laugh

Today’s prompt is to write a poem that incorporates a call and response. The response is like a chorus or refrain.

Laugh

When life throws you lemons and you get real sore
Laugh at it all and laugh some more.

When arising each morning becomes such a chore,
Laugh at it all and laugh some more.

That broken heart you never asked for?
Laugh at it all and laugh some more.

Because if you don’t you’ll become such a bore,
So laugh at it, laugh at it, and laugh some more!

Ljgloyd 2016

NaPoWriMo #25: Switching Direction

The challenge today is “to write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it”. I chose a single word from Poe’s “The Raven” and wrote a short verse going in a vastly different direction.

On Trochaic Meter

Nevermore –stressed, unstressed–
Poems like that will I write.
Trochees are just way too weird,
Just too hard to get it right.

Ljgloyd. 2016

NaPoWriMo #24: Mix and Match

Today’s challenge is to combine elevated and mundane vocabulary. In other words we are to “mix and match” fancy words with plain-talk.

 

 

Fancy Talk

Justification,
Sanctification
For my glorification

Naw, just fancy talk
Boomin’ from my preacher-man.
He’s kickiin’ our butts,
Tellin’ us best he can.

“You gotta meet Jesus
And He’ll show the way!
Do all He tells you
And you’ll be okay!”

Gotta love that dude for his
extraordinary
expository
elocution.

Ljgloyd (c) 2016

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, Romans 3:23

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9

NaPoWriMo #23: The English Sonnet

I knew we would eventually be required to write a sonnet. Well, I wrote my first.

It is a sonnet today, why oh why,
Magnificent in its melodic form.
Five feet of iambs, it is not a lie,
Fourteen in all, a rigid rhyme the norm.
Today I have no time such verse to write
It takes long stretches, ample time in hand,
Such beauty crafted in eternal light,
Not in the dull wasteland where now I stand.
Mundane, the word that drags the poet down.
Though sonnets fly high on softened breath.
The day-to-day rigors in which I drown
My sonnets they take away unto death.
I tried my best with a free heart to bring
A sonnet on sonnets with grace to sing.

Lgloyd (c) 2016

NaPoWriMo #22: The Witness

The prompt is to honor of the observance of Earth Day in a poem.     My poem is to honor the One who created the Earth:

The Witness

Some are swept away by the swell of music
as if they were struck by an ocean wave.
Some are moved by a caress of a loved one
as if a gentle breeze had touched them.
Others are split to shards like a lightning-struck tree
when they crack open the sacred word.

My being is rocked
when I see moon jellies floating in a blue abyss,
when I watch a sea lion dance
under her mirror-topped world,
when the dark presence of sycamores
and ancient oaks close over the mountain trail,
when a great bird spreads her wings and glides,
when a human is at one with the elements.

These are the Spirit’s witness to the world.

Ljgloyd (c) 2016

 

 

 

All images taken by the author

NaPoWriMo #21: Space, The Final Frontier

Today’s prompt is to write a poem based on a fairytale in the voice of a minor character. Rather than using a classic fairytale, I employ a modern one.

Space, the Final Frontier

I’m just a crewman
On a fancy starship
Deep in space
On an five year trip.

Strange new worlds,
and little green men,
stars, moons and planets
Wonders, no end.

That’s what they told me
I would see,
When I signed on the line
And was no longer free.

But it’s the guys on the bridge
Who have all the fun.
I’m assigned below deck,
Never seeing a sun.

It’s Kirk and Spock
And Jean Luc as well
Who have the adventure
While I’m stuck in hell.

It’s a good thing, I guess,
And I’ll never get hurt,
‘Cuz we all know what happens
To the guys in red shirts.

Ljgloyd (c) 2016