An ekphrastic poem, inspired by Peter Juvonen’s painting Tea in the Conservatory and the Pet Shop Boys movie It Couldn’t Happen Here.
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The bus waits (a poem)
At open mic last night, one of the participants prefaced her two songs by saying that she felt like crap and was running the risk of having to barf mid-song. This poem has nothing to with that, except she was sitting in the seat in front of me, frequently running her hands through her hair.
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Poetry Marathon 2016, Hour Five: The last time I went there
Fifth poem of the day. Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving (A poem)
True story…
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Cortege (a poem)
Today’s prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano is to write in a different way than usual, whether that be in a different form or style, using different imagery or words, etc. The poem I wrote just before this one probably achieves that goal more successfully—but I like this one better. It was inspired by a couple of Jon Hassell pieces (Last Night the Moon Came and Amsterdam Blue (Cortege)) I was listening to on Pandora…
Smiles (a poem)
I wrote this poem this afternoon while waiting to go to an appointment. I arrived much earlier than expected, so I sat in my car, writing. This second of the three poems I wrote during that 20-minute period was simply me recording my observations of what was around me. When I read it a few minutes ago, I was taken aback—it sounded really creepy. After thinking about it, I made one small change. I hope that made a difference…
In a room by the lake towards the end of the day (a poem)
An unusual move for me: I wrote this poem this afternoon, then read it at an open mic three hours later…
The window in the room where the poets played (a poem)
It’s double-shot Friday, I guess. Probably because of that second cup of coffee…
that small smudge of hope (a poem)
The November 6th prompt in The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, by Kelli Russell Agodon & Martha Silano, is to pick a particular line from a particular page of the nearest book, then use that line as the title of the poem—and within the poem, if possible. I started by using my copy of The Daily Poet, which yielded the intriguing line ‘and they began selling steamed seawater’. Unfortunately, what I was getting from that was unsatisfying.
Then I got e-mail notifying me that HoneLife’s new poetry group had posted its first exercise. I followed the link to find that the prompt was very similar. The main difference was that the prompt called for turning to a random page, and pointing to a line without looking. Then it called for using that line as the first in a 3- to 5-line poem. I ended up going with a line from Franz Wright’s Kindertotenwald as reproduced in the deluxe edition of David Sylvian’s new release, there’s a light that enters houses with no other house in sight. Since I normally do not use lengthy lines, I broke up the line into three, then added four stanzas of three lines each to complete the poem.
Ordinary Average Thoughts 