stonepicnicking_okapi

Title: the sages say
Format: Italian sonnet
Length: 111
Rating: gen
Notes: a spiritual sonnet about the nature of self-realization and the concept of original goodness. maya is the lure and distortion of the material world

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Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth

Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Title: inheritance
Fandom: Original
No. of Lines: 28
Rating: Gen
Prompt:
Notes: Also for vocab_drabbles prompt: cartographer. Supernatural elements.
Summary: Part 4 (of 5) Our formerly heartbroken heroine inherits more than a country manor.

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Title: Redamancy Revisited
No. of lines 28
Rating: Gen
Prompt:
Summary: Part 1 (of 5). Love and break-up.

before. they kissed beside the carousel.
romance and redamancy after dark.
the blared tune-joy of the amusement park
could neither dull nor drown the common swell
of love. their love was now bound to the smell
of deep-fried spun sugar. it left its mark
on brown paper, grease-stained, sticky and stark.
lightbulbs glared. they didn’t see, couldn’t tell.
they clung. they kissed. and the world disappeared.
no sound. no scent. no flavor but their own.
their island beside the merry-go-round.
and time stretched on, they kissed, and midnight neared,
surrounded by squeals of glee, all alone,
they kissed, amazed at this new thing they’d found.

after. a memory which happened to a stranger:
that kiss beside the carousel. not real.
not true. the smell of grease now makes her feel
like vomiting. how the pain must change her.
but first denial, then deadness, there’s danger
in not-feeling, not-caring, she must steel
herself for ‘next,’ brace herself for the peal
of children’s laughter. she must exchange her
everyday tragedy for something new.
not yet. the spinning hasn’t stopped. she must
wait. but time is such an awful liar.
who to be, where to go, and what to do
‘til she’s someone else and that kiss is just
a pretty postcard she sets on fire?

On Saturday morning, I attended a virtual session on poetry line breaks, and I enjoyed it immensely. And it gave me a new appreciation for this poem. And introduced me to the second by E. E. Cummings.

Tonight by Charles Bukowski

"your poems about the girls will still be around
50 years from now when the girls are gone,"
my editor phones me.

dear editor :
the girls appear to be gone
already.

I know what you mean

but give me one truly alive woman
tonight
walking across the floor toward me

and you can have all the poems

the good ones
the bad ones
or any that I might write
after this one.

I know what you mean.

do you know what I mean?

( i thank You God for most this amazing )

Soulwork by Tracy K. Smith

One’s is to feed. One’s is to cleave.
One’s to be doubled over under greed.
One’s is strife. One’s to be strangled by life.
One’s to be called and to rise.
One’s to stare fire in the eye.
One’s is bondage to pleasure.
One’s to be held captive by power.
One’s to drive a nation to its naked knees
in war. One’s is the rapture of stolen hours.
One’s to be called yet cower.
One’s is to defend the dead.
One’s to suffer until ego is shed.
One’s is to dribble the nectar of evil.
One’s but to roll a stone up a hill.
One’s to crouch low
over damp kindling in deep snow
coaxing the thin plume
of cautious smoke.
One’s is only to shiver.
One’s is only to blow.

My own list poem based on Chapter 12 of Agatha Christie's After the Funeral. Mister Goby was my favorite part of the book.

Objects in the Room Mister Goby Looks at Rather than Hercule Poirot by okapi

[left-hand corner of the chromium-plated fireplace curb]
Mister Goby is a small and spare and shrunken man,
[electric plug socket] an information agent
who protests education and finds fault [lampshade]
with the youth of today. [cushion on a sofa]
[left cuff] he consults a scrubby little notebook. he licks
[radiator] a finger and turns a page, rubs a nose.
[door] he winks, nods, shakes a head, so like a furnishing,
so non-descript [patent leather shoe] as not to be there.

I am still going through a list of list poems. I picked out a couple but they are sad and depressing poems, which is fine, but I felt like posting this one on its own. I confess I don't recognize about 75% of the poems which are referenced here, but a couple of them will make nice titles and/or prompts for Spook Me or Halloween stories.

My favorites are "Silence of the Lamb, Who Made Thee?" and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Birds" and "Die, Die, My Darling Buds of May."

32 Failed Horror Movies for Poets by Hailey Leithauser

1. Love Calls Us to the Thing from Another World
2. Dearest Creature of the Black Lagoon
3. The Invasion of the John Brown’s Body-Snatchers
4. The Blair Witch of Coos
5. What Do Swamp Women Want
6. The Filling Infestation
7. Die, Die My Darling Buds of May
8. The Truth the Undead Know
9. No Man is an Island of Doctor Moreau
10. The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman Lovely in Her Bones
11. For the Union Dawn of the Dead
12. Rosemary’s Baby Song of the Four Winds
13. In Reference to Her Children of the Corn
14. Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Birds
15. It Sleeps with Boa
16. Jenny Kissed Me Deadly
17. She-Wolf of London Thoroughfare 2 A.M.
18. Elegy for John Whiteside’s Daughter of Dracula
19. The Bean Brain-Eaters
20. The House on Haunted Fern Hill
21. The Fairie Queene of Outer Space
22. The Return of the Rape Joker
23. Silence of the Lamb, Who Made Thee?
24. The Farmer’s Bride of the Atom
25. The Lovely Bones Collector
26. The Phantom Horsewoman of the Opera
27. It Came from Beneath the Sea Rose
28. The Night of the Demon is Darkening Around Me
29. What Are Years of the Comet?
30. The Crawling Hands of Time
31. Coy Mistress of the World
32. The Mummy Will Fuck You Up

I have a year subscription to a poetry community called The Poetic License which is moderated by British poet Jo Bell, and January's prompt is Lists, and there is a list (heh) of list poems. I liked this one from Rust & Moth journal Summer 2023.

20/20 Lexicon by Michael Bazzett

Author: (n.) a primate who strikes bargains with words
Breath: (n.) an afterthought until it’s not
Currency: (n.) cousin to current, it’s meant to flow
Danger: (v.) torn from angels, born of anger
Empty: (v.) introduces a present absence
Faith: (n.) is a wicker cage holding invisible birds
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