stonepicnicking_okapi

This week's poem prompt was a prose poem with guidelines and structure.

#22 by okapi

When I reached the edge of the desert, I saw lights, cameras, overlarge plastic containers, and ants. It was as if earth, fine and granular, had become water, and water did not exist and had to be invented, yet air persisted in whipping and cried grainy tears when its waves did not crash like they should. You told me it was nothing special, but the war against the elements, the fans, the umbrellas, the misters and de-misters, told me you lied. Couldn’t imagine? You do me an injustice. I can imagine everything. Animal, vegetable, mineral. Horrible, banal, sublime.

When I reached the edge of the desert, I saw another desert because there is no such thing as destination or arrival or satisfaction. Not for the likes of me. It was as if I were wandering purposeless forever, but at least the scratches fade. Some scars erode, and others are half-hidden by shifting dunes. You told me everything would be fine. Liar. You didn’t know. You did your best. I couldn’t imagine half a century, but there it went like precocious child star become barely legal become sexpot become vixen become MILF become grandma become the bones beneath the blooming desert rose.

When I reached the edge of the desert, I saw my pen had run out of ink and my penmanship was horrid and I was ignorant of the animals, vegetables, and minerals I should encounter. It was as if a drunken scarab beetle had crawled across the page, swerving, swearing, dropping its housekeys in a vain effort to call it a night and sleep it off in the margins. You told me not to slouch. You told me it wasn’t your fault. I couldn’t go back if I tried. The best is yet to come. Just ask the ants.

[This is modeled after "Pantoum of the Great Depression" by Donald Justice and the prompt was: name.]

Stacy by okapi

I have the better name, I think,
Wheeling the cart into the lane,
As she waits and I steer clumsily. There. Her badge.
I unload cans of beans and bananas.

Wheeling the cart into the lane,
She says ‘Hi!’ I want to snatch her badge as
I unload cans of beans and bananas.
Just reach across and grab it off her chest.

She says ‘Hi!’ I want to snatch her badge as
I pretend to be normal. I pretend that I do not want to
Just reach across and grab it off her chest.
I say ‘Hi,’ too, and push the empty cart through.

I pretend to be normal. I pretend that I do not want what
I want. A badge, a smock, a thick wrist brace.
I say ‘Hi,’ too, and push the empty cart through
And out the other side. On the conveyor belt,

I want a badge, a smock, a thick wrist brace.
“Oh, I didn’t know,” she says, tapping my pink sugar shame in
And out the other side on the conveyor belt
Of late-stage capitalism, “That they made these. Cute.”

“Oh, I didn’t know,” she says, tapping my pink sugar shame with
a well-manicured nail. What? That we are the same pawn
Of late-stage capitalism? That they made these cute?
Same doughy face, same frizzled hair, same save for

a well-manicured nail. What we are: the same. Pawn-
awkward patter, fleecy chatter,
same doughy face, same frizzled hair, same save for
our sides of the cart. But then, even

Awkward patter, fleecy chatter
Must come to an end. I know that one last look at
our sides of the cart. But then even
the cart is full again and rolling towards the door

It must come to an end. I know that. One last look. And
As she waits and I steer clumsily. There. Her badge.
The cart is full again and pointing towards the door.
I have the better name, I think.

And that is no consolation, except in poetry.

A haiku and a concrete poem

Coffee Spoon by okapi

Title: City in the rain
Fandom: Original
No. of Lines: 8
Prompt:
Summary: a poem about a city and the reflections produced in puddles during a storm.

City is a thing with many feet,
hurrying,
under neon gods, worshiping with neat
scurrying.
Rain-polished stones reflect
that other place
like city, but blurred, where none expect
a frantic pace

Title: When it's over
Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Poetic form: triolet
No. of Lines: 8
Rating: Gen
Prompt:
Summary: If Murderbot can just crawl through this duct...

when it’s done, I’ll watch an episode of
the Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.
I say as I crawl, walls below, above,
when it’s done, I’ll watch an episode of—
through the duct maze, for mission, not (ew!) love
Stupid humans, I say as I crawl, soon,
when it’s done, I’ll watch an episode of
the Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

Title: Artifice
Rating: Gen
No. of lines: 8
Poetic form: acrostic
Prompt:
Summary: a surreal scene in a virtual world


a capitulation to temptation started this
rationality, gravity departed this
theatre of urban surreal, uncharted this
inverted, invented neon metropolis
fantastic, dangling over steel-chrome precipice
illusory, delusory, imparted this
crass graffiti grin, scribbled, swagger-hearted this
enterprise comprised of virtual somnolence

Title: Gandhi
Fandom: Original
Poetic form: kyrielle (a variation on)
No. of Lines: 28
Prompt: Ambitious
Rating: Gen
Summary: a variation on a kyrielle about the life of Gandhi

( Read more... )

Title: An Assay on Time
Prompt: Efficient
No. of Lines: 28
Rating: Gen
Poetic form: carol stanza
Summary: an assay (kind of a brainstorming poem) about the nature of time

Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow

Efficiently the clocks
Make time by multiplying nicks and knocks,
Dispensing ticks and tocks.
Time flies like an arrow!

For play, for bed, for tea,
For story and for losing merrily
Forgotten history
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow!

The present is a gift.
Fine sands in the hourglass spend and shift
set best-laid plans adrift.
Time flies like an arrow!

Pleas to self: don’t forget!
But we do. We always do. And regret
is doing time unmet.
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow!

there’s stitching and saving
there’s killing, wasting, waiting, and craving
carving and engraving
Time flies like an arrow!

How much more have we got?
But if it’s just an illusion, ought
we to care if we’re caught?
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow!

Time flies like an arrow!
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow!

Title: Reclaim
Poetic form: terza rima sonnet
No. of lines: 14
Rating: Gen
Prompt:
Summary: a terza rima sonnet about an island reclaiming itself after a crime

even before evil strikes, island sands
are lifting. as death assails, as horror stills
dead air, fine grains are shifting. a boat lands.

black boots imprint, clomp-pace, stomp-trample. wills
exert themselves: measure, collect, record
as flying grit abrades, as soft dune-hills

extend themselves inland, onto floorboard,
past threshold. silt alive, hungry in reach.
inquiries conclude. departures afford

unimpeded campaign to smooth each breach,
erase each edifice, to break each frame,
to bury all. seabirds above the beach

bear witness to the canvassing, they name
it in their echoed cries: reclaim! reclaim!

Sonnetto Rispetto in Praise of Literary Devices by okapi

the last carried away by ants, the power
of words at heartbeat until breath expires,
a pocket watch which tells more than the hour,
inflection, misdirection, wit which fires
wonder, a nemesis in pale pink wool,
descriptions which show-and-tell, prank-and-pull,
confirmed opinion of the Church of Rome,
and endings which stick, and clues which come home

for the breadth of an Ave Maria
a respite from the everyday, mundane
at play, anodyne and panacea
what’s gnawing inside is given a name
and maps and diagrams of Pangaea
and contranym, the same and never-same

Alma Perdida by Valéry Larbaud [trans. by Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky]

To you, vague aspirations, enthusiasms,
Thoughts after lunch, emotional impulses,
Feelings that follow the gratification
Of natural needs, flashes of genius, agitation
Of the digestive process, appeasement
Of good digestion, inexplicable joys,
Circulatory problems, memories of love,
Scent of benzoin in the morning tub, dreams of love,
My tremendous Castilian joking, my vast
Puritan sadness, my special tastes,
Chocolate, candies so sweet they almost burn, iced drinks,
Drowsy cigars, you, sleepy cigarettes,
Joys of speed, sweetness of being seated, excellence
Of sleeping in total darkness,
Great poetry of banal things: news items, trips,
Gypsies, sleigh rides, rain on the sea,
Delirium of feverish nights, alone with a few books,
Ups and downs of temperature and temperament,
Recurring moments from another life, memories, prophecies,
O splendors of the common life and the usual this and that,
To you this lost soul.


The Way We Live by Kathleen Jamie

Pass the tambourine, let me bash out praises
to the Lord God of movement, to Absolute
non-friction, flight, and the scarey side:
death by avalanche, birth by failed contraception.
Of chicken tandoori and reggae, loud, from tenements,
commitment, driving fast and unswerving
friendship. Of tee-shirts on pulleys, giros and Bombay,
barmen, dreaming waitresses with many fake-gold
bangles. Of airports, impulse, and waking to uncertainty,
to strip-lights, motorways, or that pantheon -
the mountains. To overdrafts and grafting

and the fit slow pulse of wipers as you're
creeping over Rannoch, while the God of moorland
walks abroad with his entourage of freezing fog,
his bodyguard of snow.
Of endless gloaming in the North, of Asiatic swelter,
to launderettes, anecdotes, passions and exhaustion,
Final Demands and dead men, the skeletal grip
of government. To misery and elation; mixed,
the sod and caprice of landlords.
To the way it fits, the way it is, the way it seems
to be: let me bash out praises - pass the tambourine.