Category: Creativity

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Open Write September Day 1 – Cheering the Fight

7:30 a.m. – Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, we are writing poems in our writing community. Join us and read the poems, and maybe write your own. Check back later to see how I’ve spun the prompt for today.

Maureen, our host at www.ethicalela.com, has offered several prompts in celebration of our book launch party tomorrow. I have chosen three to write today, and I share them below. Please join us tomorrow for our book launch. I’ll be wearing light blue for prostate cancer and dark blue for colon cancer to cheer Dad as he begins his treatments in the coming days. Ironically, one of our book covers is light blue, and another is dark blue.

Tomorrow – September 22, 2024 – we are having an Online Publication Party to celebrate this bounteous time in our poetry community. Please join us for a live event on Zoom/YouTube at 12 PM PST/2 PM CST/3PM EST and bring friends with you…we are going to celebrate! 

Guts (a triolet nod to Fran)

adopting a diet for healthier guts
black beans and yogurts and probiotics
changing our diets for glands and but(t)s
adopting a diet for healthier guts
cheering on polyphenols in nuts
guarding our colons from xenobiotics
adopting a diet for healthier guts
black beans and yogurts and probiotics

Jiu-jitsu Dodoitsu For the Win (a dodoitsu nod to Mo)

I’m shopping today for blues
two new cancer-ribbon hues
for dad’s diagnosis news
this fight he won’t lose

Bonny Blue Naani (a naani nod to Leilya)

a light blue ribbon
worn through September
on a dark blue shirt
we’re cheering Dad’s treatments

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Cottonheads Tanka

Photo by Ivan Rojas on Pexels.com

wait, two venomous

snake breeds make nonvenomous

offspring? is this true?

The Weather Channel said so.

What about those cottonheads?

(update: a snake expert on the Georgia Snake ID Facebook page confirmed this is NOT true as reported on TWC)

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Owls

when we came home

from our camping

weekend, there he was

hanging out in the

pine trees slated for

clear cutting

in these trees he’s loved

for years, where I too

have loved watching him

soon his mate appears

and they swoop

from tree to tree

and I hope to God

there is no little

owlet tucked away

in the safety of

a doomed tree

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Honeybee

a honeybee

took a liking

to my Cayman Jack

margarita

climbing into

the bottle

taking a long swig

then a dip

then a plunge

then a swirl

and died

a senseless

death as I

tried to help

her back

to a better life

but she

refused to

admit her

problem ~

she’s buried

at campsite 301

by the fire pit

a pollinator

extraordinare

her life cut

short by

the delusional

pleasures of

this world

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the ding

next time he

goes to a

storytelling night

he will time his

cliffhanger at

exactly two and

one half minutes

and then when

they tap that

ridiculous spoon

on the coffee cup

to signal thirty

more seconds

he will smile

return to his seat

leave everyone

hanging

and sit down

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Getting a Grip

getting a grip on

her future starts with

burning the Christmas tree

boxes one decade now in

her attic

buying enough hummingbird

nectar to last through October

and watering the string of pearls

cascading from the porch table

getting a grip is festooned with

saying goodbyes to too much

long held hostage from living

new lives in better spaces

like all those music boxes

of childhood and sad, stained

table linens frayed with holes ~

gaps in the timelines of

lineage like broken branches

on that cross-stitched tree

of names and thread strands

of who goes where and how

pre-affair, divorce, remarriage,

cousins once-removed now

fully removed and never coming

back because they did the

same thing with their goodbyes ~

they burned the Christmas tree

boxes and all that’s left is

the cooling ash of

what once was

before their birds

left the nest for the skies

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August Open Write Day 2

Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, Linda is our host for The Open Write. She inspires us to write Clunker Exchange Poems, intentionally exchanging a line (I chose into another world to use in my poem and offer all of my lines as clunkers today). You can read her full prompt here.

Sunday Morning Scrambled

all hell breaks loose

here on this peaceful

Sunday morning as I

sip coffee, write

a clunker exchange ~

sudden frantic barking

of my three vicious

Schnoodles bounces

and echoes through

the house as they

slo-mo scramble

from window to window

no-traction toenails

on the rugless wood

floors, looking like

Saturday morning

Flintstone cartoon

pets running for all

they’re worth but

going nowhere fast

when I look out and see

mama D-E-E-R

(no need to spell it

now – besides, our one

speller alerts the

other two anyway)

streaking into the woods

her two spotteds

stumbling along behind

her, pausing at the edge

to look back at this

house of horrors

where hell hath unleashed

its fury on this holy morning

then disappear

into another world

with dangers all its own

far from here (here~

where I want to exchange

all the clunked-up lines

for world peace

on the Funny Farm)

Fitz, the dog who knows D-E-E-R spells deer, leads the charge on scaring the deer away. Even the babies. Especially the babies.

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Day 1 of August Open Write with Wendy Everard

Today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the August Open Write, Wendy Everard of New York is our host for Dadaist poems. You can read her full prompt here. This form is fun – it involves finding an article and cutting out words, then pulling them out in random order to use them to form a new poem.

I took a copy of the July 22, 2024 The New Yorker and wrote down the lines of the cartoons, then cut them up on swatches of a page of a yellow legal pad. Here’s what I dada’ed:

the heat
his ashes
he didn’t want

I’ve enjoyed
smash open the pinata
while you wait

hold on –
as it became clear that
for me to
see you in
the requisite strength

are we sure
same pirate
I don’t love