The morning is dead / And the day is, too
There’s nothing left here to meet me / But the velvet moon
All my loneliness I have felt today
It’s like a little more than enough / To make a man throw himself away
And I continue / To burn the midnight lamp / Alone
Now the smiling portrait of you / Is still hangin’ on my frowning wall
But it really doesn’t, really doesn’t bother me / Too much at all
It’s just the ever falling dust / That makes it so hard for me to see
That forgotten earring layin’ on the floor
Facing coldly towards the door
And I continue / To burn the midnight lamp /  Lord, alone / Burn . . .
Loneliness is such a drag . . .
So here I sit and face / That same old fireplace
Getting ready for the same old explosion / Goin’ through my mind
And soon enough, time will tell / About the circus and the wishing well
And someone who will buy and sell for me / Someone who will toll my bell
And I continue / To burn the same old lamp
Alone yeah lightnin’, can ya hear me callin’ you?
So lonely gonna blow my mind / Yeah, yeah lonely lonely . . . my my. . . 

Jimi Hendrix 1967  BMG Rights Management

While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.
And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.
But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you:
but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.
And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came;
and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.
Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

Matthew 25:5-13

The wokeness is so deep: they’re sleeping.
Clueless legions are on the march . . .
Ignorance has Wisdom weeping;
The wokeness is so deep they’re sleeping
Through the harvest, and the reaping.
Behold the view from Titus’s arch:
The wokeness is so deep they’re sleeping—
Clueless legions are on the march.

PROMPT #4 

try writing triolets. A triolet is an eight-line poem.
All the lines are in iambic tetramenter (for a total of eight syllables per line),
and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines.
This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet.

   Wokesplanations

Set your alarms, y’all. I’m mad WOKE.
Order Chinese—send in the clowns.
(General Tso, you know, was white . . .
Africa’s in on the corporate joke)
And every lion-tamer frowns.
Sleeping late on Sabbath morning
You might miss my woke-ass warning;
Time for you to get it right.
Soccer moms talked on, inept
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

Hoping lion’s would not bite’em,
Lambs were roaring, panthers leapt.
(Lamb-chops are a pricey item…)
Blind-men too, received their sight,
Discovering new shades of white,
As one young sheep, determined, kept
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

War on Whiteness! Dark the night.
Time to dis-empower their light.
Pull the plug on those Caucasians;
Afro-centrify all Asians!
Full-court press, seconds remaining
Final quarter: there’s the game
Light-skinned Latins start complaining
People of color hold no grudge;
Whitey look for who to blame.
Take notes, brother. Here come the judge.
Fools held court. The jury prepped:
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

Then— the basketball was ended.
Cross-country skiing now the rage.
Black was under-represented;
Social justice facts presented:
Winter sports now turned the page.
Nordic culture was up-ended.
Pride makes possible all, except
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

St. George Floyd is celebrated
Neighborhoods get burned to ashes
Racist rioters compensated
Whiteness hits the brakes—and crashes.
Mary murmured . . . Jesus wept
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

Woman, thy nastiness to me
Is like old Nikes on the floor
Where sweat and mildew disagree
And force me to the nearest door
A stench I can’t ignore.

Your heart weighs less than styrofoam,
Thy stinking feet, thy scowling face,
Belong in some state nursing home . . .
Free me up some breathing space,
You mean-hair clipped-face gnome.

Lo, in yon dark recliner-chair
How meatloaf-like I see thee slump,
Upon your wide immobile rump,
Ah! Harpie of the greasy hair
Unholy Frump!

PROMPT #3

Find a poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite.

To Helen (E.A. Poe)

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!