I talk the talk but cannot walk the walk;
My poetry falls in desert places
Failing to bring life to arid spaces;
Verse germinates to wither on the stalk.

I ought to use a better garden hose
And irrigate my plant with finest ale
My new poetic scheme could never fail,
And happy plants would spring from watered rows…

But dull esthetics scorch, and modernism
Reduces my dry plot to nihilism.
And now my muse must pay for all that beer

After she blasts my crop with lyric drought
My sonnet has been overrun, I fear
By weeds, and I forgot what it’s about.

PROMPT 9: write your own sonnet. Incorporate tradition as much or as little as you like

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.
In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.”

Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?”

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”

Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father . . .

John 14

New Age Sewage: Your Sinner Self

I sing the Self—that mystic fable.
Lie to Truth as Cain to Abel.
Inner blight of fallen man,
enemy of Heaven’s master-plan:
your inner SELF! The guiding light
of Luciferian deception.
Mystic wisdom’s blinding sight;
purveyed as truth: obscene confection.
Listen well—please spare your soul
and sidestep this, the blackest hole.
Your self is sewage! Look within;
behold that putrid old abyss
then dive down deep into your sin
the fallen source of carnal bliss.
Inspire.  Inhale in full the stench
from deep within the septic trench
unsounded depths, a cesspool’s source
depravity released in force.
Apart from mercy undeserved
on those whom Heaven has reserved.
Apart from Christ, your sordid purpose;
jewel whose bright refracted surface
glistens, beckoning to the feast
yet never can appease the beast.
I hail your lie, oh Inner Self
you silted continental shelf—
(or are you more a surge oceanic:
roiling undertow satanic)?
New Age myth, and Hindu idol
fallen god whose pull is tidal…
Brahman, Atman, Buddha, babble
lies repackaged for the rabble…
How deep do you intend to go
into our post-Edenic show?
How far the bottom? Whence the end?
Explore! You’ll never comprehend.
You’ll find still worse—and yet descend.

Instant Enlightenment HERE 

Can’t hack the prompt today.

The prompt is called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman.
And here are the twenty little projects themselves — the challenge is to use them all in one poem:

1.  Begin the poem with a metaphor.

2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.

3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.

4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).

5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.

6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.

7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.

8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.

9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.

10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).

11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”

12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.

13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”

14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.

15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.

16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.

17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.

18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.

19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).

20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

Really Jim, this is a silly post-modernist formula that can only result in a silly post-modernist poem. But I forgive you. Because it’s Easter.