CHAPTER 13:  The King of the Island

As our craft approached the island’s coast, the swelling sea grew rough. Every eye on board was wide watching the darkened beach. We rounded the bluff. The nervous crew began to perceive a stench from a yawning chasm in the hill that no night wind, no downpour could quench. The rain ceased. The moon came forth like noontide from behind her veil of cloud, bathing in ghostly light the seaside; and the night sky at last began to allow increasing illumination, no longer overcast. All on board could tell that a foul shadow, something sickly-sour, emanated from entrance of the hillside bower, and closer view of the pit forced even the captain and officers to admit that the hanging cadaver, head still bearing the crown, was the withered and rotting body of the clown. The crowd of sailors strained and jostled to see: in the moonlight, even from a distance, the clown’s face in its grimace appeared strangely proud . . .
We knew the members of the first mission were all gone now—no need to excavate the bodies in the cave. The purpose of the hanging corpse, to motivate us to abandon the encounter was successful. We anchored the vessel  near the foot of the looming summit, and prepared to mount her.

rough/bluff
stench/quench
noontide/seaside
last/overcast
sour/bower
pit/admit
clown/crown
crowd/proud
excavate/motivate
encounter/mount her

PROMPT #13:

Start by creating a “word bank” of ten simple words. They should only have one or two syllables apiece. Five should correspond to each of the five senses (i.e., one word that is a thing you can see, one word that is a type of sound, one word that is a thing you can taste, etc). Three more should be concrete nouns of whatever character you choose (i.e., “bridge,” “sun,” “airplane,” “cat”), and the last two should be verbs. Now, come up with rhymes for each of your ten words. Use your expanded word-bank, with rhymes, as the seeds for your poem. Your effort doesn’t actually have to rhyme in the sense of having each line end with a rhymed word, but try to use as much soundplay in your poem as possible.

PROMPT 12: write a poem that plays with the idea of a “tall tale.”

American tall tales feature larger-than-life characters…

I’ll tell you-all a tale of Crazy Joe:
How he and his son did a-hunting go
Bidin’ their time till the prey was killed
And every hunter’s dream fulfilled.

Joe saw a dragon in the sky
And loaded his rifle. By and by,
Big Joe shot that Chinese dragon;
Hitched its head to his harvest wagon,
Used its wings to make a plane
Then flew himself to far Ukraine.
He took our taxes, started wars
Raised the prices and settled scores,
Set up bio-labs, armed the thugs
While his son was busy taking drugs.

Joe had barely finished shootin’
When from the North came an angry Putin.
Big Joe whooped that Russian bear
Skinned its fur to line his chair;
Took its claws to scratch his back
Called the whole mess “a cyber-attack”,
Then Joe resolved his son’s affairs
While stumbling down the White House stairs.

Hard-drivin’ Hunter took up art
And painted over that “election” part.
All Joe’s handlers, North to South,
held their breath when he opened his mouth…
Father and son got plenty of press
Down at their Washington address,
After they painted the Whitehouse black
And laughed when we asked for our country back.
Wiser than Solomon was Joe
At taking in the foreign dough,
And cutting deals to line his pockets
Providing bombs and arms and rockets.
Joe talked tough to Israel
And gave those proud Yehudis hell—
But sold them weapons on the sly
While the world wondered why.

Build back better? Come on, man . . .
A Pentagon puppet for their plan.
Big Joe himself: the tallest tale
Administrating massive fail.

My monostich unraveled when challenged to have poetic meaning and relevance.

PROMPT # 11:  write a monostich  (a one-line poem)

O.K. got that out of the way…

And here’s a refreshing new draft for NaPo24:

B R A N D O N    A F L O A T

BRANDON cranes his scrawny neck
Sniffing for a business deal;
Sailors gather on the deck
Murmuring with mutinous zeal…

They’re bailing water from the hull,
Throwing ballast off the stern—
Captain BRANDON’s brain, half-full
Of shipping schemes, begins to churn.

Sensing profits in the ocean,
BRANDON observes the cresting swell.
In his faltering mind, a notion
Starts to form, and none can tell . . .

Fearing for their captain’s health,
The dwindling faithful check his pulse.
Sensing oceanic wealth,
His facial muscles now convulse.

Then, hark—a mermaid’s silvery voice
Appeals to BRANDON from the sea:
Come to me captain; you’re my choice.
I’ll launder money here for free.

“Man overboard”! the sailors shout
As BRANDON flails upon the waves.
Captain’s handlers harbor doubt—
Yet throw the lifeline. Jesus saves.