White Magic

Apr6

Militant poetess, dark ingrate
From what black hole did you emigrate?
From what strange galaxy of spite
Did you slither forth to curse and bite?
What absent father spawned your soul
to spread such vicious vitriol
And bring bad vibes wherever you go
In your bitter black feminist minstrel show?

Dark matter could be white dwarfs, the remnants of cores of dead small-to medium-size stars. Or dark matter could be neutron stars or black holes, the remnants of large stars after they explode. The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope can detect high-energy gamma rays that may be emitted when dark matter particles collide.

from: NASA.gov

PROMPT #6: Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you.
Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line.
Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely.

RE: Nikki tha G and Señora Sanchez

Apr6

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt forces me to state the obvious :
Nikki Giovanni is a silly old lady still suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
She also writes sucky poetry. But Dan Schneider says it so much better H E R E .

SHAMEFUL POETRY CONFESSION:

When I was an idiot leftist I shoplifted homegirls and hand-grenades
(no caps of course, keepin’ it REAL girl… unh) from the college bookstore. I realize now what bad poetry it is, and for thinking back then that it was not, I am guilty. I have had more than my fill of militant black wahmens full of grandiose Afrocentric delusions rambling on in awful unfree verse. This stuff has been foisted on me since sixth grade and it is time to call it out for what it is: repetitive predictable garbage. Seriously, Hallmark cards have better poetry than these honorarily-degreed holy cows of blackification. Please check this hilariously dull and grim-faced live poetry session:

But back to Nikki Giovanni . . .
sane perspective from Cosmoetica:

Giovanni’s body of work includes provocative poetry from decades ago that’s laced with profane and violent language. In her piece, “The True Import Of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro,” it reads in part:

Nigger
Can you kill
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can a nigger kill a honkie
Can a nigger kill the Man
Can you kill nigger
Huh? nigger can you
Kill

The poem also includes stanzas asking if black people know how to kill in different ways, and if they can “stab-a-Jew” or “run a protestant down with your ’68 El Dorado,” adding in parentheses “that’s all they’re good for anyway.”

In another of her poems titled “The Great Pax Whitie” it reads in part:

In the beginning was the word
And the word was
Death
And the word was nigger
And the word was death to all niggers
And the word was death to all life
And the word was death to all
peace be still

Giovanni’s work also includes celebrated poems such as “Knoxville, Tennessee,” which honors summers in the Volunteer State, and she also wrote a children’s book about Rosa Parks, her personal friend. She also writes many poems about love.

Ground Down

Apr5

My cutting tool has lost its edge.

This cutlery is rusted.

Not because it is growing old,

but because it is growing disgusted.

Prompt #5

Apr5

find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem.

Verborrhea

Official scribblers, when I was a poet,
Whinged, driveling into an MFA void—

Interminably.

Intolerable, as if God were a literary milquetoast
with no poetic spine,

capable of little. An MA advisor.
If weird line breaks mean anything at all—

totally done with that.

Tepid sort of academic brown-nosing,
tedious rehash of predictable Modernism

obfuscating in rarefied tones, in some chapbook
boringly academic, same as it always was,

CONNECT/HOOK

POETIC FLUX

White Magic

from: NASA.gov

PROMPT #6: Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you.
Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line.
Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely.

RE: Nikki tha G and Señora Sanchez

SHAMEFUL POETRY CONFESSION:

But back to Nikki Giovanni . . .
sane perspective from Cosmoetica:

Giovanni’s body of work includes provocative poetry from decades ago that’s laced with profane and violent language. In her piece, “The True Import Of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro,” it reads in part:

The poem also includes stanzas asking if black people know how to kill in different ways, and if they can “stab-a-Jew” or “run a protestant down with your ’68 El Dorado,” adding in parentheses “that’s all they’re good for anyway.”

In another of her poems titled “The Great Pax Whitie” it reads in part:

Giovanni’s work also includes celebrated poems such as “Knoxville, Tennessee,” which honors summers in the Volunteer State, and she also wrote a children’s book about Rosa Parks, her personal friend. She also writes many poems about love.

Ground Down

Prompt #5

find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem.

Pennsylvania

Other children, when I was a child,
would at times invoke the inner light—

I misunderstood.

I thought it meant God scorches
within us, and God, like a torch,

can go out. That was so long ago.
I’ve since ceased my believing in death—

there’s no such thing.

There’s only a kind of brownout,
the whole of the globe turning

off for a moment, then shuddering
back, the same as it was,

except one person short.

And then before long, an utter new
person is born. Somebody worse.

Natalie Shapero

from: NASA.gov

PROMPT #6: Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you. Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line. Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely.

SHAMEFUL POETRY CONFESSION:

But back to Nikki Giovanni . . . sane perspective from Cosmoetica:

Giovanni’s body of work includes provocative poetry from decades ago that’s laced with profane and violent language. In her piece, “The True Import Of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro,” it reads in part:

The poem also includes stanzas asking if black people know how to kill in different ways, and if they can “stab-a-Jew” or “run a protestant down with your ’68 El Dorado,” adding in parentheses “that’s all they’re good for anyway.”

In another of her poems titled “The Great Pax Whitie” it reads in part:

Giovanni’s work also includes celebrated poems such as “Knoxville, Tennessee,” which honors summers in the Volunteer State, and she also wrote a children’s book about Rosa Parks, her personal friend. She also writes many poems about love.

find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem.

Pennsylvania

Other children, when I was a child, would at times invoke the inner light—

I misunderstood.

I thought it meant God scorches within us, and God, like a torch,

can go out. That was so long ago. I’ve since ceased my believing in death—

there’s no such thing.

There’s only a kind of brownout, the whole of the globe turning

off for a moment, then shuddering back, the same as it was,

except one person short.

And then before long, an utter new person is born. Somebody worse.

Natalie Shapero

PROMPT #6: Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you.
Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line.
Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely.

But back to Nikki Giovanni . . .
sane perspective from Cosmoetica:

Other children, when I was a child,
would at times invoke the inner light—

I thought it meant God scorches
within us, and God, like a torch,

can go out. That was so long ago.
I’ve since ceased my believing in death—

There’s only a kind of brownout,
the whole of the globe turning

off for a moment, then shuddering
back, the same as it was,

And then before long, an utter new
person is born. Somebody worse.