Tag Archives: NaPoWriMo writing prompt

Arriving Home

Exiles from a dysfunctional global pipe-dream
of borderless corporate matriarchies,
multi-kulti nonsense and data-driven diversity
where virtue-signaling despots ruled
and those so confused they didn’t know their own gender
competed for victim-status as they shrieked,
where rainbow torches on the filthy walls
smoldered with toxic smoke
barely illuminating the fragments
of computer carcasses we had to step over,
we fled the algorithmic oppression
of technocrats
to found a pure republic, based on poetry, goodwill and faith in God.

We emerged from the labyrinthine caverns and malodorous tunnels
into the light right outside the cave:

Clear, strong patriarchal light

purifying the fresh air.

We breathe deeply.

Once I saw some Vikings
sail the sea looking for Diet Coke
only to find angry gulls and mothers
squawking in parking lots
as the dust of the gentle hills disappeared
down the unpaved road
of rolling Scandinavian seas.

I was emotionally engaged once . . .
but she was a neurotic feminist poet, so I broke it off
and moved to Kekistan where (thanks be to Kek)
I married my THREE Kekistani brides:

PROMPT #11:

Where are you from? Not just geographically, but emotionally, physically, spiritually?
Maybe you are from Vikings and the sea and diet coke and angry gulls in parking lots.
Maybe you are from gentle hills and angry mothers
and dust disappearing down an unpaved road.
And having come from there, where are you now?

 

 

Precipitating Events: Monkeyshine

Single monks dwell alone, due to pride
but true monkeys go seeking their bride;
and a monkess (no nun)
loves some rain with her fun
on the street’s sunny simian side.

Cohabiting the sky

suspended droplets and sunlight

cloud vapor silvered with solar illumination:

A MONKEY’S WEDDING !

We shrieked it and jumped around

along that shifting frontier

between childhood and joy

between sunshine and falling raindrops

MONKEYS !

We knew they were entering into conjugal bonds;

nuptial specifics were irrelevant

the celebration was probably far away

in Borneo or Congo or Amazonia . . . or behind the sky

but it was monkeys getting married

only there and then:

along that impermanent line

where the rain didn’t know the sun was out

and the sun did not know it was raining

that fine line: monkeyshine

shout it out (when you were 8)

negative ions in the air

distant yells of children

hopeful smell of peaceful summer neighborhoods

THE MONKEY’S WEDDING

 

PROMPT #10

write a poem that starts from a regional phrase,
particularly one to describe a weather phenomenon.

 

 

 

 

Jap Po-Biz: Listless


Japonaiserie appeals to the Western dilettante mind

  • Kabuki monstrosities of cute

White snivel, and children who sniffle as they walk.
The containers used for oil. Little sparrows

  • shopping-malls of Shinto reactors

  • tsunamis of Hello-Kitty schoolgirl porn

Pretty, white chicks who are still not fully fledged
and look as if their clothes are too short for them

  • tiny plates of aesthetically-arranged trivialities

  • meaningless Engrish phrases on T-Shirts

Last year’s paper fan. A night with a clear moon
One needs a particularly beautiful fan for some special occasion

  • in herd-like apathy, they download Anime Girlfriend App

  • the robotic allure of the Orient defined

To wash one’s hair, make one’s toilet, and put on scented robes
An earthen cup. A new metal bowl. A rush mat

  • cramped restaurant/bars with detailed replicas of food

PROMPT #9 : engage in another kind of cross-cultural exercise, inspired by the work of a Japanese writer who lived more than 1000 years ago. She wrote a journal that came to be known as The Pillow Book. In it she recorded daily observations, court gossip, poems, aphorisms, and musings […]
write your own Sei Shonagon-style list of “things.”

One More Art Form

 

That classic villanelle is hard to master;

alternate lines can drive me up the wall

(but avant-garde absurdity drives faster).


I could just dash off some Haiku disaster,

but that would never hold you in its thrall.

Authentic villanelle is hard to master.


To learn new forms, sometimes all we can muster

is try it out and write; obey our call

and follow, bleating, some poetic pastor


to greener lyric landscapes—or a vaster

universe of verse in which to scrawl.

Authentic villanelle is hard to master.


Breaking the lyric flask of alabaster,

like the Magdalene’s perfume, we give our all,

disciples of true poetry, to our Master.


Keeping pace, the muse now urges: faster

I’m sweating now, and headed for a fall . . .

That classic villanelle is hard to master.

I hope to learn from Bishop—yet run past her.

 

 

PROMPT #5: write a poem that incorporates at least one of the following:

(1) the villanelle form,
(2) lines taken from an outside text, and/or
(3) phrases that oppose each other in some way.