2012 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Days 13-30

[Robert Lee Brewer]

Since the threads aren't being used too much, I'm going to combine them for the rest of the month for the 2012 November PAD Chapbook Challenge.

Happy poeming!

Robert

[vivinfrance]

Dear QE One,

What stirring times you lived in
Explorers turning up
with new-fangled vegetables
and the cursed tobacco,
not forgetting new lands and riches.

You didn’t do much for world peace -
rabble rousing speeches
more often than diplomacy.
I bet you gave that Drake fellow
an earful for being late.

You were a learned lady,
unlike most of your subjects.
Pity you didn’t found a few schools for girls
and not just for the daughters of gentlemen.
We might have had washing machines sooner.

And another thing: why wouldn’t you let females
act in Shakespeare’s plays?
For a powerful English queen,
you didn’t do much for your own sex,
except maybe set the fashions.

You prided yourself on cleanliness -
a bath once a year, even if you didn’t need one!
I bet there was a frightful pong at court,
forcing you to move house often.
The laundry maids must have had a terrible time.

Still and all, we muddle through no thanks to you!
Yours, disgruntled,
the future.


A little Recipe

Take a sackful of words
Throw them into a basin with a heap of imagination
Stir them around with grammatical precision
Add a drumroll of rhythm
Insert a soupçon of symmetry and a trace of mystery
Concoct a metaphor or two to confuse
Beat them together with a modicum of skill
Prepare a piece of clean new paper
Spread the mixture with a light hand
Allow to stew a little, rise a lot
Rest overnight before adding a few second thoughts
Eliminate drips and tidy the kitchen
Bake in the furnace of poetry
Serve with humility.

[maxie2]

Disclaimer: This poem is a year and some months old, but I'd like some feedback, and it fits the Day 13 (write a recipe poem) prompt.

VICTORY OVER LONELY

The first step is to create.

Ingredients:
½ a mind to do something you might regret (the other half obsessing about forgetting past misdeeds)
1 swatch of (overprotected) privacy
6 months of antisocial behavior
the crimson remains of a broken heart
a positive attitude
Optional:
heaps of unrequited love

Assembly:
Combine ingredients into an unselfish, self-directed devotion. Confide in yourself. Find confidence to intrude on your loneliness; this pristine practice may only be safe at first in dark movie theatres, on errands, or at the laundromat. Channel the discomfort of being alone to being comfortably triumphant. Fly above your issues and save your tissues for something economical, like the day you stop being a martyr for your long gone past. Challenge yourself to a night out -- solo. In lucid moments, recognize your company has kept your company all your life.

Yields: satisfaction found nowhere else.

[TheBatInTheHat]

13 November
Twitter sized, again.

Recipe
A loose interpretation of the prompt.

The recipe called for ginger and garlic,
but he knew her tender flesh
deserved more delicate spices.


Letter
Quite different from the first!

Dear sir,
I am deeply flattered by your affections,
but my heart has been fatally wounded;
I can never love again.


And a bonus one, just for fun, that the recipe prompt also inspired.

The zombie horde pounded impatiently on the dinner table,
forgetting that they ate the chef yesterday.

[zevd2001]

WORD SALAD
It's easy enough as long as you can dream
to stay away, be watchful as you scan
following the images as efficiently when they pan
across the universe, it's mostly a scheme
devised for nimble minds to fill up lines
with letters forming words that describe what you see
twisting and turning, grab them quickly, take them they are free
examine them, project their meanings, study the signs

they show you, meander, yes wander inside them, roll
them about in your tongue with your eyes closed, watch the sight
of how they fill your head, but be careful, they just might
not be the ones you need. Go back again and call
out for another combination, maybe a phrase
that is formidable, but who knows, it could be the path,
the beginning of what your pen records, like a swath
cut through into a piñata with stuff to gaze.

Don't be embarrassed by this wealth, this mess
gather it up as you take all the parts
of a jigsaw puzzle, organize, as it starts
to become, the details reveal themselves, then address
how all the colors of this picture come to seek
not what a painter paints, or camera shoots
this is a seed that you plant in grey matter, boots
the information in lines, the language that poems speak.

Zev Davis

[vivinfrance]

You’re not going to believe this, but I read this prompt immediately after a friend told me this story of what happened to her yesterday.

STUCK

A disaster waiting to happen,
that aptly describes my friend.
Her garden, covered in molehills,
vexed her tidy mind.

She got in her old car
and put in gear,
to flatten those pesky heaps.
It rains a lot here -
you’ve guessed it, I fear -
she promptly got stuck on a mountain.

The farmer appeared with his tractor.
and to rescue Maria he dragged her
back onto the path with a twirl.
Alas and alack,
his great tyres left tracks
bigger than molehills, poor girl.

[TheBatInTheHat]

Day 14
(Stuck)

It hurt to love you,
but leaving
was the hardest thing
I've ever had to do.
My heart bled out completely,
and I am dead inside.

[Poet Ariel]

My mind was already stuck here this morning.

What I Remember

We were the dark silhouettes’ of a couple,
leaning against the wall, whispering
promised pleasures to each other ears
We were Jazz in a crowded café
Grinning at each other, Whisky notes
being my hidden hand stroking your thigh.
We were a quiet snowfall in early spring
Outside hushed, blankets warm, soft touches.
We were the Santiam River rushing along it’s own course;
sometimes along the highway, sometimes a primal force
pushing down mountains and canyons. A gush.
We were icy roads and a waiting door.
We were the pacific ocean, ebbing and flowing
into each other, dragging the sand smooth
for bare feet and sand castles. A primal heartbeat.
We were age-scented books, the pages turning
on the corner of an armchair, Frost and Doctorow and Hitchens, we were
the accompanying winter fire, the waiting glass of wine.
We were 3 am and refrigerator raids,
reconciliation and passion on an outdoor swing,
hidden by fences and untamed trees.
We were conversation in an intimate courtyard,
slates with wild grass finding it’ way through to grow,
an aged stairway to lean against. The worn bricks of the building.
We were illuminated texts in the bathtub,
not letting distance cool our intimacy.
Early morning messages quietly seeking passage.
We were Stan Getz after an argument, improvising
a symphony to stand, music we made up on the spot; wild notes
and runaway passion that made knees quiver and surrender

But we were also infrequent, postponed dinners,
slow, unresponsive technology and overloaded work schedules
that left not much time for play.

But I have trouble remembering that
because we were dark whispers on a downtown street;
we were strokes on the thigh on a February evening.

ArielNov 14, 2012

[mapoet]

Unglued

I want to come unglued, but
grief comes with
a strong adhesive.
It attaches itself
as soon as a loss occurs.
We may learn to accept it,
come to terms with it and
even to live with it, but
grief never completely
lets go of us.
We are stuck with it.

[TheBatInTheHat]

The comment section on WD's site hates me, apparently. First I'm stuck in approval limbo, now it says I'm posting too quickly and too slow down.


LOL Oh, well...

Day 15
Tradeoff


Context

When the Dr. asked for her hand,
she too eagerly said yes,
overjoyed at the thought of becoming
"Mrs. Victor Frankenstein".