It’s time for our third Two-for-Tuesday prompt. If you’re new to these challenges, you can pick either one prompt or the other. Or decide to do both. Your choice.
For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
- Write a construction poem. Construction paper, construction hats, and so on.
- Write a deconstruction poem. Opposite of construction poem.
Let’s do this!
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Here’s my attempt at a Construction and/or Deconstruction Poem:
“& on & on”
she builds a tower
& he knocks it down
because he built a tower
& she knocked it down
because she told a joke
& he didn’t laugh
because she failed to laugh
at his funny joke
*****
Robert Lee Brewer
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of the poetry collection, Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). He edits Poet’s Market and Writer’s Market, in addition to writing a free weekly WritersMarket.com newsletter and a poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine.
He has 5 kids who have all built block towers, knocked them down, and repeated.
Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
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Find more poetic goodies here:
- 2017 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Guidelines.
- Rimas Dissolutas: Poetic Form.
- Why I Write Poetry: JR Simmang.
A trash bin at the curb
Is no obstruction
The raccoon deftly mounts
With arms in circumduction
His intrusion causes
Annoying ruction
Piles of neatly bagged trash
Lie in scattered deconstruction.
–ShennonDoah
detour
construction on the highway
put the brakes on existence in the fast lane
forced a slow down detour
along back country roads
that meandered through memories
of uncomplicated days
when every journey simply
brought me back home to
the life I had built with you
Lorraine Caramanna
Happy Thanksgiving A view through light and shadow.
by Michael Peck
Construct / deconstruct
Day 22
Civilization isn’t civilized
Just an intricate admixture
of political and religious control
they trade positions in different cultures
they are the Gin and Tonics of power
so we try to please them
each taking their percentage
each applying a different
form of fear
still we bow as if ingrained
Too many generations bent
under the iron hand
of someone else’s law
no we did not participate
we did not write the laws
that control us
we are the other half
of the equation
we obey ©
Tinker and toy
with another’s emotions,
and you’ll rue the wreckage.
#seventeensyllablesfortwentyseventeen
Building a New Creation
He builds His new creation
Following in the family footsteps
Much like His Father built the world
With words
He says, “Follow me”
And the first citizens of His kingdom
Leave nets and boats
Tax booths and old allegiances
He says, “Be quiet!”
And robs the enemy of the voice
That whispers and maligns
Enslaving what should have been free
He says, “I am willing”
And holds a man with bleeding sores
In a fierce grip
Healing body and soul
He says, “Take up your mat and walk”
And all that would disable
Disqualify from life as God intended
Is left behind
He says, “Stretch out your hand”
And what was once twisted
Unlocks and fingers reach out
to heaven
He says, “Be Still”
And all things that rage
Wind, wave and sky
Is calm
He says, “Child, wake up”
And the shroud of death falls away
Breath comes again and
There is life
He says, “You give them something to eat”
And out of the small and almost overlooked
With thanksgiving, he multiplies
And satisfies all
He says, “Father, forgive”
When the light of the world seems extinguished
And the Father’s back is turned and
All things are broken
He says, “It is finished”
And brings to an end an old dictator
Creation smiles and sings
As a new world begins
SACRED FAMILY
Staring
upward through the
resonant catechisms,
the meaning behind Christ’s smile dawns
on me.
-JR Simmang
In the End
This is the sad part.
When the marriage ends
it’s not just him and her.
It’s me, the mom who loved her
who brought her into
our tight family
and then
had to
let her
go.
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Well, it’s true. Mr “C” relies
on the elves to help him
with those gifts of many pieces.
Their hands are smaller…
he says.
BUILDING FAMILIAL BONDS
There’s a wedding soon and we’re excited,
all the required functions are in place.
A daughter bride, I find it hard to hide
the pride I have for her. For sure she will
grace the life of her fine young man.
A lad of a Canadian clan and his tartan
is true. We view him as a wonderful addition
to our crew. By year’s end we will have
made familial friends across the Provinces,
from Quebec to Alberta, the Great Northwest
Territories, our stories will compliment
each other. New found sisters and brothers
joined for a cause to much applause.
We can’t wait. It’ll be great. And so it goes.
The family grows.
Tanka
hours of hard work
and attention to detail
the best thing I built…
my son takes a hammer
to my Lego Death Star
…would a laser cannon have been more appropriate? 😀
As mom gets older,
our family grows closer
and still falls apart.
Father laid bricks, a
mason. His house of wood’s now
delapidated.
Elderly, mother’s
irresponsible, stubborn
as a mad toddler.
Who’s responsible
for a life’s wreckage after
old age has set in?
An absence can grow
tolerable, but crazy
becomes it own thing.
His ghost left, so she
filled their house to bursting–
a slow explosion.
She sought salvation
through salvaging things, but found
her own destruction.
Courtney O’Banion Smith
@cobanionsmith
Fire in the Hole
After months of laborious construction
with delays caused by improper placement
and faulty materials,
the crowning charge is lit
bringing away the last of the obstacles.
After careful inspection,
the certificate of completion is presented.
With humble pride, the class constructs
sentences and paragraphs from words
that once were as strange and exotic to them
as this land they now call home.
Take it Apart
look at the letters –
each has a sound –
put the sounds together,
like music on a sheet –
groups of letters form words,
which when placed in order
become the lyrics of your song.
Take it apart –
move things around –
letters, sounds, words, phrases –
create a new song for the story
of life, dreams, experience –
the story of you!
lovely!
Blue Print
The Christmas gift of Lincoln logs
was not the tree house he admired,
but sometimes kids behave as hogs,
expecting all that they desire.
He used the logs to build a tower,
a cabin with a porch, a fence.
He built and built and in an hour,
he’d learned a bit of building sense.
His father watched him sort and plan
and said, when he began to sing,
“I think I’ve got a right-hand man
to build a treehouse in the spring.”
Ponzi
It was a simple lie he told,
fiction not meant to hamper trust.
time-buying lies are almost true,
he reasoned; facts are manifold.
“I’ll make that true”—that was the thrust—
like magic, silver into gold.
But then the simple lies conjoined
and split like atoms in such haste,
he lost his grip on truth and care.
How skillfully, with faiths purloined,
he built destruction, waded waste,
constructing what was never there.
Watching a house of lies collapse
is fascinating, most agree,
implosion centered at the core.
Lies led to yet another lapse:
abuse of lives he’d grown to see
as conduits to give him more.
There are no alternative facts;
no magic mirrors make lies true
for wealth and power, many bleed.
And simple lies have great impacts
on simple lives of me and you
when we put trust in greed.
IT takes a long time…
My hollow has very old trees…
Da told me once…
As we hiked to the bottom
That side across from the house
Was last cut when he was ten
Which makes that forest
Ninety-two years old…
Those trees are young compared
To those that stand across from them…
They were tall standing old trees
When he was born.
It has been forty years
Since my father told me that tale, and
He explained to me how
Long it takes a forest
To be made into a forest.
It takes years
For the trees to grow tall,
And underbrush to stop
Coming along…
It takes a long time
To grow a forest…
I heard the bulldozers
And the clear-cutters
Working on a new forest
That by the end of the week
Will be no more.
Tangled roots and limbs and trunks
Will lay like carcasses
Thrown away by hunters.
Cars will pass the carnage;
The people will not even notice…
There will be a pasture and cows
Pleasing to the eye, and
That young forest will be forgotten.
It takes a long time
For a forest to be a forest.
Mary Elizabeth Todd
November 22, 2017
Oh, you capture the sorrow and tragedy so well.
This is me
trying to construct a poem.
Never mind the foundation
I can’t get past
the hole in the ground.
Please Pardon This Poem’s (Fairy) Dust
‘Cause I’m under construction everyone
so you’ll have to mind the mess
I’m under some construction
– No Doubt,
She’s longing to be exquisite
in her own bright skin, so she’s
filling in between the lines with
sprite, and sparkle.
She’ll mortar her heart stones
with hope, soap her windows
with silence and the violet
slant of sun.
Petal her something soft, a
loft in which to weave her words
and wander among them,
changed.
::
Building a Man
sometimes when we talk
my stomach aches as if
remembering the weight of you,
reliving the shift your bones took
under my ribs before you
could even cry aloud
my son, you are as old now
as your father was when I
first touched my hand to his
heart, correlating the beat
to mine, jibing his pulse
and then you, the consequence
of our hips and hearts in willing assemblage
unprepared for your existence,
our fear and wonder just as
raw now as it was in the mere
idea of you decades ago
Building Permits for a Fragile Castle
And if a bird can speak, who once was a dinosaur,
And a dog can dream; should it be implausible
That a man might supervise
The construction of light
– Projekct Two
We’re gonna build it up-up-up,
of our own hair, with a lair for
our dragons at the top of the stair.
We’re gonna shake it down-down-down,
shingles of feathers and hope
and the sounds of sun-stung songs.
We’re gonna break it through-and-through,
be sure that you can flee, and fly
whenever you damn well want to.
::
L’APPEL DU VIDE
Wherever home will be, soon,
there too will be my curved skin, my skeleton
and intimacy, diplomacy, a vacancy
left by belonging to anything.
The segregation of prospect: a dwelling
carved out in relief from the negative space.
My poem on “construction”. But in reality it’s a deconstructed reality on the idea that all things are fragile-figure it out. I’m going to be working on this poem tomorrow so it will be all switched around, but wanted to at least get the rough draft out there. enjoy.
Here’s an idea that everything is fragile and scrawled around:
there’s a breeze in the trees that shakes our paper towns.
in a moonlight daze with a written rain coming down-
We built this town to surround ourselves with words.
There’s a breeze in the trees that shake our paper towns,
Every droplet is another dent, and every falling out is collateral damage,
We built this town to surround ourselves with words,
We’re delicate little beings struggling to find freedom.
Every droplet is another dent, and every falling out is collateral damage,
we set to work in mid September, just when all the lights were coming back on,
We’re delicate little beings struggling to find freedom.
Did you see that firefly getting away before it’s too late?
We set to work in mid September, just when all the lights were coming back on,
setting to work on shaky ground, there was nothing “concrete” about it
Did you see that firefly getting away before it’s too late?
I guess it didn’t see what was the end result of this landscape.
Setting off to work on shaky ground, there was nothing “concrete” about it
They boarded up their windows so they didn’t have to hear all the noise-
I guess they didn’t see what was the end result of this landscape.
Welcome to our mad paradise, pop: 1.5
They boarded up their windows so they didn’t have to all the noise,
And when I sanded off our initials, on the ceder wood tree:
Welcome to my mad paradise, pop: 1.0.
You can hear us in the silence, though, I do every single night.
There was scattered rubbish, and now there’s paper villages everywhere:
And when I sanded off our initials, on the ceder wood tree:
there was no one else left, just me and the trees.
You can hear us in the silence, though, I do every single night.
There’s a breeze in the trees that shake my paper towns.
Coming Soon
The week the supermarket down the street closed,
I shopped their going-out-of-business sale,
getting everything from canned goods to CDs
dirt cheap, as I walked the dingy cracked linoleum
of a store that had seen better days.
that was almost five years ago, and since then
it lay dormant, home to entropy and empty shelves
and who-knows-what kind of creatures,
nature’s squatters glad that the humans moved out.
But then this spring, activity: earth movers
and dump trucks, dumpsters and tractor trailers
as the storefront was gutted and totally remodeled
to become a home decorating store. Today it’s ready
for its grand opening, all gleaming blue-and-white,
a newly-blacktopped parking lot and shiny new carts,
and I wonder, How long will you be around?
Five years from now, will you still be thriving,
or will I find your rusted carts in a nearby field,
weeds poking through the asphalt cracks,
your dark, blank facade echoing the sounds
of feral cats and blue jays, another monument
to brick-and-mortar’s slow extinction?