Purple haze, afar,
Blossom blur, tender and sweet,
Now and forever
The Only Thing Missing is You (#23 NaNoWriMoPrompt)
Howl’s and whines, this morning was like every other morning since you’ve been gone. I swear I can hear Tater kitty’s lungs fill before that first “yowl” announcing the approach of 6 a.m. He should be an employee for the Naval Observatory, ensuring the master clock is on time. Maybe it’s Matilda and Dover, blue heeler heightened senses, who realize it. That intake of air and they start to wiggle. I don’t open my eyes. I know they sense the change in my heartbeat and respiration, but I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if I’m going to let that cat tell me when to get up.
I get up.
A thundering herd of paws and tails down the gapped, wooden steps to the stone-floored kitchen. You know the routine. The only thing missing is you.
(NaPoWriMo Prompt: And now for today’s (optional) prompt! Kate Greenstreet’s poetry is spare, but gives a very palpable sense of being spoken aloud – it reads like spoken language sounds. In our interview with her, she underscores this, stating that “when you hear it, you write it down.” Today, we challenge you to honor this idea with a poem based in sound. The poem, for example, could incorporate overheard language. Perhaps it could incorporate a song lyric in some way, or language from something often heard spoken aloud (a prayer, a pledge, the Girl Scout motto). Or you could use a regional or local phrase from your hometown that you don’t hear elsewhere, e.g. “that boy won’t amount to a pinch.”)
If I believed (#22 NaPoWriMo Prompt)
NaPoWriMo Prompt: And now for our daily prompt (optional as always). I’ve found this one rather useful in trying to ‘surprise’ myself into writing something I wouldn’t have come up with otherwise. Today, I’d like you to take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens:
The sun can’t rise in the west.
Pigs can’t fly.
The clock can’t strike thirteen.
A circle can’t have corners.
A mouse can’t eat an elephant.
The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky.
If I Believed
The sun could rise in the west
Etched by a pig with wings
As the clock struck thirteen.
My hand could trace a circle with corners while I
Watched a mouse cleaning its whiskers
By its pile of elephant bones.
I could look up and
Find the stars
Rearranged overhead.
I could believe these things,
Anything,
If I believed I could live without you.
Selfie Self-Satisfied Selves (#21 NaPoWriMo Prompt)
Burning lungs, a scramble up
Twilight stairs, Huffer’s Hill. Your world.
Your arms around me,
Warm against summer chill–12,000 feet.
Wrapped in a celestial cloak,
Watching
Wyoming fade to black.
I breathed gortex, mountain, you.
My cheek, your coarse whiskers,
Our vista private, infinite,
Complete.
In the gloaming below,
Elk, moose, deer, marmots, wildflowers, waterfalls.
This moment.
Self-satisfied.
Long waves light
Faces so confident in our “us.”
Our future.
Our choices.
We hung the moon overhead.
(freewrite paragraph) I remember the air burning my lungs the last bit as we scrambled up the twilight stairs of Huffer’s Hill. You were showing me your world. Your arms were around me, pulling me close and warm in the chill of a July night at 12,000 feet. In our celestial hood, we watched the glow fade from the distant Wyoming skyline. I breathed in your scent, a mix of gortex, and deodorant, and you. There, wrapped up in you with my cheek brushing your whiskers, on top of the natural world, we were complete. Our grinning eyes searched out the elk, moose, deer, marmots, and wildflowers of Colorado incognito in the growing darkness. The photo is the moment. We are self-satisfied in our happiness. The long waves light up our faces exuding confidence in us, our future, and our choices. We reached up and hung the moon over our heads.
I followed Brim’s first prompt for a freewrite about a selfie. Then, because we are so self-satisfiedly happy in this photo, I decided that it fits within the narcissist prompt. Using a form of the elimination technique from yesterday’s prompt, I ultimately came up with the poem. These ideas have been so fruitful and fascinating.
NaPoWriMo Prompt: And now for our (optional) prompt. In her interview, Brim provides us with several suggestions for generative writing exercises, and we’d like to challenge to today to tackle her third one, which is based in the myth of Narcissus. After reading the myth, try writing a poem that plays with the myth in some way. For example, you could imagine that imagine the water is speaking to you, the narcissus flower. Or you could write a poem in which the narcissus berates the Kardashians for stealing their neurosis. Or a poem that comments on the narcissism of our time, i.e. beauty and body obsession, etc.
Put Out to Pasture 