Poetry Decathlon

[Tracy Mitchell]

Love it, Marcel, and suspect that Wm Stafford would too.

[Tracy Mitchell]

Deb I can't believe these are your first efforts with these forms. You write so well.

[Tracy Mitchell]

#5 Acrostic  

      Summer Night

Swiftly goes the daylight
under orders, it seems, to die– 
muggy in the dusk,
momentarily, then be gone– 
eloquent homage to recollection,
remembrance, to again bethink 
nights long and warm, nights
illuminated by thighs, flashing eyes, and 
gyrating, pulse-pounding dancing
half the night at the edge of a freshly mowed field, fueled
totally by cold beer, cheep wine, and hormones.

.

[Tracy Mitchell]

#1 Kerouac haiku     

braided polyethylene rope
tightens around his neck 
as his cart reaches the bluff
 

[Tracy Mitchell]

#8 Blank Verse

     Fasteners, No Staples

I am pathologically obsessed with 
small potatoes, beans in the stew, a course
built on family values, mea culpas 
born in airport bathrooms in the heartland– 
where cantaloupe and lime jello always 
beat out red velvet and praline smoozies.
 
How do you best define  a snake weasel? 
Deniers of the welfare of poor folk, 
stalkers of preservation of beauty, 
featherers of their own nests who profess 
otherwise.  Patent medicine peddlers.

I have wavered on you.  I went so far 
as Barry Commoner – I regret that, 
grand Captain that he was, and we all shall 
go down with the ship because of me. 

From where I sit, I should be in prison.  
A negative ambience, a dark change 
of position, or ambition – whatnot.
  
The nation’s resources are marketable– 
with clean water as a convenience, 
clean air we weigh against daily profit.   
What human child’s difference does this make?  

I learn I can be poisoned for profit. 
I am outraged and urge immediate 
state intervention.  That’s my difference. 

A difference to oppose affirmative 
action in favor of equal pay for 
equal treachery, rather than opposing 
every new attempt to level the field.  

Damn.  I didn’t start out in your corner.
I thought you tone-deaf and too far up scale– 
clever, and most likely a total shit. 
 
But I owed you a fair reasoned reply.

.

[Tracy Mitchell]

#2  Limerick

    MSPF Decathlon Post-Mortem 

As I reflect in the aftermath
I did not morph to a psychopath
what can be said, at most
I came dangerously close
while writing ten poems for the Decath  [lon]



 

[Tracy Mitchell]

That's it, here's my list:

1.  Kererouac haiku -- hang yourself
2.  Limerick -- MSPF Decathlon Post-Mortem
3.  Cinquain -- Chaser Cairn [Crown Cinquain]
4.  Etheree -- Cliffside
5.  Acrostic -- Summer Night
6.  Triolet --   Chugging the Dogma/Twist Not Sober These Defective Thoughts
7.  Sonnet -- Beyond Color
8.  Blank Verse -- Fasteners, No Staples
9.  Free Verse -- I Already Wrote This Poem
10.  Wild Card/Cook's Choice -- Joe Blow Outgrows The Road Show/
                                                In Serial American Sentences
                                                With Square Poem Epilogue


As you likely know, I am not a form poetry guy, so this was really a reach for me -- a fun reach. 

And who knows, maybe I learned something. 

Yeah, okay, I'll stick with the fun thing.  

Cheers.

T