National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

[indar]

 Referencing Gyppo's #11, he can do jujitsu AND write 30 poems in 30 days. Read THAT and weep Norris.

[lisaeagle65]

This is one of the great secrets of all writing, poetry, prose, whatever. Even fairly dry technical stuff. If you do it all the time it does get easier, like exercise. Obvious really, but many writers seem to resist this simple fact. They try to train themselves to be more productive, to not waste words writing less than perfect text.

There are no shortcuts. No magic template. But no writing is wasted if it teaches you something, if it opens you up to that inner flow.

This doesn't mean all writing is fit to share with the public, but once you begin to get a feel for what might work and what doesn't you'll find yourself subconsciously nudged to the better side. That's when you learn to trust your own instincts.

Once you no longer have to think so much about the 'mechanics' of it, the nuts and bolts of sentence construction and grammar, it frees your mind up for the more creative aspects. More about the subject and the feelings it exposes for you.

It lets you into the character or characters you are writing about, cranks up your empathy sensors to full power and sometimes even beyond. When you get that involved it seeps through into the reader as well.

In your poem about the eagle, flying high, observing, I was seeing the world through his eyes, feeling the lift of the currents beneath his wings. I also felt his solitude, a double edged blessing/curse.

Gyppo
-------------------

Gyppo, I really like this mini-essay. As a writer-editor who leads a wonderful group of local writers, I feel that the effort of "just getting it on the page" cannot be stressed enough. Build the words. Tear them down. Rebuild the words. I can see a mantra in this. Von

Gyppo,
You are so right, there are no shortcuts or magic templates. It is a journey and sometimes the way a particular journey ends is not what you had in mind in the beginning, it takes on a life of it's own and that's where the learning comes in, I suppose.
It is fascinating to dig into our humanness and share it with honest vulnerability.
BTW.. I love the ants piece, nice twist at the end. 

[lisaeagle65]

just a bit of a front story on this. Years ago a friend took a homeless lady in. He was so kind and peaceful. He went missing.
The woman shot, dismembered and cannibalized. I wrote this yesterday. Sometimes it takes awhile to reach it. I apologize for the lengthiness.



MORNING OF MOURNING

A drowsy sun peeks
over a fog- consumed mountain
drowned in pink and blue highlights of haze.
It is cold this Sunday morning.
Frosted sagebrush and frozen footprints
are among this crowd of mourners.
A small fire in the center of us all
fails to warm any part of this earth
and its tiny visitors.
It fails to bring tingling life
back to the frost-bitten blood
we all share.

Juniper berries and pine needles
heap the over sized tin platter
and I wonder
as we in our own grief take a turn
to gently drop a handful
into the tear- blurred flames
why you? The gentle one?
Taken by her violent heart of insanity
and soured soul.




Each stiff, frozen hand
like unoiled mechanical parts
hurt in closing on gathered dirt
to sprinkle on the now shrinking fire.

Flames, orange with lack of oxygen
Release bits of Juniper and Pine
to rise and disappear
as reality is absorbed slowly
like the winter sun into winter skin.
And I wonder about the cold soil
how it doesn't smell on January mornings
how it hurts to hold
how it hurts to let go.

Cupped in dusty palms
water drips from half-bent fingers
into the shallow hole molded
around the baby tree you planted.
I wonder about this tree
and it's inevitable death of thirst
without you.

I wonder about grief,
juniper berries and pine,
sweet songs that rise in smoke,
cold, hard earth in cold, hard hands
and death of baby trees.

I wonder, as the sun peeks
over a fog- consumed- mountain
drowned in pink and blue highlights of haze
if this frigid Sunday morning
will ever thaw.

In loving memory of Peter 
1942-1993

[ajduclos]

Lisaeagle - sometimes it is right there, sometimes takes an overnight or days or... yes, years..... but when it comes it must out, and must channel it to paper.
This is poignant, painful, brutal, heartfelt............. glad you have gotten it out..........
Aj

[lisaeagle65]

30 ways to die. 
#1
Repetition.

She repeats herself
to fill impotent voids
that crept fertile,
and tendriled through
their fabric.

Decades together
sentence obligations to choose
repeat or silence.
He chose an old pair of shoes
inoffensive, comfortable 
happy to accept the absence of novelty,
of not having to scour media for material,
just being with her was enough now.

She chose repeat
but disappears a little more
with each one.
 
His attentive stare, open eyed 
suggests interest, and
the intent is affection,
but they remind him
of their chronology 
tunnelling deeper
to remove more
hammering
coffin nails

staccato

Wonderful!!! "To fill impotent voids"  I really like this..
 

[lisaeagle65]

I know it's awkward, going back to the beginning of this thread but I couldn't resist.

4/2

When a Person Dies

Odd people gather,
like a brood of same birds,
to remember a drunken rambling from 1978
or the childhood trauma of a dog
hit by a Dodge Dart—

mother cried, father nearly died
and later that evening, ivy rustled
and scratched
against a bedroom screen

Who was this person
leaving a life lying around
for all the wrong people
to remember?

by George

George, I think I've been to this funeral, a few times. All so familiar. I love, love, love the last S.

2.

Trees sway

as winds play

hide-and-seek.

Beautiful in its simplicity, Vaughn.


Nicole - I have re-read your CAROLINA GROCERY a few times and enjoy it every time. 
 
YES.. Familiar for sure... It's great George
  

 

[lisaeagle65]

Wow, sounds like she received quite the setup, enough to make the other gals jealous! Charming
write Gyppo, and love the last S, so familiar

Beautiful!!!! the feeling, images, the tone is so warm.. It got me..

[lisaeagle65]

Lisaeagle - sometimes it is right there, sometimes takes an overnight or days or... yes, years..... but when it comes it must out, and must channel it to paper.
This is poignant, painful, brutal, heartfelt............. glad you have gotten it out..........
Aj

Thanks Aj, There has been lots of little ones throughout the years. Pieces.
 

[lisaeagle65]

Wow, Sharon - beautiful, sensitive... "topics are freely feminine" 

very moving and real..

[ajduclos]

Lisaeagle - sometimes it is right there, sometimes takes an overnight or days or... yes, years..... but when it comes it must out, and must channel it to paper.
This is poignant, painful, brutal, heartfelt............. glad you have gotten it out..........
Aj

Thanks Aj, There has been lots of little ones throughout the years. Pieces.   

Ya, I know how that goes... all part of the process of those that touch us to the core of our transient existence............