Wednesday, November 14, 2012

More poems from the PAD challenge

I'm keeping up pretty well with the Poem A Day challenge. Sometimes I surprise even myself. Here are a couple I've written in the last week. I've included the prompt so you know what I am trying to express.


Day 6  (a Two-for-Tuesday prompt) which is actually two prompts:
1.    Write a Left Poem
2.    Write a Right Poem

It’s About Balance
If I work the right I have to work the left
like taking my right leg on a ride on the spin bike
well, then the left needs a ride too.
If I twist to right the left also needs to twist
If I cross my legs in the half Lotus 
with one leg over the other,
soon I need to change sides.
But it’s hard to keep it all straight.
One of these days, one side or the other
will get slighted and left out.
I’m right on about that.


Day 8
Talk back to a dead poet. Choose a poem you like by a poet who is no longer living and offer a rebuttal. Dickinson’s line, “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” is just begging for a response. Maybe, unlike Shakespeare,  your lover’s face is EXACTLY like the sun. And don’t we all have something we’d like to say to Sylvia Plath?

(With apologies to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “First Fig”)

Ah, Edna,
If you only knew
how such a small flame ignites
and strengthens me.
It warms my body
through and through.
I quote these lovely words
incessantly.
But please, oh, please
my friend, tell me
what the hell
the title means. 

Day 12
Write about a piece of technology or engineering that does not exist but that should.  It could be a tribute to something that came to be because of a writer’s imagination, like a helicopter or a submarine or a filtration system that makes urine potable.  Or it could be the original imagination that may one day lead to a new piece of technology, like cloud movers, flood distributors, skyhooks, or levitation chairs.


Giant Snuffer
Fires abound.
Some flare up and spread for days.
And arsonists dance with glee
the orange light of the flames
shining in their eyes.
So I envision
a huge candlesnuffer
one that can expand at will
to cover the entire fire
no matter how widespread.
A plane will drop it from the sky
and it will plunge down
and in an instant snuff the fire out.
And those dancers
will have nothing but dry ashes
to wallow in.






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