“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
I hope you enjoyed National Poetry Month, read some extra poetry, perhaps attended more than a couple poetry readings, wrote some poems to various prompts and found yourself writing some things you would not have written otherwise. You might have even developed a habit of writing every day.
“A word after a word after a word is power.”—Margaret Atwood
My schedule is very busy these days with owning, managing a bookstore and all the marketing, scheduling, ordering, etc that it entails. (Remember to support your friendly neighborhood independent bookstore. (BookTree on Facebook is here) BookTree will have an evening with Tess Gallagher on May 14th! Our Third Saturday writing workshop followed by our PoetryIsEverything Poetry Night on May 18th features Matthew Brouwer and Jed Myers and an open mic. Hope you can be part of it!
Most of the poems I wrote this month were done in less than 20 minutes and then quickly edited in about 5 minutes as I was posting them. I did think about some of the prompts as I was doing other things. About ten poems are decent and maybe three or four with some work are worth publishing. A couple were awful I know and that’s part of the NaPoWriMo challenge too.
“Tears are words that need to be written.” —Paulo Coelho
After my poems you’ll find some Bonus Prompts.
Prompt 29 Countdown poem (mine started with 10 words decreasing to 1)
Indie Bookstore Day
by Christopher J. Jarmick
This year’s 11 hours of independent bookstore day at BookTree
began by letting in two dozen people waiting outside.
By hour three more than 500 had visited
getting passports stamped, some touring the store,
others buying books, many rushing fast.
21 store visits required for
discount card, bragging rites.
Busy, memorable, fun,
10 hour
day.
Prompt 30 Go through what you have written the last 29 days and pick out 4 lines or more to incorporate in the body of a new poem.
What Me Worry?
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Not going to worry about a thing
like the song said
even if the maze of anxiety
isn’t as much fun as I would imagine
a Coney Island of the Mind ought to be.
I could care less if I dash out into a vandlop
or how insecure I feel four layers in.
My knees will inhale courage
and I’ll imagine everyone in their worst
pair of underwear rubberizing their faces
with makeup smiles.
Gonna be alright.
Not going to worry about a thing.
XTRA –
Poem Starter 1429
By Christopher J. Jarmick
There’s no ‘I’ in
meat, mate or tame,
and you can’t spell team
without meta.
Poem Starter 1950
By Christopher J. Jarmick
During the intermission
a billion dollars
was redacted.
Poem Starter 1501
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Will I know
which poem is good
which a worthwhile failure?
EXTRA PROMPTS!!!!
Need some extra prompts for the days ahead?
Here’s 7 more I almost used including several from Brendan McBreen too:
Prompt A
whats your sign?
write a poem which predicts the future
think daily horoscope
Prompt B
garden poem
you’ve heard of a green thumb
write a poem comparing different body parts to different plants or plant parts
Prompt C
Judge a book cover
Write an ekphrastic poem but use the art work
on a cover of a book to inspire you.
Prompt D
poker face
write a poem
without letting the reader know what you are writing about
just hint at the subject
Prompt E
Put a Tiger in your tank!
Write a poem that includes three or four (or more) places
you vividly remember from your childhood.
Prompt F
30 days has Remember, Poetry, Soon and November
all the rest have thirty-one, except for February alone.
Make up two to three names for calendar months ( yes, you could
create a new day name too) and use them in your poem today.
Prompt G
snap! snap!
it’s the Addams Family!
write a nice gloomy macabre poem
about one of your relatives (fictional or real) who is probably a distant relation to the Addams’s
be sure to include some rhymes
Prompt H
the end of endings
write a to do list for the day of the apocalypse
its going to be a busy day after all
“Always be a poet, even in prose.” —Charles Baudelaire
A few months ago, the wonderful, talented, writer, publisher, editor, poet Lana Ayers did an interview with me and creatively posted the results. You might enjoy it. Thoughts on Writing and Dealing with Inner Darkness.
Thank you!
Keep Writing!
The final two NaPoWriMo 2019 prompts. Here we go!!!
Prompt for April 29 (write poem to this prompt on April 29th )
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” —Isaac Asimov
From Brendan McBreen that Striped Water Poets member from the Auburn area whose latest collection of poetry from MoonPath Press is Cosmic Egg.
counting backwards
write a countdown poem
use gradually decreasing numbers in a poem
concluding with your final line
this should be a blast!
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” —Albert Camus
Prompt for April 30 (write poem to this prompt on April 30th )
“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.” —Sylvia Plath
It’s the last official day of NaPoWriMo (you can of course keep writing a poem a day, I mean now that it is almost a habit perhaps you should. Plenty of prompts out there if you need them.) Congratulations for making an effort to write each and every day. Hope you stretched a bit and some of the excercises challenged you. Hope most of it was fun. Maybe you even wrote some things that can revised into something worth keeping and publishing.
Go through what you have written the last 29 days and pick out 4 lines. Incorporate these 4 lines into the body of your poem that reveals something most people probably do not know about you. You can alter and revise your 4 words (but they should be fairly close to how they originally appeared).
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” —Robert Frost
“You can make anything by writing.” —C.S. Lewis
Prompt 24 Rewrite song lyrics
Fly Trump Past the Moon
(song parody) by Christopher J. Jarmick
Fly Trump past the moon
let him nick-name all the stars
Let Musk blast him far away
Past that Jupiter and Mars
In twitter posts, be pushy
In twitter posts, can’t grab pussy.
Make us great again
and bring back some civility
It’s all that we long for
All we dream about some more
In Twitter posts he will yell
In twitter posts, He can’t spell
Mueller’s report will tell
though cunning Barr will redact
the truth shall be known
and Trump we shall extract
In twitter posts he will yell
To his rude posts, we shall reply
Go to . . . .
Hell
Prompt 25 – aliteration
Boris belches
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Boris, the biggest born behemoth belched
Creating chaotic calamity
Seismic seizures, celebrations squelched
Time trembled, terrible travesty.
“Manners matter!” commands Mother Mabel
Disgraced, dumbfounded, definitely in disfavor
bashful behemoth boy Boris blushes at his bad behavior
Totally terrified tot told to vacate table.
Prompt 26 A Stream of consciousness write after listening and writing down five or six words or phrases that someone said.
Michael Lewis’ Pod Cast Extrapolated
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Life isn’t so hard, but it isn’t easy
And did you ever really look hard enough
to realize there are little tragedies in nearly
everyone’s life you have ever met
and in nearly every family there are dysfunctions
and usually people hold onto grudges
And the original reason is often grudge-holding worthy
but most are held onto year and year
like a really bad habit
which doesn’t make much sense at all
because the wound won’t heal until you figure
out how to forgive and mostly forget.
Why open up your wound all the time?
Why carry around such stuff?
But now it’s time to stop writing and notice
how beautiful the light looks outside
And notice the shadows that are being cast
And walk outside and take a long deep breath
Paying attention to the whole process of
Breathing in, holding the air in your lungs
And then letting it go.
Yes, letting it go.
Man, the light is beautiful right now.
Wish you were here.
Prompt 27 – pick a canned phrase and expand on the sentiment
in an extreme and overly detailed way 8 lines or more extreme.
No limits
By Christopher J. Jarmick
There are no limits to what you can achieve
your imagination is organically illimitable
no red or yellow lights, speed restrictions, or dead ends
in the way of your path to reach your goal.
Don’t imagine a problem, just believe it and you can achieve it.
Picture, taste, touch, smell, put the top down and feel it in the air
Race to that goal, speed bumps and obstacles do not exist.
Space, infinity, nothing to stop you. No bars. No caps.
No bounds, no controls, no rations
No freeze, no bridles, no brakes,
No demarcation, no checks, no locked doors.
Prompt 28 Find five verbs and five nouns used in Space/Astronomy/Rocket Science and use them to write about another subject.
Not a Romantic Poem
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Kepler’s laws sure seem to apply
to a young lovers combusted heart
It’s a circular geocentric, cosmic alignment
that makes you hear your special song on the radio
in the mall, in a TV commercial
The quasar burns for her.
Where’s a black hole when you need one?
Feeling worse than a byproduct of a dwarf planet
jettisoned toward a disintegrating comet.
you wish you could combust like a celestial fireball
instead of having a parallax view and that feeling
like a penumbra in a waning moon.
Keep Writing!!!
“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.” —Gustave Flaubert
We’re down to the final 7 prompts of NaPoWriMo 2019! Here’s the next 5 challenges and inspirations to keep you writing.
But first…for those of you in Western Washington:
This FRIDAY from 1:30pm to around 4pm, writer, poet, editor and publisher David D. Horowitz will be at BookTree in Kirkland. It’s always fun when he hangs out and talks/reads/answers questions. Facebook Event Page you can share is here!
Also: Saturday is Seattle Independent Bookstore Day! BookTree is once again part of it. Be part of the celebration of Independent bookstores. Thank You. Facebook for SIBD here!
And now to the prompts.
Prompt for April 24 (write poem to this prompt on April 24th )
Music. Rewrite the lyrics to a song you admire. Keep a nearly identical meter and rhyme pattern. (Tell us what song it was only at the end of your poem).
“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.” —William Faulkner
Keep Writing!
Prompt for April 25 (write poem to this prompt on April 25th )
From Brendan McBreen : dive into the dark dank deep depths of alliteration!
write a poem using alliteration in each line… can you make it rhyme?
Happy Poeming!
Prompt for April 26 (write poem to this prompt on April 26th )
“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” — Sidney Sheldon
Stream of consciousness write. Listen. Write down the sounds you hear and make sure you hear voices speaking or go to the internet or radio and write down five or six words that someone has said
Now use this to write for 4 to 5 minutes and I mean just write, pen to paper preferably and move the pen as continuously as possible for several minutes. Take a few minutes (no more than 3 minutes – just 3 minutes) and that’s your poem for today.
“Don’t get it right, get it written.” – – Ally Carter
Keep Writing!
Prompt for April 27 (write poem to this prompt on April 27th )
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” ― John Steinbeck
From Brendan McBreen
canned phrase
pick a canned phrase you use like “have a nice day” and expand on the sentiment
in an extreme and overly detailed way
eight lines long extreme
“I write to discover what I know.”—Flannery O’Connor
Happy Poeming!
Prompt for April 28 (write poem to this prompt on April 28th )
“Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” –William Faulkner
Twisting a prompt idea from Brendan McBreen we have this challenge:
Find five verbs and five nouns used in Space/Astronomy/Rocket Science and use them to write about another subject. The idea is to create an extended metaphor in a short poem, of maybe ten to twelve lines.
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ― Sylvia Plath
And here are poems I wrote for the last shared prompts.
Prompt for April 22 (write poem to this prompt on April 22nd )
Prompt 22 Recipe Poem that reads like a detailed recipe but doesn’t have anything to do with cooking or baking.
Laura’s Recipe for a Maltese Detour
By
Christopher J. Jarmick
Organize your shopping list of ingredients
though it probably won’t matter much.
Wear black and consider a hat.
One or two: Shady Dames
One or Two: Saps
One or two: unwashed cops
Three: tablespoons of angular perspective
from below the eye-line
Four: Teaspoons of mood lighting
Five: Pinches of some
not quite right circumstances
Six: Cups of desperation
Six: Dead ends – peeled.
Seven or eight: Mugs of untrustworthy,
possibly spoiled unkempt
characters and stoolies.
(they’ll be available to you
almost everywhere you go.)
Eight: Halves of hard-boiled cynicism. Diced.
Nine: Drops of sweat
on or about the brow.
Ten: Zest scrapings from
a this- isn’t-going-to-end
well.
Combine and mix the ingredients.
But you know what doll? It really doesn’t matter
How you do it. We’re doomed to repeat
our past mistakes, make a mess of things anyway.
Eventually you’ll figure out the best way
to half-bake everything and when you split it up
into equal portions, folks will accuse you and others
of it not being fairly divided and then there is the
sour, bitter after-taste.
Intentional and
certainly part of the appeal
but there’s going to be smoke
and serious injuries.
You probably should be smart
leave early, get a head start, forget the whole thing,
but 10 to 1 says
you won’t.
Prompt 23 Poem (TODAY)
write a poem in the form of a conversation between a mythological character
and an inanimate object repeating four randomly chosen words throughout.
Catch, spring, release, fire (are the words)
Rukuba and the Ball
By Christopher J. Jarmick
“Catch me, Rukuba,” Ball said.
“Catch you?” asked the guardian of fire.
“Yes it is spring and we must
play catch and release.”
Rukuba sprang into action catching the ball
releasing it quickly as if it were on fire.
Ball laughed. “I shall bounce high into the air.”
“…and I shall spring into the air faster than a
a spark from a fire and catch and release you.”
“You are fast!”
“Let us play catch and release some more.”
It is a perfect game for a spring day,” Ball agreed
“I will give you a three second head start.”
“I will roll down the hill and into the spring
where surely you, the guardian of fire, will not
dare catch and release me.”
“Try me, my silly friend.”
And the two new best friends played
catch and release until the spring sun set
And the fireflies appeared.
Keep Writing!!!
“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”—Annie Proulx
Oh my! Less than 10 to go! If you are just starting….welcome and enjoy being part of NaPoWriMo! If you’ve been playing along for a while, I hope the prompts are inspiring and challenging. Maybe you are even writing something different than anything you’ve written before. This is good!
Prompt for April 22 (write poem to this prompt on April 22nd )
“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
Write a recipe poem.
Make it read like a detailed recipe but the poem shouldn’t have
anything to do with cooking or baking.
Keep Writing!
Prompt for April 23 (write poem to this prompt on April 23rd )
There’s no such thing as writing too much – as long as you only keep 10 percent of it. – Christopher J. Jarmick
From Brendan McBreen – fun with words and stuff
pick four words, random is good
now write a poem in the form of a conversation between
a mythological character and an inanimate object
make sure those four words repeat throughout
If you’ve been writing more than a few months and sincerely believe everything you write has value you’re delusional and should seek help immediately. – Christopher J. Jarmick
Happy Poeming!
Prompt 17
So start your poem with 1 three syllable word
Line 2: use 3 words and two three syllable words
Line 3: 6 words with 3 three syllable words
Line 4: 9 words with 4 three syllable words.
Stanza 2
Line 5 a line with 6 words and 3 three syllable words
Line 6: A line with 3 words and 2 three syllable
Line 7: Last line 1 3 syllable word.
Threemation
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Difficult
creative challenging puzzle
dividing syllables with laser focused consciousness
demonstrate, implement, stimulate new idea perhaps a unique form.
Overcome poetic objection, release the muse
Realize and recognize
potential.
Prompt 18 – choose word that is tattooed on your forehead include it
at least 3x in your poem, try to make it the third word in every third line of poem.
Forgive
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Others like you
have imperfections
and faults. Forgive them
Slights big and small
Are made every day
Remember to forgive. Often.
Memories weigh you down
as much as possessions
when you forgive ,the load lightens.
Be unstuck in time
Flexible and understanding
You just forgive, stretch to the sky.
I hope you realize
on my forehead in invisible ink
Tattoo reading forgive, a reminder.
The tattoo is for me and you because
best advice is one you also follow and
I must forgive myself too.
Prompt 19
Mix up some well- known quotes use three to (not more) than five words at a time (credit quotes used)
Quoted
by Christopher J. Jarmick
Do unto others (Matthew 7:12)
Stay drunk on writing (Ray Bradbury)
Rejoice with the truth (1 Cor 13 4 – 13 )
Jump off cliffs (Ray Bradbury)
Fear no evil (Psalm 23)
Stuff your eyes with wonder (Ray Bradbury)
walk through fire (Isaiah 43:2)
don’t ask for guarantees (Ray Bradbury)
Be strong and courageous. (Joshua 1:9)
pretend you’re not teaching (Ray Bradbury)
stand your ground (Ephesians 6: 14)
You must read books (Ray Bradbury)
be not dismayed (Isaaih 41:10)
write every single day (Ray Bradbury)
Love with all your soul (Mark 12:30)
Ideas lie everywhere through poetry (Ray Bradbury)
incline your heart to understanding (Proverbs 2)
Read poetry every day (Ray Bradbury)
Run with perseverance (Hebrews 12 1-2)
Poetry is evidence of life. (Leonard Cohen)
Poem Starter 1419 (inspired by quote prompt)
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Family:
Can’t live
with/out
them.
EXTRA WRITE
Know Love Now
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Know
Love
Know how to
Love
Love
Love
Know how
How to know
Love
To know
Love
Now who to
Love?
Do you know
how to love
too?
Prompt for April 20
Write 2 or 4 NAANI poems. The NAANI form (4 lines 20 to 25 syllables) is one of India’s most popular Telegu poem forms introduced by Dr. N. Gopi .
Naani Poems
By Christopher J. Jarmick
1.
The place between
twilight and moon rise
nostalgia ignites
a newborn passion
2.
This time pledge that
each moment will
be appreciated
take nothing for granted
3.
Choose carefully
words do matter
though some squander
precious this poetry.
4.
Each season brings
new life and sheds
new light on all
the shadows of heart.
Prompt for April 21 – negative write a poem describing a subject by only what the subject is not
X-Ray
By Christopher J. Jarmick
This thing is not what you
think it is.
You would not even care
if you did know what it was
unless you knew me
very well.
This thing is not what
you think it is.
A lethargic winter’s night
does not compare.
The rotting blooms
of flowers never pruned
in late autumn.
Who does it represent?
Not anyone you know.
I thought I knew once,
but everyone is complex
and not always sure of
what they want..
This thing is not what you
think it is.
I almost got rid of it
several times,
but because it is part
of my personal history
I keep it.
This thing takes up no room
requires no maintenance
is almost never seen.
Curiosity makes you wonder
now, but you’ll forget about it
soon enough.
This thing is not what you
think it is.
KEEP WRITING!!!
The half-way marker is in the dust behind you. Congrats to those with persistence and perseverance and welcome to any new-comers who’ve decided to give this NaPoWriMo thing a try!
“Go where the pain is, go where the pleasure is.” ― Anne Rice
Author Robert Dugoni at BookTree bookstore in Kirkland On Wednesday April 17 at 6:30 pm for talk, Q and A and signing. Facebook Event Page here!
Free Creative Writing workshop (4:30pm), followed by the PoetryIsEverything Third Saturday reading and open mic (6:15pm) at BookTree on Saturday April 20th. Share our Facebook Event Page here! Thanks.
Prompt 17 – Here’s the prompt for the poem you write on April 17th.
Three-way
It’s Day 17, and Seventeen has 3 syllables in it. So
start your poem with a three syllable word
On the next line Line 2 use 3 words with 2 of them three syllables
Line 3: 6 words with at least 3 three syllable words
Line 4: 8 words with at least 4 three syllable words.
Stanza 2 – Line 5: 6 words and 3 three syllable words
Line 6: 3 words and 2 three syllable words
Line 7 1 or 2 two words and 1 3 syllable word.
Prompt for April 18 (write poem to this prompt on April 18th )
“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. … Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”-― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
From Brendan McBreen:
third eye sore
if you had to have one word tattooed on your forehead
which word would you choose?
now include that word in a poem three times
try making it the third word of every third line in a poem 12 lines (or longer).
Happy Poeming!
Prompt for April 19 (write poem to this prompt on April 19th )
“The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.” ― David Nicholls
Mix up some well- known quotes no more than three or four words at a time.
Poem should be 8 lines of longer and consist mainly of the quotes you are borrowing.
You can use some of the quotes I’ve shared on these pages or some that you know and love. (Share the sources of the quotes you used).
Keep Writing!
“It’s okay to write crap. Just don’t try publishing it while it’s still crap.” ― S.M. Blooding
Prompt for April 20 (write poem to this prompt on April 20 )
“Don’t get it right, get it written.” ― Ally Carter
Write 3 or 4 NAANI poems. The NAANI form.
This poetry was introduced by one of the renowned Telugu poets Dr. N.Gopi.
Examples of NAANI poems:
Bollimuntha Venkata Ramana Rao
In-between four walls
A loneliness with deep silence
Became paleness
When book accosts.
In-between
Language and slang
Arise the difference
Who are noble?
With pain
With commotion burnt out
Waving flow of intention
Oh! Where’s my pen?
Poetic expression
Economy of words
story canvas
Knows only squandering.
KEEP WRITING!
Prompt for April 21 (write poem to this prompt on April 21 )
“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.” —Erica Jong
From Brendan McBreen – negative
write a poem describing a subject by only what the subject is not
“Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.”- Ayn Rand
And here’s a few poems I’ve written for passed prompts.
Prompt 15 half your 14 line (or less) poem should consist of borrowed lines/phrases from a book, poem, or magazine article, The endline should be compromised of up to 15 borrowed words .
Dog in the Park (with lines from Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
By Christopher J. Jarmick
The dog is playing fetch in the park on a bright sunny day.
He will not be muzzled.
The large man wearing the red MAGA baseball cap
is just another fire hydrant to him.
He ignores the three young men with swastikas
he has his own free world to live in.
The dog has not yet decided to fetch the ball
He is touching, testing and investigating everything.
Man’s best friend decides to drop the ball because he has
a real tale to tell and a real tail to tell it with.
Poets reading on the stage in the park with
something to say about reality and how to hear it.
The politician takes his place now in the park’s gazebo, a question mark holding a megaphone
with its wondrous hollow horn about to spout victorious answers to everything.
Prompt 16 Brendan’s suggested prompt was to write a poem with four adjectives in it
now remove the adjectives and replace them with nouns. I did this and also eliminated and changed several verbs to nouns too (except in the title).
Those Magnificent Fabulous Jaunty Adjectives
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Today’s investigation into nominalization of language
avoidance of emotiveness, sequestration now a noun.
Adjective (and Verbs too) transmorphed into nouns.
Call it the corporatization of language, legalese, advertising jive.
Editors, now insane.
Here to stay. Focus on the build. The reveal of a beauty beneath.
Can I have a modifier.
Please?
Answer: no.
No.
Accentuate with less waste.
Imagine sky
(you know the color).
Concept clear, concise
a distance between you and I.
Things to do.
People (you know),
Time wastes.
Bye. Not good,
just bye.
Keep Writing!
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” —Anaïs Nin
Just about at the half-way point for NaPoWriMo 2019. Join in, catch-up, develop the write every day habit!
Prompt for April 15 (write poem to this prompt on April 15th )
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”— Richard Bach
Half way through NaPoWriMo
Half your poem today should consist of lines from a book or long magazine article. The last line should be borrowed and contain less than 15 words. Every other line should consist of borrowed words as they appear in the source material you use (yes you can combine short phrases of borrowed materials put together 3 to 5 words (up to 14) per line.
Chew your humble pie slowly and thoroughly. Someday if you keep learning, keep reading and keep writing you will eat a little bit less of it. – Christopher J. Jarmick
Prompt for April 16 (write poem to this prompt on April 16th )
From Auburn area based Striped Water Poet member Brendan McBreen
for lack of a better word
write a poem with four adjectives in it
now remove the adjectives and replace them with nouns
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”—Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
(And now some poems I’ve been writing to the prompts)
Prompt 10 write a poem about something that once was
Missing
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Now a vacant space
on the shelf,
once a favorite book
lent last year
in that space.
On the back of that door
Hung a favorite comfy shirt
worn and washed too often,
now no more.
I remember the old store
that was there before
the fitness and spa business
it was full of books and there
was a bell attached to the door.
On that face
eyes twinkling with spirit
a smile
now empty space.
Prompt 11 Use at least 4 to 5 book titles in your poem.
(I used 40).
In the company of crows and ravens
By Christopher J. Jarmick
The one raven with great expectations flew
over the cuckoo’s nest and the phantom tollbooth
near the secret garden of Anna Karenina
beloved by Anne of Green Gables and Rebecca
on the animal Farm, east of Eden
(neighboring the glass castle owned by
The Brothers Karamazov, Dracula, Romeo and Juliet)
considering the crime and punishment of the Thorn Birds
after their attempt to kill a mockingbird in cold blood
near Cannery Row on Main Street in 1984.
The princess bride blamed the old man and the sea
for the catch 22 in 2001 that saved those ‘birds’
from one hundred years of Solitude.
Sidhartha living the secret life of bees on the road with Georgia
wondered about the maltese falcon, the glass jar, the things they carried, but
like the gentleman in Moscow and the thin man believed the odyssey
was less pillars of the earth stuff and more like
water for elephants because it was
all a Coney Island of the Mind.
Prompt 12 An Acrostic poem using a movie title and about something personal, perhaps using at least one unusual word.
7th Voyage
By Christopher J. Jarmick
7 years old watching Chiller Theater on
The Admiral black and white TV with Nana
How to Make a Monster, She Creature, Cyclops,
Vespine Corman cult classic Wasp Woman
Or the telepathic crab monsters and The Manster were favorites
You’ll get nightmares, Nana worried
And she was right but I thought creature features were
Great and Nana truly
Enjoyed spoiling her grandchild.
Only a movie, I’d tell her when she acted
Frightened at the movies we watched.
So many years later and
I still fondly remember those Saturday
Night sleepovers watching
Bad 1950’s movies in the mid-1960s
And all the attention, love and affection
Delivered from Nana’s heart.
Prompt 13 – in the style of bill bissett
Abndend
By
Crstofur J. Jrmik
I woodnt stp 4 pasd lif
but th car slohd on itz ohn
pst th gost uv hows
vaykant, rn dn.
We sw overgrwn grss
nd clumps uv thck green leevz,
jyant purpel eyerices
amng weedz uvf nuhglct
Chldrn owt uv skool;
Nowair tu go,
n playces thy shoodn’t b
waytng fr thr callng
I, dryv by ysterda
4getng both gd nd bd
C-ing ownly purpul butee
uv sprding aynshent plnt.
Prompt 14 – V words
VAUNTPARLER
By Christopher J. Jarmick
I have ventured into a spring day
full of valentining choruses
My van-jothery state of mind
And that voxy sky directs me back inside
but the vaniloquence of the coffee shop
complete with a velitation occurring near
the bathrooms and a couple velitating
doesn’t help my mood so I grab a cup to go
and dash right out into a vandlop.
Good thing I invoke a little Brecthtian verfremdungseffekt.
Though I’m vinerous by nature
the coffee I’m sipping I’ll admit is pretty good.
I realize like so many others I’m feeling some vernalagnia.
FYI
VERFREMDUNGSEFFEKT for example is a german word pronounced pretty much like it sounds and sometimes abbreviated as the V effect. It is another name for the alienation or distancing effect which is a theatrical term and refers to a playwright deliberately distancing the events on stage from their audience, usually by including constant reminders that they’re merely watching a performance into the play. The German playwright Bertolt Brecht , likely invented this unusual technique.
Vinerous means you are hard to please.
Too many to define all of them here.
Keep Writing!
