She has no clarity.
Everyone lies to themselves.
Trying to change direction
she swallows moments
then burps.
~bw 22
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Tank
This old blind hound dog
expresses enough gratitude
to smooth stones.
~bw 22
Day Eleven. Something big.
Cracked not Broken
Slivers of breath sent her plans clattering through to
that place
where nothing ever mattered but now.
How did the light dim?
Where did her angels go?
Dancing on pins,
deep , where secrets whisper,
they move through the crack in her everything.
Light against dark –
tracing paths to summon themselves.
Nothing works like it used to.
When she walks, feathers fall from her feet.
She laughs.
~bw 22
Day Ten — off prompt. This one came after I tried to construct a cento from some of my older poems. While pieces of other poems are present, this is not what I expected to write. Like so many poems, it became itself.
there but for the grace of gods
The dead man chased answers to neurotically contrived questions
budding flowers blossomed, then withered in his wake
There were bugs writhing inside his skull
They ate pieces of his brain
He heard from inside out
Everything he remembered disappeared
Answers tricked him
riddles — forever
unsolved
~bw 22
Day Nine asked for a nonet. 9 words per line, 8 words, 7 words . . .
untitled glosa
in a language of unquestionable voice,
I hear the night break, the moon
toss back her hair. I hear the hum
of contentment shuddering in the grass
–Tiffany Midge “Night Caller”
Strong and remote we hold onto the void
spinning webs – fibrous orbs that
trace the patterns of stars over our eyes
in a language of unquestionable voice
of silky scribbled syllables that syncopate
like fingertips indiscriminately tapping
dropping sounds from rhythm until
I hear the night break the moon.
Luna hides her face in craters of cloud cover
unconsciously peeking through wispy dis-clarity.
Swelling tides respond with waves begging her to
toss back her hair. I hear the hum
of salvation bearing witness to its birth.
Tangled and tethered, her hair breaks through its
cloud-covered chrysalis illuminating a sweet yet unsettled feeling
of contentment shuddering in the grass.
~bw 22
Day 8: I repeated an earlier prompt for today. This is my second glossa from the prompt for day three. You can find my first glosa here. Both were from quatrains found in Tiffany Midge poems. This one is from a poem, Night Crawler, found in Midge’s book, The Woman Who Married a Bear.
Magnetic Poetry
Moist sacred breath
tendrils through dusk forests
vining secrets
to the moon.
~bw 22
Day Seven— Today’s prompt eluded me, so i resorted to my magnetic poetry set. I used an old tray my mother-in-law left us to guide the poem’s direction.
That Crow
Hold that image—
fast, before it fades
to fog, to
dreams not remembered.
For many days
if a crow caws, its
dreams nudge her, the roll of a
die that makes
life feel fragile, maybe it
is fragile, like that image,
a crow
broken-winged, strutting across an old stone wall, a
bird that swallowed her whole
that crow from her dreams, that crow that
cannot
fly.
~bw 22
Day Six prompted us to write a variation of an acrostic poem. The first word of each line in this piece is from the first stanza of Dreams by Langston Hughes. This one didn’t come easy, but it is my sixth.
An Ogre in the Oval Office
Buffoon
Charlatan
Evil grenade
Incited to rage when his henchmen strayed
Voters ignored his plea to succeed
So he growled and howled
And still tried to lead
The desperate, evil, racist brigade
Egged on by himself,
The orange grenade
This ogre, this reptile, this stain in our eye
Promoted a huge election lie
Designed to retain him
Designed to en-reign him
Designed to make him the king we denied
Witnessing horror abroad on tv
I’m counting our blessings that we removed he
who will not be named
~bw 22
Day Five asked us to write about a mythical creature doing something unusual. I wish this creature was mythical, and hope he fades away to nothing more than a smudge on our democratic republic.
Poetry Prompt
1. Open your laptop
2. Drop in Billy Collins’ mouse and watch it
3. delete everything you wrote last week then
4. recreate words from its footprints
5. Accuse the words of lying
6. Fan them with a bellows until they blow off the screen and
7. land behind your eyes
8. When the words form tears
9. remember they are only mouse droppings
10. lying beneath the lines of your poem
~bw 22
The Napo prompt for Day Four suggested a poem in the form of a poetry prompt.
She believes God was in the trees.
“The bones of the dead
are excavated, scattered, and sold.
Shrines are blasted from sacred
rock in the name of patriotism.”
-Tiffany Midge “Night of the Living Dead”
She follows patterns of shadows
that dance across the wall
lengthening dusk toward the
closet, where high on a shelf she rattles
the bones of the dead.
Culled from forest floors
each bone holds the secrets of
stardust tracing lines within a void.
She misses the trees
where patterns of shadows, like bones,
are excavated, scattered, and sold.
Her dad said trees were sentinels of time
always watching. She believes that trees
held stories forever remote and inaccessible
bulldozed by the highest bidder,
gone.
Shrines are blasted from sacred
places where patterns of shadows
no longer fall. She opens the box of bones
and inhales the forest floor grateful for
secrets and shovels. Grateful for her bravery
against the movement to destroy what’s gone
where every lie was a
rock in the name of patriotism.
~bw 22
Glosa One
undercaws 