Riddle Poem

NaPoWiMo - Day 25 - Today’s prompt – do a riddle poem.  One in which you write from the point of view of an object or person (or about an object and person), and the poem itself forms a giant riddle.

This is a riddle

with a bolt in the middle.

Two pieces secured,

I make many things blurred.

X marks the spot

so follow the dots

as dolls join together

maybe birds of a feather

will lift from the page

or give voice to your rage.

Answer - Scissors

Twenty-eight Years of The Good Life

NaPoWiMo - Day 24 - Today, I challenge you to write an autobiographical poem. This can be just a sketch of an event that happened to you, or you can write one line for every year of your life, with each year sort of reflecting that year in its theme, mood, etc., or you can try writing one stanza for each decade of your life (without worrying about whether you have exactly ten lines per stanza, or matching each line to a particular year). There are as many ways of going about this as there are of you (so, somewhat above 600).

Twenty-eight Years of The Good Life

1962:  Received my only "F", sophomore chemistry’

            Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for his belief in personal freedom;

1964:  Graduated from high school

            began college, with ideals of helping man achieve a better life;

1966: Left school to become a wife (under the threat of suicide);

            learned to fight;

1968:  Erased the fear of labor, became a mother, 7lb. 12oz. dark haired daughter;

1970:  Moved to a dead West Virginia coal town - lost a son on Valentine's Day - listened to midnight radio;

1972:  Mother again, 7lb. 6oz. daughter with red hair, born in the mountains of Maryland - lived for one month in an apartment with two children and no furniture;

1974:  Back in West Virginia, Mother one last time 2lb. 3oz. son with dark body hair - four months of round-trips to the university hospital - this one lived.

1975:  Divorced - got the kids, $33,000.00 in debts, one rocking chair, a car which broke in three weeks and the washer and dryer.

1976:  Started dancing again - sheltered frightened women and children;

1976:  Purchased a house - first child began junior high school - learned about clogged drains;

1983:  Lost one ovary and my appendix - second child began junior high - learned to water ski;

1986:  Became a grandmother in August - dark haired, dark skinned 6lb. 13oz. girl - bought a brand new car;

1989:  Became a wife again - one child and one grandchild left home - memorized the poems of Lucille Clifton;

1990:  Second first wedding anniversary - the redhead will graduate from high school - Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

Earth Breeze

NaPoWiMo - Day 23 - Today’s prompt is to write a bouts-rimes. The bouts-rimes is a sort of poetic parlor game: you write a poem using the rhyming end words from another poem. They’re usually done with sonnets in English. So today I challenge you to write a bouts-rimes sonnet, using the end words from either K. Silem Mohammad’s poem You White White Teatime Teen, which was itself constructed anagrammatically from Shakespeare’s The Silken Tent. So your end words are either: rage, doom, age, tomb , sighs, breast, thighs, west, mad, blues, plaid, shoes, fail, mail or tent, breeze, relent, ease, pole, heavenward, soul, cord, bound, thought, round, taught, air, aware.

Earth Breeze

Clouds circle overhead, a heavenly tent,

and all earth becomes a bending breeze.

I lean my ear to hear what’s relevant

to find release and calm and ease.

Nature’s cycles, a divining pole

Points us ever heavenward.

Leads us forward to our soul.

Tied gently with silken cord,

which lets us soar and bound

beyond all human thought

till we can see life in the round

and recall what we’ve been taught

that life is love, invisible as air,

that culls us all to be aware.