Poetry Prompts

Confession

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

It always happens about mid-month when I am doing a poem-a-day: I start to poop out a bit, leaving the work of it–even the imagining part–until later and later in the day.  I loved the idea I started to work with today, using this crazy photo from Facebook to get the prompt rolling (it’s on the theme of confession), but now I feel the pressure to rush it so I can get on to planning tomorrow’s classes.

Confession

I admit it:
I still have the vandal’s fantasies,
One of my heroes is Banksy.
I love the artists and agitators
who take their social commentary
to the streets.

Sometimes I hear stories
of the tricksters and their mischief
and I wish that I had thought of them myself–
like exchanging the voices of talking dolls
so Barbie growls, “Vengeance is mine!”
and G.I. Joe opines, “Math class is sooooo hard!”

In college, I dreamed of joining
ninja women climbing billboards
to plaster “Not on our bodies!”
over the bodies of women
selling cars with their bodies.

Today was another last straw
in a long, long line of last straws:
Two packets of poetry magnets,
the pink one and the blue.
I want to buy them up and scramble,
then sell them in orange and green packages
declaring: Ballet worms and rugby wings!
I’ll climb into my fairy aeroplane
and grab my handbag
for a ride with the skeleton bunnies.

This is just a warning
so when you see the headlines
about the local schoolteacher
caught making a ruckus in the toy store,
you won’t need to be shocked.
Just roll your eyes and say,
“Well, it’s about time!”

Gratitude List:
1. Bluebells!  (I know–they’re technically grape hyacinths, but I don’t really care.  We called them bluebells when I was a child, so bluebells they will be).
2. Spring tonic pesto: large handfuls of chickweed, with a little dandelion, burdock, nettle, garlic mustard, wild mustard, sorrel, wild garlic.
3. Joss’s book is past seventy pages now.  He keeps adding sections: tonight included pieces of a Baby Animals calendar and a Birds calendar.  And always the demand, like a pushy schoolteacher: “Write sentences!”
4. A spring-like day.  I feel better, being slightly sick on day like today, than I did, being mostly well on a gray and cloudy day.
5. Reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Everything with Ellis.

May we walk in Beauty!

Seasoning

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Tonight’s prompt is to write a poem about a season:

I am not going to write a poem tonight.
This dog of the seasons, who waits
between winter and spring
to spring out from nowhere,
teeth bared and fur on end.

So I won’t be writing a poem tonight.
Instead I”ll write a recipe:
30 mL of Dayquil
2 zinc tablets
two droppers of Elderberry tincture
and sleep.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Adrenaline.  Got me through tonight, and will get me through tomorrow.
2. Sleep–most powerful elixir.  Nine times out of ten, it works for me.
3. Those poets and storytellers!  I love performing among them.  I love the deliberate and careful spoken word.
4. Forsythia is just starting to bloom!  Another thing to keep me liking my neighbor–so much yellow comes to him in daffodils and forsythia, it must be a message to me to be kind in my thoughts.
5. Josiah’s book.  While it can be draining because he is always begging us to write sentences in it, i love how excited he has been about making his own book.  And he keeps adding and adding and adding to it.
6. The people who are keeping vigil at Chiefs’ Hill today and tonight and tomorrow to grieve the bulldozers on sacred Native American burial grounds.
7. I just lost this entire post, but the computer had automatically saved the draft.  Yay for Autosave!

May we walk in Beauty!

How Will the Day End?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Today’s prompt is to write a poem titled “How <fill in the blank>”

How Will the Day End?

It will fade quietly away
or it will go out in blaze.

It will wander off quietly
into a corner of night,
or it will rattle down the drain,
gurgling as it swirls into the dark.

It will be filled with the quiet murmurings of doves,
the muttering of the last bars of the day’s bird choir,
or it will go out with the shrill whinny of the screech owl,
the screep of the fox, and the whoof of the white-tailed deer.

It will pull the shades of my eyes downward
and fill my brain with fog,
it will draw out my energy
like serum in a syringe.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  I know, daffodils again.  But.  Outside the school office is a row of creamy daffodils with a buttery center.  But in one clump, one daffodil has a bright gold-orange center, just begging for attention.
2. Making and playing Lego Chess with Ellis.
3. Friday morning hymn sing–this remains one of my favorite moments of my week.  My colleagues have wonderful voices.
4. The library book sale!  I scored lots of classics for my classroom shelves, and some more contemporary young adult novels, too.  Jon bought me a copy of Ted Kooser’s Delights and Shadows, which contains this lovely poem, titled “Screech Owl”:
All night each reedy whinny
from a bird no bigger than a heart
flies out of a tall black pine
and, in a breath, is taken away
by the stars. Yet, with small hope
from the center of darkness
it calls out again and again.
5. Delightfully shocking coincidences.  At the sale, Jon also bought a book called American Watercolors and a copy of Little Bear’s Friend, by Else Holmelund Minarik and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.  As he was poring through the book of water colors, he noticed a painting by Carolyn Brady.  In the shadows behind a vase of stunning flowers is a copy of Little Bear’s Friend!  What are the chances of that?  And not only one of the books we bought would feature a very different book from a very different genre, but that someone would be looking through it that closely, to catch it.

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The Working Poem

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a work poem:

The form of this poem is a little inspired by Charles Wright’s “The New Poem“:

This poem is a workhorse,
pulling the plow of the mind
across the blank and endless
field of the white page.

This poem works in a factory,
fitting the intricate parts together,
oiling them when needed,
and making the engines purr.

This poem will come to your rescue,
on call and ready to rush,
sirens blasting and red lights flashing,
to pull you from the wreckage.

This poem will broker your deals,
edge out the competition,
and buy up your stocks
when you need a little boost.

This poem will be your nanny,
wiping snotty noses
and baking oatmeal cookies.
(But it draws the line at changing diapers.)

You can count on this poem
to do the tasks you set it,
to come when called,
to maintain your filing system,
to vacuum the rugs.

Give it a bonus at the holidays,
and weekends off,
and it will be loyal
as long as you need it.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The poets and storytellers of the Spoken Word Festival #13.  What an honor to speak poetry with all these wise and thoughtful voices.  And for Daina and Marie who create this work of art each year.
2. The eager and fierce and thoughtful and considerate conversation of freshmen when they get a chance to discuss real-life issues.
3. Watching students come alive with a poetry game.
4. How stringing these sounds and symbols together makes a meaning.  What a miracle is language!
5. Resolve.

May we walk in Beauty!

Oh, Come On, Alfred!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s Poetry Prompt over at Poetic Asides is to write a dare poem.  This one is in the glosa form.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
–T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Time’s up, Alfred.
Make your decisions.
Settle your score with time
and risk it.
Eat that peach
and grow your hair.
Join those women
in their fancy parlor chats.
Stop asking
“Do I dare?”

Jump in.
Start the next round of Twister.
Knock their socks off, buddy.
That catty fog against the windows
has settled into your soul.
Wear a wig!  Carry a purse!
Swim with the mermaids.
Take up Irish drinking songs,
verse upon verse upon verse.
Disturb the Universe!

Ever since my college days,
you have been sitting
on my periphery,
asking me these questions,
reminding me that hesitations
breed paralysis, a crime
of omission,
of never-having-dared,
waiting patiently in line:
In a minute there is time. . .

And in a minute
the chance is gone,
the mermaids have stopped singing,
your hair has gone gray.
Sure, it could always have been better,
but it could also be much worse.
Step into the center of your life, Alfred,
and all the foggy yellow clouds of doubt
will gradually disperse:
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
Gratitude List:
1. The smell of those soaps I bought at Savemart today: Sandalwood, Rosewood Geranium, and Patchouli.  Scent is one of my favorite senses.  These three beauties have flipped on the happy switch in my brain.
2. My students.  I was reminded today of some of my students from last semester who were wild and disruptive–not at all meanly or even rudely, but enough to tire a teacher.  And thinking about this particular trio, I realized how incredibly fond I am of them all, how something in the challenge of working with them day-to-day and treasuring them rather than letting them get my goat makes me feel a particular delight in the memory of them.
3. Have I mentioned daffodils?
4. Fresh spinach, right from the field.  Give me a few more weeks of this and I might even be an acceptable blood donor again.  Call me the Woman of Iron.
5. Mockingbird has found his springtime voice.  I wish my ears were a little more discerning, and could count the number of calls in his repertoire.  He’s a pretty vociferous polyglot.  (Yeah–purple.  It was fun to say, though.)

May we walk in Beauty!

Do You Remember?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Today’s poem is a two-fer: write about love and/or anti-love.  I usually really like his double challenges, and I try to work with the polarities.  Today’s poem, however, came out purely on the love side.  I have been re-reading my gratitude lists from this time last year, and one of those gratitudes inspired this poem, which is for my father, whom I and the bluebirds love:

I know this is true,
but it may be a secret:

The Archangel Michael is a bluebird
who gazes into your window
waiting for the moment
you walk into the room:

those clear watching eyes,
the quiet murmuring chirrup,
dip of the head and flip of the wing.

There is a girl on a swing
singing of bluebirds
and you are pushing her so high
she flies.

Gratitude List:
1. Bluebirds and you
2. Chickweed and you
3. Organizing and sorting and you
4. The farm crew and you
5. Free magazines at the library, and you

May we walk in Beauty!

Not What it Seems

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a things-not-as-they-appear poem.  I keep going back to the Shaman Poem from March 1:

Here is how we make the world:
I will say fire and mean wisdom.
I will say wisteria and mean my thoughts are tangled.
I will say the river is flowing and mean that time is passing.
I will say grandmother’s quilt and mean that the work is love.

I will say house and mean your heart.
I will say spiderweb and mean the prayers are holding you.
I will say the eagle flies and mean my thoughts are with you.
I will say the daffodils are blooming and mean you are healing.

I will say song and mean dream.
I will say dream and mean prayer.
I will say prayer and mean poem.

 

Gratitude List:
1. My neighbor’s bank of nodding sunny daffodils.  (Say Man-who-Plants-Sunshine, and no longer mean Crusty Curmudgeon.  That one is going to take some work.)
2. Freckles on a small boy’s face.
3. A day to organize and tidy the classroom.
4. Playing outside!
5. All the poems of April.  I decided I did not have time curate a Poetree this year.  Still, the Internet is a grand Tree of Poetry.  I am loving reading everyone’s poems.

May we walk in Beauty!

Vegetables

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Today I have been given the tasks of bringing the vegetables to the family Easter dinner, and of writing a poem about vegetables.  I’m not quite sure what this is:

It hasn’t always been this way,
a hand reaching through leaves,
the light, the dark, the light,
and the quick rustle and scamper
of small creatures in the deeper shadows–

a pathway through the labyrinth
of cornstalks, row upon row
snaking along the hillside,
and the wind in the tassels–

an answer settling downward
through the dreaming,
like a leaf gently curving to earth
or a small flat stone sinking
into the shadowy depths of the pond.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Whatever that thing is that gets a poem going
2. I am surrounded by wise people, so many wise and thoughtful people
3. The puzzle–how the lights and darks fit together to make the whole
4. The color orange
5. Love wins

May we walk in Beauty!

Departure

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is departure.  This poem feels darker, more fatalistic, than I think I feel.  Last week, my husband mentioned that our eldest child, almost 9, is halfway through his childhood.  I think that shadowed this poem.  Still, while I don’t think the emotional tone is entirely accurate for my own state, it feels “true” at some level.

There is an art to the departure,
a craft to the act of letting go,
of settling your heart.
It’s an art.

Where do we start the grieving,
the leaving and unleaving,
separating this from that part?
Where do we start?

But when you burn it down
to its essentials, it’s all about
preparing for departure
in the end.

Perhaps you can extend
small blisses and delights,
the moments in the middle,
when you’ve lit
the brightest lights, the candles,
flames of memory,
names written on your heart.

Still, all is moving toward the ending,
veering ever to a newer,
fresher destination
where other lights will glimmer,
illuminate new memories,
new pathways, new strivings.

Departure is inevitable,
but so is arrival.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Grandma Weaver’s spinach balls
2. Hay rides (Joss and I rode the hay wagon at Flinchbaugh’s 4 times today!)
3. Wind flowers and speedwell
4. Sleeping in
5. People who keep me accountable to doing the inner work.

May we walk in Beauty!

Dea Ex Machina

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Dea Ex Machina

What we speak
we create.
Writing, we make
meaning into existence.

These words, cogs
and gears, shift
meaning to matter:

“Let there be. . .”
And there is.

And it is good.

Gratitude List:
1. The social lives of my children.  Friends.
2. All that dies and decays so that new life may rise and be nourished
3. Chocolate oatmeal cake with caramel icing
4. How words shape meaning
5. Bees

May we walk in Beauty!