perfect, lifeless boys in the sunshine dead or dying in this new battlefield in schoolhouses here, where guns are business, this country where we dare not want or mention the poison claiming them in such great numbers
too long in this season is blinding us to what we love
~kat
NaPoWriMo2023 Challenge Day 6: off topic today. Just could wrap my brain around the ask. Soooo….It’s been a while since I wrote a blackout poem. I found this stunning poem by Molly McCully Brown. The title grabbed me right away because I live in Virginia. Her words resonated with me and my own experience here. My take after gleaning from her words resulted in another poem right from the current headlines. I wish it wasn’t 😟
October, I’m dragging the dog away from perfect birds lifeless on the pavement. By the water, boyin dress blues with bayonets, the blistered hulls of boxships. Everything is sunshine. Everything is dead, or dying, and this isn’t a new thought. I grew up here, but farther from the ocean. Each April, they took us to the battlefield, marched us in schoolhouse lines up courthouse steps: here is where the war ended. Never mind that it was fall before the final battleship lowered its flag; never mind that we still haven’t fired the last gun. What business do I have wanting a baby here: in this body where I can’t keep my balance, this country wherewe can’t keep anything alive that needs us, or dares not to, not even the switchgrass pale and starved for groundwater? And still, I do want. I search the news formention of the birds, whatever poison or disease I’m sure is claiming them in such great numbers: meadowlarks, house wrens, chickadees, starlings. Once even a gray gull, pulled open at the chest before we found him, hollowed of his organs. It takes a long time—too long— for me to understand the sun in this season is blinding, and the birds are flying into windows all around me, fourteen stories up. Flying into glass and falling. What we love is rarely blameless. Is it a failure that I wouldn’t trade this brightness? I imagine pointing upward for my daughter: Look, there, how it catches in the changing trees.
there once was a shyster named Don a scammer in chief, a vile con to court he was dragged by a porn star he shagged how climactic, his just denouement!
~kat
A limerick today…straight from the headlines! You can’t make this stuff up! I shouldn’t be enjoying this, but I am. I can’t look away. Not sure I captured the theme…but the past few years have been over the top inappropriate. Hoping this brings a little levity to this absurd train wreck!
NaPoWriMo 2023 Challenge Day 5: write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment – or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.
it’s never really quiet here
not even in the late, late night
my heart beat thumps inside my ears
it’s never really quiet here
is it ghosts, god, or me I hear
the words so many words to write
it’s never really quiet here
not even in the late, late night
~kat
NaPoWriMo2023 Challenge – Day 4: Today, let’s try writing triolets. A triolet is an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetramenter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) — ABaAabAB.
my dad grew stagnant at night like a nightmare frozen in the sky didn’t seem like what he touched was his didn’t seem like what touched him held he couldn’t get us through the short weeds then it seemed like he turned away and stopped and then he disappeared just disappeared
~kat
NaPoWriMo2023 Day 3 Challenge: Find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite.
The poem below, set in opposite, was particularly poignant for me when I think about my father, who was tormented by untreated mental illness…and his ultimate suicide.
My Mama moved among the days like a dreamwalker in a field; seemed like what she touched was hers seemed like what touched her couldn’t hold, she got us almost through the high grass then seemed like she turned around and ran right back in right back on in
Normally, I would use this space to comment on the lines gleaned from the last several weeks of writing…but I have chores to do, mouths to feed and several souls to keep.
Suffice to say, I am determined to write as often as I am able. It is my peace in the storm. I need these words more than you know. And it is a bonus when they manage to fall into place and resemble a poem! So…that said, that’s all I have right now…back to care taking, taking care to dribble a few lines now and again, keeping my own questionable sanity in check!
Peace to you my friends. Be kind above all things. Oh, how this world needs kindness.
Sunday’s ReVerse poem - April 2, 2023
I have words, so many words weary from these long, long nights heaven enfolds me winter’s end is near it’s power they crave…and your soul until all that’s left to rouse us at dawn on fire with fever murmuring sweet poetry I know…whatever… I heard the sky is falling
~kat
A ReVerse poem (a practice I started many years ago) is a summary poem with a single line lifted from each entry of a collection of work over a particular timeframe and re-penned in chronological order as a new poem. Unlike a collaborative poem, the ReVerse features the words of one writer, providing a glimpse into their thoughts over time.
So it is easier for you to find all the parts/chapters of my ongoing fiction series, I created a new page that lists all the links. You can check it out HERE!
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kat Myrman and Like Mercury Colliding with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
like mercury colliding... 