Category Archives: Challenges and Writing Prompts

Monday Musing

found missing

it was where
he had long
turned thus…
there he was, serene,
cadaverous, calm,
as he sat there gazing,
he was gone

~kat


Today’s Blackout/Found poem is taken from the poem:

Why He Was There
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Much as he left it when he went from us
Here was the room again where he had been
So long that something of him should be seen,
Or felt-and so it was. Incredulous,
I turned about, loath to be greeted thus,
And there he was in his old chair, serene
As ever, and as laconic as lean
As when he lived, and as cadaverous.
Calm as he was of old when we were young,
He sat there gazing at the pallid flame
Before him. ‘And how far will this go on?’
I thought. He felt the failure of my tongue,
And smiled: ‘I was not here until you came;
And I shall not be here when you are gone.’


offspring – NaPoWriMo 2019 #1

offspring

they don’t come with
instructions, and yet
we pop them out as if
life depended on it
(…well, it sort of does)
smelly, demanding,
helpless, tugging at our
raw breasts, depriving
us of sleep, sometimes
for years, testing our
patience, breaking our
hearts…if you’ve loved
one, you know what
I mean…and we do
our best to keep them
safe, to keep from offing
them ourselves when
they challenge us, no,
they don’t come with
instructions, and yet
somehow we manage
to survive the decades
until it is time for them
to leave the nest, literally,
(have you seen a teenager’s
room?) taking a piece of
our heart with them

~kat

NaPoWriMo Day 1: write poems that provide the reader with instructions on how to do something. It can be a sort of recipe, like O’Neil’s poem. Or you could try to play on the notorious unreliability of instructional manuals (if you’ve ever tried to put IKEA furniture together, you know what I mean). You could even write a dis-instruction poem, that tells the reader how not to do something. 


March Pi-Archimedes #31

butterflies

somewhere there’s a
butterfly
fluttering its delicate wings
creating
chaos, soft, waves of air
bellowing, swelling into tempests…change…somewhere there’s a butterfly

~kat


And…that’s a wrap. 31 days of pi-archimedic perfection. I have loved this form. April is poetry month. My usual micro-shorts will be replaced by NaPoWriMo offerings each day. Summoning the Muse! Let the words flow!


Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 31 March 2019

This was a week filled with the usual chaos we have become accustomed to. That is perhaps, the greatest tragedy of all; the fact that we are not surprised. But I am comforted by the fact that everything is temporary. Everything. Do-overs are nature’s gift to us. Life to death to life, messy and unruly, perfection in the imperfect. Perfection.

This week’s ReVerse brushes the cusp of perfection. It was a week of beautiful words amidst the chaos, in spite of it. Sometimes I am surprised by life. I’ve learned to savor those moments. To pause and take it all in. To sigh. To allow it to take my breath away, surrendering to each tiny death, life trembling in the wings.


Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 31 March 2019

can we know
she is like a penny, face up, begging
in the din is truth they’re trying to hide
shed a tear
let’s just do what we came here for
with prideful, power hungry idolators
unwitting onlookers, deadly, as a spider spinning its web
the gloaming fades into night
some blood is like water spilt, evaporating
for one glorious day in the sun
you tell me i’m perfect

~kat


A ReVerse poem 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. I use it as a review of the previous week.


March Pi-Archimedes #30

blind love

you say i’m
beautiful
even when i’m feeling
frumpy
you tell me i’m perfect
just as i am, it’s true, love is blind

~kat


The Pi-Archimedes verse is:
○ a hexastich, a poem in 6 lines.
○ measured by the number of words in each line 3-1-4-1-5-9 to match the numerical sequence of the first six digits of Pi.
○ unrhymed.
Pi=3.14159…