Category Archives: Digital Art & Photos

one-sided

one-sided 

you don’t hear me when I say I love you
I’m paying for the demons of your past
after all these years, still you have to ask
you can’t believe I’ll stay forever true

I wonder if there’s more that I can do
to prove my love, or would it be a waste
it’s exhausting when my effort is misplaced
it’s worth reminding you what we’ve been through

we’ve seen it all, the better and the worst
sickness, yours and mine, and family too
adversity, met head on, we two pulled through
if I had to choose, you know I’d pick you first

so tell me darling dear, do you love me
please spare me all this effort, set me free

~kat

I am not a fan of sonnets. But a challenge is a challenge. Chewed on this all day. Obligatory sonnet penned. Glad this is done. 


NaPoWriMo2023 Challenge Day Nine: Sunday Sonnet - write your own sonnet. Incorporate tradition as much or as little as you like – while keeping in general to the theme of “love.”

In general, though, here are the main characteristics that define most sonnets:
* Number of Lines: 14
* Meter: Typically iambic pentameter
* Rhyme Scheme: Petrarchan (abba abba cde cde or abba abba cdc dcd) or Shakespearean (abab cdcd efef gg), among many others
* Unique Qualities: Contains a volta (twist or turn) closer to the end of the sonnet
* Common Themes: Typically love and romance but also faith, time, personal emotions, and social/political matters

poison

poison

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 😟
Virginia, Autumn
by Molly McCully Brown


October, I’m dragging the dog away from perfect birds
lifeless on the pavement. By the water, boy in 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
where we 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 for mention 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.

Copyright © 2023 by Molly McCully Brown. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 5, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.


poetic justice

poetic justice

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.

restless

restless

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.


Sunday’s ReVerse poem – 2 April 2023

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.