the sweet scent of buttercups infuses the warm breeze, leaf buds have popped; tiny flutters of emerald green against an azure sky,the Fowler toads have emerged from their winter hideaways, a cacophony of spring peepers greets the dusk with lusty verve, hummingbirds have returned buzzling by my head to sip sweet nectar from feeders that have been at the ready for weeks, the world is awake, teeming with life mourning doves, bluejays, tits, wrens, phoebes, and bright crimson cardinals congregate at wood’s edge twitter-chattering, gray squirrels toss seed to the ground, while dangling from the feeders… spring…Gaia’s first bloom, debutante of debutante’s, oh, she has outdone herself, or maybe I’m just getting wiser, not to mention older, all this to say, well done, spring… well done, decades of springs have come and gone, but first blooms, and new life never get old
-kat
NaPoWriMo2023 Challenge Day Twenty-Four: write a poem in the form of a review. But not a review of a book or a movie of a restaurant. Instead, I challenge you to write a poetic review of something that isn’t normally reviewed. For example, your mother-in-law, the moon, or the year you were ten years old.
1- soot dusted space morning sun glare floor to ceiling windows leak streaked inside from too much rain cubicle of cubicles the corporate sweatshop that devoured me
2- down, down, downsized from a one hundred year old money-trap, a thousand square feet of accumulated stuff to lose, memories are not things, to a forever home in the Blue Ridge foothills with undressed windows, ambient green
3- the pandemic, people were dying, they told us, “pack everything, work from home”, a few weeks turned into months into years from cubicle to corner nook sheltered, stir crazy, in place hummingbirds at the window squirrels in the hickory trees
4- i don’t miss the commute from dark dawn to dark dusk the break room chatter, gossip, office politics ugly they’re telling us, “pack everything, come back to the cubicles”, but i have decided to stay where life has balance, home where my heart is
~kat
NaPoWriMo 2023 Challenge Day Twenty-Three: write a poem of your own that has multiple numbered sections. Attempt to have each section be in dialogue with the others, like a song where a different person sings each verse, giving a different point of view. Set the poem in a specific place that you used to spend a lot of time in, but don’t spend time in anymore.
courage is a child who goes back to school after a massacre
courage is telling the truth even if it means losing everything
courage is wearing a dress because it makes you feel pretty even if they named you Jonathan
courage is helping those who are different because what matters most is acknowledging their humanity
courage Is not laughing when the joke is not funny but hurtful to someone
courage is saying, “me too” “Black Lives Matter” “I stand with you”
courage I have learned evolved from the Latin word, ‘cor’ meaning heart
courage is following one’s heart showing the rest of us how to truly live
~kat
NaPoWriMo 2023 Challenge Day Twenty-One: choose an abstract noun from the list below, and then use that as the title for a poem that contains very short lines, and at least one invented word.
if I were the least bit honest I would lie to you tell you everything is going to be okay that we will get through this you and me that one day we’ll look back and laugh at how silly it was for us to worry I would tell you this and more because it’s what you need to hear most right now but i’m not honest, not one bit the truth of the matter not that it matters is that I’m terrified this might not end well for you, for us… we just don’t need dishonesty when we’re hanging by a thread
~kat
NaPoWriMo2023 Challenge Day Sixteen: Today’s prompt is a poem of negation – yes (or maybe, no), I challenge you to write a poem that involves describing something in terms of what it is not, or not like.
it was a brief moment in time an open window when we were convinced that girls could be smart and successful, that girls could be treated as equals, that their thoughts and opinions mattered, it hasn’t been long since girls could grow up and be anything they dreamed that they could be, and for a second we were assured that our bodies were our own, that our lives had value, gone were the days when we couldn’t vote, or own property, or drive, or choose how to spend our futures, free from the need to defer to our fathers and then to our husbands to get along in this world.
They lied to us you know. Let us taste freedom and a bit of equality (for less pay) and autonomy over own bodies, and the right to choose how to care for ourselves… they never intended for us to get comfortable, they didn’t like it when we started thinking for ourselves, when we stopped asking permission, when we called them out for not accepting that no means no, for expecting to be treated with respect.
I learned how to manage, like those before me, my mother, her mother, before the brief moment flashed, I learned to smile demurely, to avert my eyes when it was not my eyes they wanted to see, but my breasts, I learned that it was easier to make coffee in the boardroom, I learned how to suggest an idea and then applaud my male counterpart when he presented my idea as his, I learned how to juggle work, home, raising the children, I learned how to burn the candle at both ends without getting burned… I thought I was being a team player, thought I was doing what was expected of me, but there was no team.
It's not the life I hoped for you, my darling daughters, and it breaks my heart to watch that brief moment slip away. I didn’t raise you to be chattel I didn’t raise you to be less than.
Please believe me when I tell you that I didn’t lie when I told you that you can be whatever and whoever you dream to be…I still believe it is possible, and I intend to fight for you and your rights until my last breath…I have learned to look them straight in the eyes, dare them to objectify me, to present my own ideas, and tell them it’s time to make their own damn coffee… and while they’re at it, bring me mine.
~kat
NaPoWriMo2023 Challenge Day 14: Today, I challenge you to write a parody or satire based on a famous poem. It can be long or short, rhymed or not. But take a favorite (or unfavorite) poem of the past, and see if you can’t re-write it on humorous, mocking, or sharp-witted lines. You can use your poem to make fun of the original (in the vein of a parody), or turn the form and manner of the original into a vehicle for making points about something else (more of a satire – though the dividing lines get rather confused and thin at times).
Kind of on prompt…not satire, but definitely inspired by the amazing poem below by Gabriel Okara. Peace Y’all. Happy Friday!
Once Upon a Time by the Nigerian poet Gabriel Okara
Once upon a time, son, they used to laugh with their hearts and laugh with their eyes: but now they only laugh with their teeth, while their ice-block-cold eyes search behind my shadow. There was a time indeed they used to shake hands with their hearts: but that’s gone, son. Now they shake hands without hearts while their left hands search my empty pockets.
‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’: they say, and when I come again and feel at home, once, twice, there will be no thrice- for then I find doors shut on me.
So I have learned many things, son. I have learned to wear many faces like dresses – homeface, officeface, streetface, hostface, cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles like a fixed portrait smile.
And I have learned too to laugh with only my teeth and shake hands without my heart. I have also learned to say,’Goodbye’, when I mean ‘Good-riddance’: to say ‘Glad to meet you’, without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been nice talking to you’, after being bored.
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!
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