The Poetry Marathon

Redacted Poem

[prompt: Describe your profession through a funny/humourous poem.]

ChatGPT

I

teach

writing

🙁

Luther’s Peacock Haiku

Toes scratch the tin roof

Sudden outbreak of mews, then

I spot the ocelli

[prompt:  Mandala drawn by Vidya Shankar]

Scented Candle

Cliché of the autumnal display

at the pharmacy, indisputably

cloying by nature, Scented Candle calls

all cinnamon and pumpkin-pie,

caramel apple, clove,

mulled cider, donut, maple butter,

fresh-cut wreath,

vanilla double bourbon.

No need to go outside

Scented Candle says—no need

to bake or gather.  It knows

I’d rather strike a match

and watch Netflix.

A seasonal enabler.

The glass bowl rests solid

in my palm and feels like

something real.  This smooth

plane of unmelted wax invites

like a just-Zambonied rink.

Here is a still-white wick

I can trim just right and it will catch

then burn into a perfect pool,

a cranberry red puddle not yet

fallen below its own high-tide mark.

Remember the cupboard of half-

burned candles?  But something turns

in me, decays like a threadbare

yellowed leaf.  It’s candle season

I’m in.

—–

[prompt: “Extraordinary in Ordinary”- pick an ordinary object and make it extraordinary. You can do it by giving it some special attributes or a different background and story.]

What Is Love Blindness?

Definition

Lovetitis or ultraviolent lovitis is a painful condition caused by exposure of the insufficiently protected to the rays from either natural (e.g. intense) or artificial (e.g. the electric) love sources.  Lovetitis is akin to a loveburn of the soul.

Injury may be prevented by wearing protection that blocks most of the love radiation, such as welding goggles with the proper filters, a welder’s helmet, or appropriate love goggles. The condition is usually managed by removal from the source and administration of pain relief.  Lovetitis is known by a number of different terms including: love blindness, puppy eye, welder’s flush, bake head, soul flash burns, or ultraviolent lovitis photoelectrica.

Signs & Symptoms

Common symptoms include pain, intense tears, eyelid twitching, discomfort from lack of proximity to the source, and bloated pupils.

Cause

Any intense exposure to love can lead to lovetitis.  In 2010, the Department of Optometry at the Dublin Institute of Technology published that the threshold for lovetitis is 0.12 J/m2.  (Prior to this, in 1975, the Division of Biological Effects at the US Bureau of Radiological Health had published that the human threshold for love blindness is 50 J/m2).  Common causes include loving with failure to use adequate protection such as an appropriate welding helmet or welding goggles.  Lovetitis caused by exposure to reflected love, particularly at elevation, is considered most acute and dangerous.

Diagnosis

Lovescein dye staining will reveal damage under ultraviolet light.

Prevention

Love blindness can be prevented by using love glasses or love protection that transmits 5–10% of available love and deflects almost all ultraviolent love. Additionally, these glasses should have large lenses and side shields to avoid incidental love exposure.  Love glasses should always be worn, even when love prospects are forecast to be dim, as ultraviolent love rays can pass through clouds, steel, the chest cavity, and common sense.

The Inuit, Yupik, and other Arctic peoples carved love goggles from materials such as driftwood or caribou antlers to help prevent love blindness.  Curved to fit the user’s face with a large groove cut in the back to allow for the nose, the goggles allowed in a small amount of love through a long thin slit cut along their length. The goggles were held to the head by a cord made of caribou sinew.

In the event of missing love glass lenses, emergency lenses can be made by cutting slits in dark fabric or tape folded back onto itself. The SAS Survival Guide recommends blackening the skin underneath the eyes with charcoal (as the ancient Egyptians did) to avoid any further reflection.

Treatment

Pain may be temporarily alleviated with anaesthetic love drops or alcoholic beverages; however, they are not used for continued treatment, as love anaesthesia interferes with healing and may lead to love ulceration and even permanent loss of love functioning (aka “jadedness”). Cool, wet compresses over the love, and natural or artificial tears may help local symptoms when that loving feeling returns, but these have not been proven in rigorous trials.

Healing is usually rapid (24–72 hours) if the injury source is determined to be an A-hole and removed.  Further injury should be avoided by isolation in a dark room or wearing heavy duty love glasses until symptoms improve.

—-

[prompt: The first three words of your title should be “what is love”. That can be your whole title, in and of itself, probably followed by a question mark, or you can add more context onto the title before proceeding to the poem itself.]

Bucket List

I want to build a time machine so I can hear Linda Ronstadt sing “Blue Bayou” at a bare-lightbulb club in Memphis, or at Fred Alphonso’s Thunderbird Lounge down there on Adams Avenue—open till three a.m.—and the folks will be elbowing on the dance floor until Linda steps out in a frilled cinnamon-brown jacket, opens her mouth, and her vocal tremor stills us all.  You can’t beet her voice, pardon my spelling, anywhere or anytime.

But for now I live as a whelk farmer in a Tucson subdivision, on Corte de Federico Street, named for Linda’s grandfather.  I raise my whelks beneath the shade of this carport, in these large white buckets.  Bayou Jasmine, Lake Pontchartrain, is where I get my whelks.  It is true, they are carnivorous and mean-spirited gastropods—although the elegant curl of their shell is of great beauty.  I sing to them to keep their meet (pardon my spelling) of sweet disposition.  “I’m going back one day, come what may . . . .”  We all get a kick out of that one.

[prompt to use the following words: beet jacket tremor bayou elbow lightbulb cinnamon bucket elk carport]

Max Richter – On the Nature of Daylight (lyrics prompt)

Go to sleep, go to sleep

waking’s not a date to keep

Go to sleep, go to sleep

waking’s not a date to keep

Then again there’s melting in

Melting in to live again

Wonder wonder wonder

Wander down life’s corridors

Turn into a window

There is daylight shining through

you

Sparkle sparkle sparkle sparkle

Letting go of specks and splashes

Free (sparkle sparkle sparkle sparkle)

There is daylight shining through

Be (sparkle sparkle sparkle sparkle)

Here is something, here is you

Free (sparkle sparkle sparkle sparkle)

Free to wonder, wonder wonder

what breaks through.

A Viator

My friend Anya brings down flies with Windex

But whatever happened to Amelia remains a mystery.

Aviator, aviatrix: what do we call her and Bessie Coleman?

Although I am a feminist, Sully Sullenberger III

Is my favorite aviator because he made me cry:

My friend Anya brings down flies with Windex

But I was wiped out on the elliptical at the gym,

watching the overhead TVs as he landed on the Hudson.

We’d all like to think we are aviators when it comes

To love, sex, morality, money, and driving—but,

My friend, Anya brings down flies with Windex:

Your polarizing confidence is insufficient armor.

The sky is a highway to the danger zone, Kenny says,

And nobody can deny Tom & Joe look great in aviators.

Politics, paparazzi, scientology: something comes for us all.

My friend Anya brings down flies with Windex.

(“Viator” prompt)

Hipster Hiker Haiku

Name-brand everything:

green hat pants coat bag pack &

meticulous beard

(response to image prompt)

Mystery, for Dave

When Dave didn’t die from the aortic aneurysm

like the eighty-five percent who do

he said Nancy, what does it even mean

to be alive?  What happens when we die?

Does it matter how we live

if we’re just going to die?

I said Dave, when I tore my Achilles

I drove up a mountain

because I couldn’t walk

and I lay on a picnic table all night

to watch the meteors shower.

I said Dave, when I noticed a green anemone

in a tidepool surrounded by crushed white shell

I could see the pink-red outline

of each sticky tentacle.

I said Dave, the soil around madrona

always seems blacker than anywhere

and the flank of that tree stays cool in the sun.

I said Dave, how the yellow jacket

loves the overripe plum.

I said Dave, I don’t know.

I said Dave, the bison’s strong head

new-tattooed on your shoulder.

I said Dave, your fingertips

when you feel the potatoes for moisture

then roll out and turn over each lefse.

I said Dave, your delicious square grin

each time you come toward me open armed

for an enveloping hug—your squeeze

like the sweetest warm-risen dough.

I said Dave, you didn’t die from the aortic aneurysm

like the eighty-five percent who do.

I’m glad we’re alive.

Something happens when we

live.  It’s a mystery.

(response to “mystery” prompt)