Prompt for Hour Seven
Each year I write one prompt devoted to a cliché topic, previously these prompts have been focused on love and death.
This year the challenge is to write a poem about angst that is not cliché. Good luck!
Loser
Not sure why I do it to myself
Competitive yet take a loser’s approach
Common sense is fleeting
Ego is stabbed
Self-inflicted wounds
Pride conflicts with self worth
An L never feels good
Glue – Prompt Six
Mothers are the glue of humanity. They birth generations of thinkers and doers, movers and shakers. They build strong foundations for creative minds and industrious endeavors. Through ingenuity, insight, love and care, they pad those generations with morals and a profound belief in good deeds and kind spirits. Not all mothers possess these qualities, but enough do to keep the earth spinning. Motherhood can be difficult and rewarding, but the result of this special assignment and the qualities required to perform the job is the balance necessary for society to move on.
The mighty oak is strong
The May breeze is gentle and soothing
Every season reaps bountiful harvests.
Soccer Hai-kuku
Fleet-footed atop the blades of grass, they look like a floating ice capade of soccer ballet clicking heels like Dorothy while swooping legs shoot–Nike’d.
Her hair bunched floppy whipping
White shirts mouth surprise
She barely misses missing.
Tragic Kiss
Fall into my tragic kiss
Let me taste your pain
Let me drink it all away
I’ll help you live again
You know the way I need to die
But could you let me go
Suspended between life and breath
Laughing in Death’s shadow
The volume of your thirst
Speaks more than any words
Together we bond in strength
Align my soul with yours
Life is never perfect
You loose while you wait
When you’re looking back
The little things you taste
I know it cuts you open
Making deeper scars
Let me fade it all away
Let me be your salve
To Be Happy
Oh to be happy
To feel open and free
To be on top of the world
Silver linings decree
Oh to be happy
And know only bliss
To walk with faith, blindly
To trust lovers kiss
Oh to be happy
No heartache to bear
To feel cupid’s arrow
And love that is fair
Poem 3- “Basic” Needs
Written on the road as I clearly struggled for inspiration.
I have been traveling a lot lately
To ancient Roman baths, birthplaces of poets and colleges that look more like monuments
Hiking up the Scottish highlands
And enviously admiring the crown jewels
Rushing through towns, lanes, bylanes
The typical tourist
Fascinated by everything
But afraid that I’ll miss my bus
to the next destination on my checklist
And in this mad rush
Through new sights and sounds and smells
The only thing I crave is
A hot cup of Starbucks
Skim latte, 12oz, no sugar
A basic desire
Overlooked in the heat of the moment
Yet remembered remorsefully after
As I struggle to write coherent verse
Make Up
You can learn anything
from YouTube.
Lately, this has been eye shadow
and how to choose foundation.
And, no, I am not a teenager.
When I was a teenager,
zipping round the rink
to the evangelical enthusiasm
of Newsboys’ “Shine,”
I turned up my nose
at the two boldly made-up girls
and their dangling silver-dollar sized hoops.
After all, had not Alcott’s hero
been aghast to discover
his love interest “painted” her face?
Now, having lost interest in being
an old-fashioned “good girl”
(at least, beyond the demands of my paycheck),
I wonder if I can be bolder.
The worlds war.
Watching “before” and “after” faces–
it seems that each
has both lost and gained.
My Haibun
Writing is a painful bliss. A piece of me remains on the page long after I have placed down my pen. I am a writer of life. I am a healer, healing my own festering wounds, tainting my soul with a callous ugliness, an enveloping bitterness of hopelessness, trying to suffocate my voice, my words. Writing is my sanity. It keeps me grounded in my creativity and allows me to travel along the dusty trails and mountain ranges of the imagination. It keeps my dreams insight, although just a little out of reach. Writing is my bridge to humanity, it stamps out the horrors of the world. It is hope-filled and dark, sometimes. It is fueled by emotion and bath in truth, my truth.
to write saves me from
bitter inhumanity
and empowers me