hour 1: a dream about waking up
dragging feet to the bathroom to brush my teeth with warm water
my dad would call it the adversary
but i’m quite certain this one’s on me
late, bittersweet like day old oranges
but i
i am alive
Simply Nobody
I’m a speck on the floor trampled by almost all. I’m a ding in a car door waiting to be buffed out. I’m nobody, nothing viable, no value, no meaning. Just a modern day slave and flunky. Just a means to an end for some who claim to love me. A wisp caught in a vortex of wind going round and round no one knows I’m there. Left here in this one place while others sped away to live their lives leaving mine in vain.
just no one, nobody to some who claim to love me. A pebble laying under a pile of rock on an abandoned shore. A scorned and almost lifeless form kicked on the head and dropped when I was born. Left here in this place to suffer while others sped away. Left me in limbo to rot in hell but But God is watching I pray to him.
I’m nobody plain and simply no one. Left here to die unhappy. But I pray, pray, pray to the Lord and HE shall set me free. I’m someone to HIM. I know God loves me. HE will lift me up and guide me to happiness. Someday I’ll walk, not speed away. And the difference will be respect for I’ll never neglect those who claim to love me as they have done to me. For although to them I’m simply nobody but I know that I am love.
I’m Chinese!
You’re Chinese!
You’re Chinese!
You’re Chinese!
The words stung
Even though
They were true
I’m Chinese
I cried to
My mother
She said yes
You are and
That boy’s not
I ran back
Boasted I’m
Chinese, you’re not
The boy cried
And ran to
His mother
My heart swelled
I went home
I’m Chinese!
Prompt for Hour Three
Text Prompt:
This prompt called Twenty Little Poetry Projects and was suggested by Lexanne Leonard, but was created by Jim Simmerman and is called Twenty Little Poetry Projects and was originally published in The Practice of Poetry. If you don’t think you can complete it in the hour feel free to stop at the half way point.
“Give each project at least one line. You should open the poem with the first project, and close it with the last, but otherwise use the projects in whatever order you like. Do all twenty. Let different ones be in different voices. Don’t take things too seriously.
1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synaesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use a piece of false cause-and-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of “talk” you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun)…”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a nonhuman object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.”
Image Prompt:
By Frank Ching
His Whisper
“This way, beautiful,” he whispered, not there.
Hands imagined intertwined
as pines mist our morning air.
Glories still asleep lead a pleasant dream
into cosmic light – a fire hiding
beyond our sphere unseen.
Kisses! Oh, kisses as we laugh and play
in busy days imagined.
I wish, in my naivete.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES (hour ii)
I grew up feasting
my eyes on the hypocrites
Their speeches heightened
And they grew grey hairs
feeding from the swamp, stomach
wars and woes, shame void
The swamp had been a
haven where harvests of deceit
heaped up for years long
The hypocritic
rises out of the shamed swamp
their feet sank deeper
I am growing still
witnessing how time migrates
against them, with cuffs
*Inspired by the text prompt
hour two
T h e r e
is no way.
I can get back there.
I am not a shadow.
I cannot cast myself so thin.
A veil of darkness.
I am more than that.
A whole silhouette.
A solid form.
Bones and blood with a positive charge.
Your white walls cannot contain all of me.
A figure of darkness before me.
Always on one foot. Unsure if you want to stay.
What dues have you paid to see me?
What do I owe you?
You are not the sun. I am not the moon.
I hang here empty-handed. You think you came prepared.
There is no chance of rain. Nothing more to see from where
you are. Go on. Find a way. Meet me at the top.
Woes of my country people
We are no longer flying
the flag of our country, we are picking
bodies, dead bodies of innocent
brothers and sisters; protesters.
The land that grew us is now thirsty,
it’s drinking our blood- those who died
of malaria: 100
those who died of hunger and malnutrition: 400 & 300
toddlers have lost their tenderness, their mothers lost
too much happiness, she couldn’t nurture her baby
on how to smile,
how to stay happy and grow beautiful.
Each family has lost too much, we are tired
we are still losing, we’ve lost people
we’ve lost dignity
our leaders are still drinking our blood,
we have lost our country.
© Àdèlé
Old Too Late
After six decades,
how did I know so little?
I catch myself in
cellphone photographs,
cheek jowls still firm,
teeth bared, grinning
into the camera,
as if my problems were
invisible, nonexistent.
Behind me, a backdrop
of rivers and trees,
an endless spider web
of mountain trails
my spine could still navigate.
Meanwhile, a sky dome
hovered above, witnessing
everything I failed to see,
yet remaining silent.
I wouldn’t have listened,
anyway. Eyes and ears
tuned to unconsciousness,
I walk the path, turn
my head for a moment,
and pose, while motion continues:
relentless, erasing my body,
blurring its lines like water.
Hour #2: “The Sad Ladder”
The sad ladder I climb, quietly visible
on glinting walls, a vast canvased possibility,
the unstained imagination.
How alluring the mystery before words,
the images birthed in the fires of my soul.
How to paint them with the smudges
of calloused fingers. To bring color from inside,
to darken the boundaries set outside.
Perhaps it is better never to touch the rungs
but to stay in the eternal hint of wonder.
All my gifts will merely clutter this serene
clairvoyance that beckons the best of my soul.
Perhaps it is better to stand apart forever,
listen to the call, watch as my thoughts arise and fall,
contort, and reform.
There are no steps reaching high enough
to see over this seething storm,
unless I never bless its form
beyond the waves of my mind.
Handles retreating, disintegrating, impure.
Just the vast, blank world, a colorless universe
that contains all we could ever create.