#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Thirty

Midas’ Green Thumb

Palo verde – green stick
set ablaze by flaming petals
under the hot Arizona sun.

It’s as if King Midas
turned his golden touch
into a green 
thumb.
Green branches
grow more vibrant.
Golden hues blaze across
the clear, blue sky
as yellow flowers pullulate.

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our last prompt of the year – optional, as always! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend, as in  Claire Scott’s poem “Scheherazade at the Doctor’s Office.”

Good morning and welcome to the last day of #NaPoWriMo 2024. I was playing with a quadrille for the dverse prompt yesterday. And yes, I was using the palo verde as inspiration again. I looked up info on the tree and learned the palo verde is the Arizona state tree. Then I was watching the local news and the meteorologist, Sean McLaughlin, mentioned he just learned the palo verde was the state tree. I didn’t share my original quadrille because it was rather didactic.

Palo verde tree – green stick
ablaze in yellow flowers every
April under the blazing Arizona
sun.

Its green trunk gives the tree
a bigger surface area for
photosynthesis.
Green bark helps
the tree survive in an
arid climate
with a scant amount
of rainfall.

So this brings my 14th year of #NaPoWriMo to a close. I wrote more than thirty poems this year. I’ll be back tomorrow to write my wrap-up.

Toasty Avocado

Avocado

Green berry
Blanket
Toast
Warm cardigan

I’m going to spill the tea. Shawn had a twin sized quilt his mother bought about thirty years ago, and it’s been falling apart. I’ve wanted to get rid of it for a few years now and this past winter Shawn finally let it go. When he was over in Miami a couple weekends ago, I washed the bedding and I folded up the quilt to store away. Then I found Shawn pining over the winter quilt and I told him; No it’s been washed and put away until November.

But I got rid of my snuggly quilt. I need it.

No you don’t. That is a queen quilt that covers the whole bed and it’s way too warm to have a quilt on the bed now.

But the other blankets are too scratchy.

Then use my tortilla. (Great Christmas gift, by the way. Everybody loves how silky, soft it is.)I had to buy Gretchen a waffle blanket so she’d stop stealing my tortilla. Now Shawn has an avocado blanket he can snuggle with at night that won’t make me boil to death. I hope this stops the longing looks he’s been giving our winter quilt.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Nine

Incandescent

The palo verde is ablaze with yellow flowers in April.
I go outside to enjoy the sunshine casting an ethereal –
golden glow as petals float down, I search for inspiration.

As I mentioned we had a gorgeous weekend weather wise. After writing and posting my sijo I went back outside to enjoy the afternoon. The sun was right above the palo verde, shining through the branches and I wrote another sijo for it. As the second wraps into the third line, I’m not sure it is a true sijo, but I like how it reads.

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our optional prompt. If you’ve been paying attention to pop-music news over the past couple of weeks, you may know that Taylor Swift has released a new double album titled “The Tortured Poets Department.” In recognition of this occasion, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous yourself, but we’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title.

Chase after fireflies
Gazing into pitch black skies
Incandescent glow

Since I wrote the first poem yesterday, I composed the #haikuchallenge today using incandescent too.

#HaikuChallenge Sunday April 28, 2024

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Eight

Sunday Pondering

I wonder how April will end as I go outside with my dog.
Sitting under the palo verde ablaze in yellow flowers.
Words drift away like the delicate petals falling at my feet.

Palo Verde in Bloom in My Backyard

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Finally, our optional prompt for the day asks you to try your hand at writing a sijo. This is a traditional Korean verse form. A sijo has three lines of 14-16 syllables. The first line introduces the poem’s theme, the second discusses it, and the third line, which is divided into two sentences or clauses, ends the poem – usually with some kind of twist or surprise.

Good afternoon and welcome to day twenty eight of #NaPoWriMo where I decided to take my poetry journal out to the backyard and enjoy the cool Sunday breeze. The palo verde is in full bloom and I wrote a haiku about it a few days ago:

yellow petals drop
palo verde set ablaze
flames adrift in wind

It was very windy here on Friday as we had a low pressure system blowing in, it’s made this last weekend in April very nice. I decided I needed to go out and enjoy my coffee on the back patio while I can. Of course the dog came out with me. One of the sijo I wrote a few years ago focussed on the palo verde and I do love writing poetry about it even when the yellow petals become detritus on my patio.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Seven

Grand Canyon – American Sonnet I

Here I sit, the final Saturday in April
my pen scratching across the page,
adding lines to my first American
sonnet.
Maybe I should include the magnificence
of the Grand Canyon.
Of how over the summer, the impossible puzzle
cost me the grand sum of $10
and it took Gretchen one month to complete.
In honor of her hard work, I found a frame
to display the panoramic slice of an
American landscape where the
Colorado River carved through rock
over countless centuries, sinking the canyon’s
depth a mile down, down… down.

Grand Canyon Puzzle

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our prompt – optional, as always!  Today we’d like to challenge you to write an “American sonnet.” What’s that? Well, it’s like a regular sonnet but . . . fewer rules? Like a traditional Spencerian or Shakespearean sonnet, an American sonnet is shortish (generally 14 lines, but not necessarily!), discursive, and tends to end with a bang, but there’s no need to have a rhyme scheme or even a specific meter. 

Good morning and welcome to day twenty seven of #NaPoWriMo the final Saturday of 2024. I decided to write my American Sonnet about the Grand Canyon and our fun with the impossible puzzle this past summer.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Five

Colbert Questionert

Celebs sit in the hot seat and answer important questions about life. Best sandwich? Should always be cut diagonally. One thing you own you should really throw out? My childhood journals filled with secret longings. Apples or oranges; why not avocados? The first autograph I received was an award for a writing contest. I wonder if Stephen has the same number in mind no one ever gets right. Some questions rotate in and out, but everyone ends with five words describing the rest of their life: messy chaotic dribbles of poetry.

aisle or window
fifteen questions to be known
answers may vary

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Last but not least, here’s our optional prompt for the day. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire,” a set of questions drawn from Victorian-era parlor games, and adapted by modern interviewers. You could choose to answer the whole questionnaire, and then write a poem based on your answers, answer just a few, or just write a poem that’s based on the questions. You could even write a poem in the form of an entirely new Proust Questionnaire.

Good afternoon. I decided to answer a few questions off the Colbert Questionert. Some of the celebrities have some out of the box responses. When Prince Harry was asked aisle or window he said, cockpit. And I really liked Matt Damon’s answer to what happens when we die? We go home. In my life, I’m a big introvert and not a fan of ice breakers which is what these questions are really about. I prefer to sit in the corner and remain a mystery to everyone else in the parlor.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Six

Onomatopoeia

Words defined by sound
Found to mimic
Abound in
Nature
Purr
Pronounce with extra oomph!

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that involves alliteration, consonance, and assonance. Alliteration is the repetition of a particular consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds elsewhere in multiple words, and assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. Traci Brimhall’s poem “A Group of Moths” provides a great example of these poetic devices at work, with each line playing with different sounds that seem to move the poem along on a sonorous wave.

Good morning and welcome to day twenty six of #NaPoWriMo and I need to go back and work on yesterday’s prompt. In the meantime, I had fun playing with sound and defining onomatopoeia in a teacup dictionary poem. An easy way to write a shape poem, because when centered on the page it resembles a teacup. I am off to enjoy my coffee and the beautiful spring day in the desert. I should be back later to catch up on the missed prompt.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Four

A Monsoon Splendor

And be my love in the rain
every summer monsoons
ease the sweltering heat
as storm clouds build
blocking out the sun
come outside with me
as heavy raindrops fall
and run down our lashes
lips steam with passion
from your fervent kisses
under the summer sky
our love sizzles in the rain

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Finally, our (optional) prompt for the day is another one pulled from our 2016 archives. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it. This will work best if you just start with a line of poetry you remember, but without looking up the whole original poem. Or you could find a poem that you haven’t read before and then use a line that interests you. The idea is for the original to furnish the backdrop for your work, but without influencing you so much that you feel as if you are just rewriting the original! 

Good evening and welcome to day twenty four of #NaPoWriMo. I had written this poem earlier today, but I let it sit. I’m not impressed with it. The opening line is from A Line-storm Song by Robert Frost. I actually went back to my 2016 poem to see if it would offer me any inspiration to no avail, so I decided to post what I wrote earlier today. At least there is only one more week to go.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Three

If She Asks…

Once upon a time;
Eric and Charles approached
Logan inside a bar, recruiting
for the X-men.
In true Wolverine form,
Logan told them:
Go fuck yourself.
They did not know the proper way
to bat their eyelashes.

Tony Stark has an ex-girlfriend,
Veronica, who one day decided
she wanted to hang out
with Wolverine.
She requested sweetly:
Can Wolverine come out to play?
And to her delight
he dropped everything to show
how his claws rise exclusively
for her.

Shawn posing as Wolverine

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about, or involving, a superhero, taking your inspiration from these four poems in which Lucille Clifton addresses Clark Kent/Superman.

Good afternoon and welcome to day twenty three of #NaPoWriMo where I recalled a time nine years ago when Wolverine came out to play. Most of the time, Shawn is obsessing over Tony Stark/Ironman. But one day when I was wasting time on Facebook taking quizzes, Shawn took a quick photo posing as Wolverine for me. Shhhh… don’t tell Tony his ex-girlfriend has the hots for Wolverine’s huge talons.

#NaPoWriMo 2024 Day Twenty Two

Dog Versus Tortoise

It happens every year
when my human opens
the backdoor to let me out
and the tortoise has plopped
himself at its threshold.

Hey, dog why are you knocking
on my shell?
Can’t you see me sitting here?

Excuse me, Shaman
but I need to go!
Get out of my way
or I’ll lift my leg
and complete
my business
on top of your shell
instead.
Why must you plop
right in front of
the backdoor anyway?

The humans have the AC running
and you get to sleep inside
with the cool air while
I’m stuck out here
in the brutal sun all day.
The back porch offers
a bit of shade and respite.

I think you’ve grown soft!
A Sonoran desert tortoise
should be basking in the sun
not hiding out in the shade.
Now,
step aside
so I can get back in the house.

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Last but not least, here’s today’s optional prompt. This one comes from the poet and fiction writer Todd Dillard, who provided this idea on his twitter account a few months ago. The idea is to write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it. Like, maybe a comb and a spatula. Or a daffodil and a bag of potato chips. Or perhaps your two things could be linked somehow – like a rock and a hard place – and be utterly sick of being so joined. The possibilities are endless!

Good morning and welcome to day twenty two of #NaPoWriMo where I imagined the conversation between my dog and the tortoise after letting the dog out this morning and she had to jump across the tortoise as he was plopped right at the backdoor. Sonoran Desert tortoises hibernate in the winter somewhere between October-March. Our tortoise Shaman is around 30 years old and not in the best health anymore. While Shawn was gone this weekend, Gretchen and I went out to feed the tortoises. We got Shaman to eat some lettuce and spinach. He perked up after Gretchen cooled him off with some water. Then I found him right at the backdoor when I woke up this morning. It looked like the morning food Shawn put out for him was untouched.