#NaPoWriMo 2022 Day Fourteen

My First Triumph

Shot – Interior bedroom. A little girl sits up in bed with a sneaker in her lap, fiddling with the laces.

Right hand
Appears useless
Shoelace slips through fingers
Kindergarten starts tomorrow
Action

It’s late at night, but the little girl is frantic. She’s worried about failing her first day of school, because she can’t tie her shoes. After numerous attempts, she finally succeeds at tying the laces and can go to sleep untroubled.

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our (optional) prompt. Today’s challenge is a fun one: write a poem that takes the form of the opening scene of the movie of your life. Does it open with a car chase? A musical number? A long scene panning across a verdant plain? You’re the director (and also the producer, the actors, the set designer, the cinematographer, and the lowly assistant that buys doughnuts for the crew) – so it’s all up to you!

Good afternoon and welcome to day fourteen of NaPoWriMo where I’m in charge of telling my life story, but where should I begin? Shawn wasn’t any help. Gretchen came up with a great opening scene – Your death, I’ll bet you’re wondering how I got here. One’s life does ultimately tell the story of her death. But I couldn’t get anywhere starting at the end because I have not reached it yet. I didn’t want to start at the beginning, because I have no real memory of it. Then I realized if anyone were to make a movie of my life, my struggle with cerebral palsy would be at the forefront. Why not open with the memory of my first triumph?

Of course I worked this out after I toyed with other firsts. 😉

A Roll in the Hay

First time
Two teenagers
Nervous and excited
Explore virgin territory
Hayloft

Okay not exactly the first time I’ve alluded to something my husband borrowed without any intent of returning it. And yes, I have to get off the cinquains.

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#NaPoWriMo 2022 Day Ten

Soft Caress

Beauty
Fingers linger
She offers a warm smile
He breathes in her effervescence
Allure

Shawn and I recreate “The Kiss”

Napowrimo Prompt – Today’s (optional) prompt is pretty simple – a love poem! If you’re having trouble getting into the right mood for a love poem, maybe you’ll find inspiration in one of my favorites, June Jordan’s “Poem for Haruko.”

Good morning and welcome to day ten. Love poem – there are quite a few on this blog. Being out on the west coast, Maureen posts the next day prompts at 9pm for me. When I checked out the prompt last night, I told Shawn; I’m not sure I’m feeling the love today. He went out to pick up some food and I get a text; Is my wallet on my nightstand? Nope, I don’t see a wallet on the nightstand. I look over on the dresser, still no wallet. I turn back to the bed and there’s the wallet on his quilt. He drives back and I meet him in the driveway with his wallet. Then he sends a group text, Dad dash will be late as mom tried to steal my wallet. SMH

For napowrimo I usually start my poems handwritten in my poetry journal, and as I was flipping through the pages this morning, I came across this poem – Pink Rose. And I still love that fourth line and appropriated it for today’s poem. I also used yesterday’s #haikuchallenge for inspiration.

Intense disquiet
Find solace wrapped in his arms
Harbor in a storm

Thank you for reading my day ten contribution even if there it was not inspired by a loving feeling.

#NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Twenty Five

Masked and Ready to Go

Second Shot

My shot
Stop virus spread
Auspicious occasion
Help create herd immunity
Vaccine

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Our prompt for today (optional, as always) is to write an “occasional” poem. What’s that? Well, it’s a poem suited to, or written for, a particular occasion. This past January, lots of people who usually don’t encounter poetry got a dose when Amanda Gorman read a poem at President Biden’s inauguration. And then she followed it up with a poem at the Superbowl (not traditionally an event associated with verse!) The poem you write can be for an occasion in the past or the future, one important to you and your family (a wedding, a birth) or for an occasion in the public eye (the Olympics, perhaps?).

Good morning and welcome to day twenty five of #NaPoWriMo. Today’s special occasion – this afternoon I’m off to get my 2nd shot of the Moderna vaccine. It’s an auspicious occasion worthy of a poem.

Other occasion poems – 8th grade graduation

Twentieth Wedding Anniversary

My Dad’s 70th Birthday

And last week marked thirty years since Shawn and I started dating and in less than six months we’ll be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary another occasion I’m sure I’ll commemorate in a poem. But for now I’ll be headed off to my local grocery store pharmacy for shot number 2 and if you don’t see a poem from me tomorrow you’ll know I’m probably not feeling well.

#NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Twenty Three

Pink Rose by Shawn Hosking

Pink Rose

Sweet dreams
She sleeps soundly
Wrapped secure in his arms
He breathes in her effervescence
Love drunk

NaPoWriMo Prompt = Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that responds, in some way, to another. This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem. You might use a favorite (or least favorite poem) as the source for your response. And if you’re having trouble finding a poem to respond to, here are a few that might help you generate ideas: “This World is Not Conclusion,” by Peter Gizzi, “In That Other Fantasy Where We Live Forever,” by Wanda Coleman, “La Chalupa, the Boat,” by Jean Valentine, or “Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm,” by Carl Phillips.

Good morning and welcome to day twenty three of #NaPoWriMo. Okay I wasn’t exactly getting into this prompt. I’ve replied to other poems before and didn’t really know who I wanted to read and respond to today. When I checked Facebook, I was reminded it’s Shakespeare day. But he’s a little over done. Then I checked my blog stats and saw someone read a post from #NaPoWriMo 2018; I started going through those posts and right near the start of the month Day Two I see I wrote a poem using Romeo & Juliet and responded to a poem Shawn wrote. So it hasn’t been six years since Shawn wrote me a poem; I’ve cut it down to three. The title of today’s poem comes from the photo and one of those silly games – Every Woman is a Flower. Apparently I’m a pink rose.

Love’s in the Air  2018

In the soft light of the night
It’s exciting to see you breathe
In effervescent waves
The rise…
The shudder…
The fall…
Of lungs full of love
Drunk with pollen’s pleasure

© Shawn Hosking 2018

#NaPoWriMo Day One

Strange animation
Distracts me from daily chores
House in disarray

NaPoWriMo Prompt Day One – our daily prompt (optional, as always)! Sometimes, writing poetry is a matter of getting outside of your own head, and learning to see the world in a new way. To an extent, you have to “derange” yourself – make the world strange, and see it as a stranger might. To help you do that, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by this animated version of “Seductive Fantasy” by Sun Ra and his Arkestra. If you don’t feel after watching it a little bit like the top of your head’s been taken off, and your thoughts given a good stir – well, maybe you are already living in a state of heightened poetic awareness!

Good morning and welcome to the first day of #NaPoWriMo 2021. Okay I actually started the laundry before working on the poem so it wasn’t a big distraction. Gretchen was working on poem #2 for her poetry class last night and it came with some weird instructions. The piece had to be grammatically correct and be senseless. This was proving to be difficult for her – not the grammatically correct part since Mom was an English major both my children have grown up speaking and writing proper grammar but the senseless part… Yeah her professor remarked her first poem read like a TED talk. And then this morning Maureen shares this video. As you can see, Mom doesn’t do well with senseless either.

The #haikuchallenge word today is busy and I used this as inspiration for that one as well.

Derange thought patterns
Busy writing poetry
Whimsical opus

Silly
April Fool’s Day
Seductive Fantasy
Rationale takes flight of fancy
Senseless

#NaPoWriMo Idioms

Me sporting my quarantine haircut 

Les carottes sont cuites!

Coiffure
homespun trimming
Razor sheers off ragged mop
Laugh at how the carrots are cooked
Haircut

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Our (optional) prompt for the day asks you to engage with different languages and cultures through the lens of proverbs and idiomatic phrases. Many different cultures have proverbs or phrases that have largely the same meaning, but are expressed in different ways. For example, in English we say “his bark is worse than his bite,” but the same idea in Spanish would be stated as “the lion isn’t as fierce as his painting.” Today, I’d like to challenge you to find an idiomatic phrase from a different language or culture, and use it as the jumping-off point for your poem. Here’s are a few lists to help get you started: One, two, three.

Good afternoon readers and welcome to day twenty-two of NaPoWriMo and me showing off my quarantine haircut. Yes, on Saturday I let Robin take a razor to my hair. The hairdresser uses a number 4 blade; how hard can it be mom? Well I should have kept him away from the bangs. I was told it was because my head was tilted, but the hairdresser is suppose to insure their client is looking straight ahead. I’m still not sure how they got this short; I did say bangs are hard and I like them just above the eyebrow. I really have no idea how they were cut as the scissors were never near my eyes.

Oh well both Robin and Gretchen were like, you’re just going to have an awkward phase mom. It’s a good thing I’m stuck at home and no one can see me. 😉 Except I just posted a picture of the do with a face mask my mother-in-law made. It’s actually not the first bad haircut I’ve had and on the plus side this one was free. I’m pretty sure it will grow out sufficiently to be fixed by an actual hairdresser once the stay at home order is lifted.

#NaPoWriMo 2018 Day Seventeen

Mom in 1967 when my dad was in Vietnam. Six years before I was born.

Speed Demon

Drag race
first senior class
inaugurates ditch day
accept challenge up Butler hill
Winner

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Our prompt for the day (optional as always) follows Gowrishankar’s suggestion that we write a poem re-telling a family anecdote that has stuck with you over time. It could be the story of the time your Uncle Louis caught a home run ball, the time your Cousin May accidentally brought home a coyote and gave it a bath, thinking it was a stray dog, or something darker (or even sillier).

Once upon a time, spring 1960, my mother was a senior in high school and part of the first graduating class of her high school. On the first senior skip day, the story goes the kids with cars loaded up with students and left school. My mom was driving her boyfriend’s car, and one of her classmates raced the boyfriend but could not win. That afternoon he was next to her at the red light and indicated he wanted to race. My mom figured, What the hell. She’s never raced in a car which made her classmate figure he had the advantage and would be able to beat the car for once. But my mom was pretty smart and shifted every time her classmate did and she won the race. True story? I have no idea, but I always loved hearing it. Oh and the wonders of the Internet – look what I found.

#NaPoWriMo 2018 Day Fourteen

Teapot

Teapot
whistles loudly
teacup slips from fingers
happiness turns to confusion
Prosy

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Dream dictionaries have been around as long as people have had dreams. Interestingly, if you consult a few of them, they nearly always tend to have totally different things to say about specific objects or symbols. Dreams, unlike words themselves, don’t seem to be nicely definable! At any rate, today’s prompt is to write entries for an imaginary dream dictionary. Pick one (or more) of the following words, and write about what it means to dream of these things

Good Afternoon and welcome to day fourteen of #NaPoWriMo which I hope is not too mundane or prosy for you. This was kinda fun as I’ve never actually looked anything up in a dream dictionary before. It said if you dream of a tea kettle (or teapot) your life is too mundane or you’re taking someone for granted. And of course I went over to the thesaurus to look up mundane. It would have worked for line 5, but I like prosy. Would anyone accuse me of being prosy during #NaPoWriMo; I think that would be a nightmare. So no, dear readers, I’m not taking you for granted.

 

Sweet dream
mother makes tea
brings little girl comfort
memory fades away too fast
Suspire

 

#NaPoWriMo 2018 Day Eight

Jacob and Lindsey Wedding Alwun House – Shawn Hosking Photographer

Love Potion

Wedding
bride and groom step
forward to recite vows
reception happiness abounds
Allure

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Let’s take a leaf from Shelley’s book, and write poems in which mysterious and magical things occur. Your poem could take the form of a spell, for example, or simply describe an event that can’t be understood literally. Feel free to incorporate crystal balls, fauns, lightning storms, or whatever seems fierce and free and strange. Poetry is like that (at least when you’ve been reading Shelley!) If you’re in search of inspiration, maybe you’ll find it in this poem by Louis Untermeyer, or this one by Kathleen Graber.

Good afternoon and welcome back to #NaPoWriMo day eight. I slept in this morning so I got a lot start on today’s prompt. Any guesses where I was yesterday? Yes, Shawn and I attended a wedding and Shawn was one of the photographers. It worked out for me though, because another friend helped me with the buffet and kept me well supplied in beverages. I told Shawn he needed to pay him for taking care of me. It was nice not trying to balance a plate of food and walk back to the table. Of course I learned years ago, I don’t care how dressed up I am, my feet will be in sneakers. It just makes it easier to walk. One of the pictures Shawn took was everyone standing in front of Alwun House. I really tried to sneak to the back, but it didn’t work. Shawn showed me the photo, but I didn’t check to see if the sneakers were visible.

Well I have some housework to do since I’ll be starting work tomorrow and I won’t have all the time to procrastinate as usual. I can’t believe no one told me April 7 is no housework day. Actually made yesterday’s poem work out even better, but I was doing some housework before we left for the wedding.

#NaPoWriMo 2018 Day Four

Photo credit

 

Misery

Gray skies
Blue Wednesday
Class sings Happy Birthday
She’s not invisible today
Eeroye

Good Morning! Welcome back to #NaPoWriMo day four. Gretchen’s birthday is today and despite her gloomy nature her teachers are going to be happy for her. I heard her math teacher said Happy Birthday loud enough for the whole class to hear and they sang to her. Her life as she knows it is over.

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our (optional) daily prompt. Our craft resource today focuses on the use of concrete nouns and specific details, using the idea of “putting a dog in it.” Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like “beauty” or “justice,” but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns. Adjectives are fine too! For example, you could have a poem about sadness that describes that emotion as “a rowboat tethered with fishing line to a willow that leans over a pond. Rainwater collects in the bottom, and mosquito eggs.” Concrete details like those can draw the reader in and let them imagine the real world where your abstract ideal or feeling happens. Happy writing!

Happy

Birthday
Cake and ice cream
Wish blowing out candles
Party with family and friends
Balloons

The real world is the first poem, but I had a hard time describing a birthday in misery until I thought about Eeyore.