4/1 - Tanka
"The Name That Might Have Been"
I sometimes whisper
the name that might have been mine
in the empty hours
when the world has forgotten
the sounds of ancient silence.
4/2 - Rictameter
"Escape"
Escape--
inside my mind
I flee to far off places,
to times long vanished from the earth
before the dreary dungeon walls closed in--
a dank prison with no reason,
no foul deed to punish,
and nowhere to
escape.
Barbara's Poems
4/3 - Nonnet
"Middle Age 1"
The minutes pour away like treacle,
last dregs on the side of the jar
that never seems to empty.
Waiting, trapped and transfixed
by the clock's hands,
you muddle through
the motions
of your
life.
If you're just dropping by, I don't have any theme in mind this year--I just want to get past the 18th, which is my deadly day for NaPo. :)
4/4 - Triolet
"The Green House"
In a green house on a gray street,
where I wait in still reflection--
I wait for the ghost sound of tapping feet
in a green house on a gray street.
But there's only the sound of sleet
the weather's sigh of introspection
on a green house, on a gray street,
where I wait in still reflection
4/5 - Sevenling
"Middle Age 2"
Middle age crept in while I waited to grow up,
slipped in silently between wistful games of make-believe
and conversations with lying mirrors.
Anticipation faded somewhere into panic,
into desperate lottery dreams of cheap fortune
and long, anxious nights awake,
Waiting to feel something inside me change.
4/6 - Rondelet
"My Secret Name"
My secret name--
the one that I can never write--
My secret name,
the sound of someone's ancient shame,
is hidden deep and out of sight
where not a drop of sun could light
My secret name.
4/7 - Haiku
"Dandelion Wish"
Dandelion wish
carried on the bright thunder
into my childhood.
4/8 - Free verse
"Nowhere"
I stand at the crest of nowhere
looking toward nowhere else,
the wind caught in useless eddies of dust,
while the rain teases.
Beyond nowhere is somewhere.
Beyond somewhere is home,
lost in the clouds
and the cheating virga over the mountains.
I follow its gray, curving lines into nothing
as I stand at the crest of nowhere.
4/9 - Fib
"Just Once"
Just.
Once.
A chance--
all I ask
is what is given
easily to beautiful strangers
as they glide through blessed lives of picturesque misery.
4/10 - Great Poets Steal
(from the NaPoWriMo prompt to use the first line of a poem you like, in this case "Ash Wednesday" by T.S. Eliot)
"Hope"
Because I do not hope to turn again,
I wait and I watch instead,
and let the world turn around me.
Because I do not hope to love again,
I learn to be alone
and to listen to the voices of the dead.
Because I do not hope to build again,
I carefully, wakefully guard
the remaining tinder of my castle.
Because I do not hope to fight again,
I withdraw inside my armor
and hide behind the breastplate.
Because I do not hope to hope again,
I resign myself and sigh at night,
with only the stars to hear.
4/11 - Dodoitsu
"Lunch on the Hill"
I ate on the hill today,
looking east to home again,
wrapped in melancholy peace,
dreaming green grass dreams.
4/12 - Rondeau
"Naïveté"
Tell lies to me, and I'll believe--
I really am quite that naïve.
I'll hear your tale of grief and woe,
and feats that grant a hero's glow--
I won't assume that you'll deceive.
So go ahead, give--I'll receive
the pretty stories that you weave.
I'll hear and marvel at them, so
tell lies to me.
Really, dear, I give you leave,
to spin all the tales that you conceive!
I'll stash suspicion far below
And bury doubts deep in the snow
Go ahead, then, I won't grieve--
tell lies to me.
4/13 - Monostitch
"Insomnia"
Elusion of sleep brings delusions of illusions.
4/14 - Sonnet
"Inevitable"
They say, "Accept inevitable change!
The world moves on, and you must go along!"
The world they see is wonderful and strange,
the rhythms of an ever-flowing song.
They see life as an instant's fluttered glance
Each moment just a snapshot in the mind--
No past or future in the present's dance,
just now and now, and to the rest they're blind.
They say that nothing's ever really true;
it's just a trick of fashionable trends.
Reality's just what we thought we knew
and change will over-write it in the end.
And yet somehow, they cannot find it odd
how firmly they declare the will of God.
4/15 - Cadae
"In the Closed Stacks"
In dusty
stacks,
I find myself
lost
in unsung epics
of ancient magazines and journals--
snapshots
of what lived in the world
before it moved on.
They whisper
to my modern mind
of times often unremembered,
and of lives forever unremarked,
lost in the deluge of years.
4/16 - Double dactyl
"Project Runway Guidelines"
Stitchery, bitchery--
Cry on cue mastery,
spiteful confessionals...
Eye on the time!
Aim for the heights of the
très-fabulosity--
never bore Nina and
try not to whine.
4/17 - Limerick
"First Chair"
There once was a flautist from Perry
who thought that first chair was too scary
So she fumbled her keys
and blew with a wheeze
and ended up somewhere contrary.
4/18 - Acrostic
"Makeover"
Mold me into a brand new thing!
Another day has gone by, another
killing of hours.
Erase the wasted time,
or write it over,
verse and line,
every second, every bad choice,
removed forever.
4/19 - Opposites Day
(NaPoWriMo prompt; write a poem that is line-by-line opposite of a known poem, in this case, "Ozymandias," by Shelley)
"The Digital Shift"
I know a native of the modern world,
who says, A tiny, limbless speck of light
floats above the ocean. Far away, in heaven's vault,
half-revealed, a glowing face rises, its smile
and dimpled chin and grin of warm servility
whisper the alien dreams of its creator
which doesn't yet live, but pushes from this fragile thing--
the mind which beckoned them and the soul that starved.
And in the air, the invisible voice whispers,
"My name is Nobody, servant of servants,
Look away from my works, my dear friends, and rejoice!"
All around, the world created grows, around the idea
of that tiny flicker of light, contained but ringed
by all the woven networks she commands.
4/20 - Nonnet
"Rules"
They scoff at rules, those hidebound relics
of a much less enlightened time,
a time of limited acts
when men were bound by words
instead of guesswork,
and understood
the cryptic
deadly
rules.
4/21 - Décima (stanza)
"The Little Woods"
The little woods beside my grandma's house,
between her kitchen and the neighbor's place,
could serve as jungles, forests... wild space,
where I could creep as quiet as a mouse...
but oh, the dragons and dark wizards I would rouse!
With friends I'd tiptoe quietly past the leaves
of deadly bushes planted 'neath the eaves,
their branches full of poisonous ripe fruit.
The forest floor, a trap of tangled roots
was all I needed then to just believe.
4/22 - Haiku
"Library"
Once there were places
for silent contemplation
now long forgotten.
4/23 - Dodoitsu
"Unplugged"
I do not care for children
sitting in rigid, straight lines
waiting to be entertained
by shiny strangers.
4/24 - Tanka
"Undesired"
From the beginning,
crying out to empty space,
always undesired,
she waits for the silent voice
that speaks of revelation.
4/25 - Free Verse
"Cleaning Up"
Here is my life in piles on the floor,
huddled untidily,
shivering, waiting for the final blow--
the blast of cold apathy
that waits for all forgotten things.
4/26 - Elegy
"An Elegy in the Storage Cupboard"
Everything was important once.
There, in the corner, the projector...
Oh, a wave of the future!
Drawn objects
handwriting
thrown through the air
dancing amidst the dust motes
that now gather in your tomb.
But film! Oh, film, surely you would last.
A great blur of Technicolor visions
spread out, with matching sound,
to replace dead paper and ink
to engage the minds of the new generation--
so visual, so immediate,
so old now,
so far out of touch
as your burial mound grew around you.
Video was the answer--
history on strips of brown magnet
no threading of spools,
almost no storage
Anything could be put on tape,
anything recorded
The future was here,
and now is gone.
A home for black widows
among the boxes.
DVDs rose, ascendant
resplendent
transcendent!
With extras and Easter eggs--
surely, this was the end
Everyone owned a player
that now sits in its cupboard,
cold.
Because surely--
Oh, surely!--
the next thing,
the real thing,
will last forever.
4/27 - Nursery Rhyme
"Addison Madison"
Addison Madison Lily MacKenzie
had six black cats and a little white hen-zy
When they went down to the green river glen-zy
They sat on the banks to eat peppers cayenne-zy
They cried from the peppers and oh-oh, oh then-zy
They drank up the river that ran through the glen-zy
That day they all caused quite a fury and frenzy
with Addison Madison Lily MacKenzie.
4/28 - Rictameter (space challenge)
"Empty"
Empty--
miles upon miles
of empty, barren space
icy roads turned on dry cornfields
that will smell of fertilizer in spring
when winter's left in fits and starts
and the lake unfreezes
and houses are
empty.
4/29 - Clerihew
"The Odyssey (In Five Seconds Or Less)"
Unhappy Odysseus
was missing his Miss-e-us
But he'd lost his ship so
he stayed with Calypso.
4/30 - Reverdie/Iconograph
"Moth Spring"
