Erasure

Image courtesy of Maniactive

One other thing...Poetry Tow Truck suggested writers try out the erasure feature (as highlighted by Big Tent Poetry) on Wave Poetry.  I did that  - and yes - it was really cool!  The problem was, the poem/writing was created in Flash, which made it very difficult to get a copy of it.  So, with the help of my very computer-literate 11 year old son, I made a screen shot which I saved as a jpeg.  Here's the result, which I called  

Gestures and Appearances:

Oh, the horror! A zombie called Anaphora...

Writer's Island's prompt today is tribute.  The March Challenge is all about horror.  Poetry Tow Truck suggests we work a bit of anaphora into a poem.  I decided to combine all three elements into one poem, because a silly, lazy monster ate my brains.

Oh, the horror...

Image courtesy of Poisoned Rationality

Zombies Don’t Read – A Tribute to Horror Flicks

"Zombies don't read. They ain't hooked on phonics. So give it a rest." ~ Griffin, House of the Dead 2: All Guts, No Glory (2005)

Zombies don’t read, but vampires bite.

Zombies don’t read, but werewolves cause fright.

Zombies don’t read, but ghosts often haunt.

Zombies don’t read, but gremlins will taunt.

Zombies don’t read, but Phantoms are known

to sing opera, while Frankenstein’s prone

to make a new creature who then will proceed

to cause mass destruction, but zombies don’t read.

Zombies don’t read what Stephen King writes.

Zombies don’t read. They threaten your nights.

Zombies don’t read.  The horror remains,

‘cause zombies (like phonics) will just eat your brains.

###

Secret Tricks To Being Competitive

Today was definitely a unique amalgam of prompts!

The March Challenge, in honor of the start of the Iditarod Race, was looking for works about races and competition.  Writer's Island was all about secrets and Poetry Tow Truck wanted us to choose a book and then use the book itself as the writing prompt.

In the spirit of 'winning' (thank you Charlie Sheen!) and all that other good not-so-secret competitive stuff, I'm posting four poems today.  The first two are 5/7/5 Haiku.  The third is an Irish Celtic form called Debibhidhe (pronounced jay-vee) which is a poem of quatrains with rhyming couplets and lots of alliteration.  The fourth (and final) poem is an Envelope Couplet which, although employing rhyming couplets, is actually a 6-line stanza'd poem.

Image courtesy of Picture Book

Dogsled Race

It is oft said, if

you’re not the first in the pack,

the views never change.

###

Image courtesy of Bravo Engraving

Tongue-in-Cheek Competitive Advice

Sure, I have advice for people starting to write. Don’t.  I don’t need the competition. ~Robert B. Parker

Think you might try?  Don’t.

Do we actually need

another poet? 

###

Image courtesy of Writer's Island

Shhh!

Of course I can keep secrets.  It’s the people I tell them to that can’t keep them. ~Anthony Haden-Guest

Secrets passed and secrets sold

are two sorts of secrets told.

Clandestine?  Covert?  Nay.

Secret mysteries?  I say,

“Listen!  Lordy!  I just heard

whisperings.  Wherefore, the word

is that so-and-so did such.

Do not tell. Shhh! Thanks so much!”

###

Image courtesy of Ryan D'Mello

Juggling*

Make bats and balls fly in the air.

Learn the tricks.  It’s in this quair.**

The stance and jugglespace, you’ll get.

Cascading’s also in this set.

So, one ball, two balls - tossed with flair…

make bats and balls fly in the air.

Make bats and balls fly in the air.

You’ll learn how-to; this book will share

High Throw, First Tricks, Over the Top,

Under the leg, The Snatch, The Chop.

Classic Three-Ball Tricks, you’ll dare.

Make bats and balls fly in the air.

Make bats and balls fly in the air.

Juggle clubs, rings anywhere!

With well-timed catch and great upswing,

hey - you can juggle anything!

This book can aid and help prepare -

make bats and balls fly in the air.

*This poem used the book Juggling by Stuart Ashman as its prompt.

**According to Webster’s 1913 Dictionary, a quair or a quire is a synonym for a book.

### 

At the Improv

"Improvisation is haphazard." -Leo Ornstein

'Jazz Improvisation' by Vahram

Indeed, it is.

Today's theme is improvisation.  You know - like extemporaneous speech, making it up as you go, etc.  Haphazard, but fun.

Writer's Island posted the word 'improvise' as today's prompt, and that was my improvisational jumping off point, so to speak.  SiS/Few Miles posted a wonderful picture prompt, which continues the theme here, and finally, Poetry Tow Truck posted a really cool 'beginning and end' prompt in which writers were asked to choose a poem, take the first two lines, list the first line vertically (word by word) on the left margin and then the second line vertically to parallel the first on the right margin - and then write a poem using the two words in each column as the first and last words in each line of a new poem.  (You'll see what I mean shortly.)

Interestingly enough, because of the nature of that last prompt, I did not write in poetic form of any sort for the last poem, but rather, it's a free verse kind of poem (gasp!) since I was (yep, you got it!) improvising.

Improvise

"Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there." ~Miles Davis

Create on the fly,

banish your inner critic

and see what happens.

###

I leapt in the air

improvising flight, like birds

in a sunrise song.

###

Improvisation 10 by Wassily Kandinsky

Improvision

You think, I don’t really know my lines. Not well enough, anyway.  A

'watch time' guard is glaring at you. You feel a bit ghostly

yourself, but you figure

I will just improvise and carry on.

Watch the crowd.  Their reaction is what counts. The…

the…the crowd seems to like you!  It’s an applause garden!

Watcher-dude is also clapping.  Emotion reverberates off each wall,

too.

Take a bow.

###

Where the third poem came from:

By the Round Pond by Wendy Cope, from her book If I Don’t Know

                                         

You watch yourself.  You watch the watcher too –

A ghostly figure on the garden wall.

You	a
watch	ghostly
yourself	figure
you	on
watch	the
the	garden
watcher	wall
too

That last post wasn't enough for one day, so I'm adding a bookshelf, too.

Image courtesy Korianne Speaks

I just found out about another really interesting prompt site called Poetry Tow Truck from my poetry pal, Pamela.

(Like the alliteration?)

Anyway, this site, hosted by Donna Vorreyer, provides some truly esoteric writing ideas on Saturdays.  Today, the exercise was to look at a bookshelf, make a list of 6 or 7 books on that shelf - and then write a draft of a poem using the titles in the list.

I wrote my 'draft' in free verse, which is unusual for me since I normally write in (mostly) rhymed poetic form, but I did that way because it was the only way I could figure out how to make it all work.

An Investment in Fine Art

Ogden [g]nashed his teeth.

He stood and glared

at the large,

somber-toned oil painting

which was hanging

on the south wall

in the old, silent drawing room.

The sisters reluctantly

followed him

into the drawing room

in a nervous huddle.

They too stopped

and stared at the painting -

which Betsy, 

the youngest sister,

had just acquired.

It was simply titled,

‘The Riverside.’

“Shakespeare himself

could have written

a perfect sonnet

about such a masterpiece,”

said Betsy,

in an attempt to explain

her reasons for purchasing

that particular piece of art.

“It was a waste

of precious funds,”

snarled Ogden,

adding,

“There’s a reason Father

made me Executor.

No one in America,

much less anywhere else,

would have spent so much

on this trash!”

“Well, I –

yes I, Toto, like it!”

declared Thomasina,

the eldest sister,

whose nickname

(which, by the way, Ogden despised)

was the same 

as a certain famous

Cairn terrier.

“I like it too!”

exclaimed Midgie,

the middle sister.

“Although, to be honest,”

she continued with a sly grin,

“I would have preferred

a signed manga cel

of something like Nausicaä -

instead of some

priceless piece of

early 17^th century art...

like this.”

Midgie, Betsy and Toto

all giggled

as Ogden stormed

out of the room.

###

The books on my list were:
1.) Ogden Nash, The Life’s Work of America’s Laureate of Light Verse by Douglas M. Parker
2.) The Old Silent by Martha Grimes
3.) The Riverside Shakespeare
4.) The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America
5.) Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind – Hayao Miyazaki

6.) The Sisters – The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell

7.) I, Toto – The Autobiography of Terry, The Dog Who Was Toto by Willard Carroll