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 |   Poetry in April -- in celebration |
 This is my Second Book of poems. I may not have eaten the plums from the icebox, but I am guilty of writing poetry without thinking too much, without laboring over words and lines. This Is Just to Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold by William Carlos Williams You, too, forgive me for I only love the writing process; the result is secondary...And please never mind that I am also aping William Carlos Williams's false apology.    From where does the title Beetlebung and Kettlehorn come from? The name Beetlebung and Kettlehorn has to do with ancient whaling practices and Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. During the nineteenth century, because of its dense white wood, the tupelo tree was used in whale oil casks made of copper. Beetle was the mallet made from the Tupelo tree and bung was the stopper in the cask hole. In Martha’s vineyard, the Tupelo tree is still known as the Beetlebung tree, and at Chilmark there, is a Beetlebung Corner, with shops at Chilmark Center, from where roads lead to other interesting points. Kettlehorn, as well as being an ancient surname, refers to a piece of equipment resembling to but much bigger than a shoe-horn, used to stir the hot blubber and separate the fine oil from the denser particles. Whale oil was a popular commodity and, as a fuel, was used for lighting the dark, burning to provide heat and as an aid in cooking. After the whale was hunted, men in a boat cut strips of blubber from the whale's back, tied them together and rowed ashore. There the fat was cut into smaller pieces to be boiled into oil in large copper kettles. In addition there exists kettle corn in Cape Cod which are corn chips fried in kettles and sometimes mistakenly called kettlehorns. For some reason, way back when, the words Beetlebung and Kettlehorn were used together and, at one time or another, were given to shops and other things that go together as titles. I adopted the name for my on-the-spot poetry in reference to the idea of blubber. "Poetry the shortest distance between two humans" Lawrence Ferlinghetti |
| When your arms reach to clouds what do they pick, and do your leaves learn to fly, over time, from spring to fall? Can you shift, if just a little, to shield bird nests from the two-faced wind, and do you fear unruly, half-baked laws of nature reducing bright feathers to rags? Do you have hidden eyes to watch billion suns and moons or ears to hear angels’ wings, and do you feel the upward anguish or earthlings who take refuge under your shade? ----------------- Prompt: Trees |
| I look up with haunted eyes at vagabond, ghost-like clouds drifting on powder blue, and scheming to surprise on a journey in circles with wings widespread, a hawk searches for small prey, a trespasser in a serene morning. Why is it the bright light this day brings must carry undertones of a puzzle grasping a piece of the sky, like the hawk, to make me wonder if you’ll show up in a poem yet unwritten? ------------ Prompt: : Look at the sky and get it into the poem, the sky on April 24 wherever you are! |
| Sudden sirens in the melting night, and on my windowsill, three pots, a flower bowing low, distorted leaves wilting, proof of my flaws. I slide the curtain to see emergency, red lights swirling, turning, in cadence with men running back and forth then a gurney lifted into the van. The window now flung open wide and my need to know what's outside and what is wrong with Mrs. Juditz, even if I didn't take good care of the African Violets she gave me, hobbling through her neatly trimmed lawn this Easter. Afterwards, I lie awake in the night regretting words I wasn't able to say regretting and walking away. What will it be like, the morning without her sight and who knows what else my window will expose? --------------------- Prompt: Put a window in the poem |
| "Doors forget but only doors know what it is doors forget." Carl Sandburg, from Doors When the new year stays behind us, together with new everything, and the fire in the hearth, crystal red, neglects carrying me to you, I can stop searching for you, little by little, on my own. You spilt the Champagne, ripped the trimming from the door hearth smells of ashes This nostalgia is like going to Heaven in the arms of Morpheus and plucking an exquisite wild flower. In the morning drowsiness, I will sigh for such a special flower or even a delicate petal, which isn't in my hand anymore. dew-heavy petals everything's a lukewarm dream hope leaves my threshold When the wind steals my banners with your name on them, I will let my feet grow roots into the ground for holding up sturdier signposts. tangled tongue bleeding, I grow roots in silent rock faith still strong inside Although I tried, I recognize I cannot close that many doors behind me, as you are behind an infinite number of them, and as it must be written on my stars, I shall not divine any success in forgetting. ------------------------ Prompt: Put a door in the poem |
| Crouching on rickety knees, I plant the black lustrous seed in moist sand mixed with peat moss, a piece of its outer covering removed with an apology for peeling off a corner of its secrets, expecting it won’t fear life, for I’ll watch it wake up, an angel unfolding its wings so persistent a green when the sun will peek through the leaves. So what, if I am forcing myself on hope and this seed, perfect and holy, at the threshold of sprouting? --------- Prompt: A threshold |
| "Someone left the cake out in the rain - I don't think that I can take it 'Cause it took so long to bake it - And I'll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo" In the book of clouds, someone's turning pages, making rattling sounds, reminding me of a time I was alone in the city, a pallid, timid toad inside a net, stranded among crowds, splashed on by taxis, while rain rang a thousand parables on sidewalks and at the pier, boats' wails surged, undulating through salty waves, chillier than the icy wind wandering in circles, swirling, to wrap around my washed-out world. ====== Prompt: Rain |
| She insists on winning this race speeding along Bird Road with a self-conscious grin and leaving behind a whiff of Chanel No. 5 the imitation kind. The bus—Miami-Dade Transit to Little Havana— lurches to a halt to let her climb up, as she finally stops at the fare box waving her Golden Passport EASY Card and sighs, "I made it!" leaning on her cane. ------------------ Prompt: Speed, swiftness, something fast or quick |
| remorse, a mountain with a booming roar, lurches forward bounces, snow cascades down syllables in rivers, spinning good byes rushing, splashing from rock to rock staggering, growing with ice, tumbling blind, filling craters devouring crags and valleys then, this wound of silence too painful a thing to turn back still, I look at you once more through the rearview mirror ------------- A poem with 3 natural objects in it (dead or living, but definitely from nature) |
| Once upon a time, as if stuffed into a black body bag, Ophelia was a young bride trapped in a hamlet, behind a contentious kitchen door, scared of the powdery moment when the dough would fail to rise to occasion, akin to her, while pots and pans--statues with warm eyes- viewed the ruins inside a Bundt pan. Now, she is the one with keen eyes seeing through her blood, ignoring the hostile howl of the oven, insufferable foil work of forks and knives, infinitesimal belligerence of appliances, and nothing will ever force her into tight places again. ----------------- Prompt: A poem with 3 inanimate objects in it |
| who could have thought a universe would be born when inner stuff surged up? all this, miracle of leaves in spring deep forests, dark streams vast oceans, snow covered glaciers high cliffs with caves billions of faces like glittering moons amazing what you notice weakness of the human heart its inventory of scars and the end as punishment for our beginning --------- Prompt: A poem about the beginning of something |
| My prince talked to me in his full-moon voice like a bee drowned in its own honey, before the eclipse, before I lost a glass slipper, before the midnight struck in a puff of wind. And when the apparition emerged at high tide, that dark side, smug, rolled words around out of orbit, hard to know why, but bit by bit, I shall build a launch pad to it so I can capture the shadow, the abandoned tomorrow, and confront the dream, for, once, my prince talked to me in his full-moon voice like a bee drowned in its own honey. ======== Prompt:A pressing deadline and a full moon (get both in the poem) |
| No matter how I have flossed like a mad woman, the hygienist gives me an outraged stare with shaming weight, as she jams the thread into soft flesh, blood all over her hands like Lady Macbeth. Slowly, she scrapes and irrigates, and for the way she does all that, she thinks she deserves infinite praise, Yet,she is a humming bird, quite talkative of things far off like the moon, people I know nothing about, a lost woman, her niece, and her winged dreams. Her words ebb and flow, ethereal, to sway the mind toward calm, so I close my eyes and imagine my incisors as pebbles, bone-white, on a beach, sparkling with salt water and hot sun, with the surf, speaking in tongues. And the touch of this magician makes me stick a poem inside my teeth. --------------------- Prompt: Teeth, dental reference, dream of missing teeth... |
| I wonder if there is soul in non-living things like the porch door, as Glenda arrives, donned in Kohl and rouge, inside her Spanks zipped to hold in check her thickened middle. She collapses into the lawn chair next to me, while her mascara runs as she weeps. He has left her, the one fifteen years her junior, “Plus, I’m broke,” she sobs, as the ragged wind bangs at the screens, slamming the door, bashing the latch. I bite my lip and touch her arm, knowing my urgent business has to do with repairing, and since handled on both sides, doors are for entering and departing. ---------------- Prompt: Let there be something broken in the poem |
| While having tea and carrot cake, and watching Jason Isbell on WXEL sing, ”Cause you're a brand new kind of actress,” my nephew phones to say, in June, he’ll show his short film in Festival de Cine de Huesca, and I ask, “What about Elisa?” He says they’ve split, for he has a higher calling writ in his Karma, so he quit with his soul mate since she had other ideas, which reminds me of Ilsa and Rick, and I think, “Play it again, Sam.” The cynic Rick, a patriot? Maybe, but my kudos go to Ilsa, also my sympathies. Imagine making do with the second best and pining for the love of her life with the rest of her being... Then, on TV, Jason Isbell croons, “Come run away with me This ain't the world we signed up for…” --------- Prompt: Cinema; a strongly cinematic poem, a poem about a particular film, or with a film allusion |
| While I was on my morning walk today, the abrupt sky took the color of a gravestone and I ran, but not before spotting the old man two doors down, wordless, blinking into slanting rain as his daughter bullied him to move inside and their schnauzer whined at the end of the leash. In a flash, I recalled his delicate words huge like constellations, from months ago, casting the saga of his wife, long dead since, while he showed me a dried flower, gentle white, in between sepia pages inside his calfskin Bible He said, in essence, with the shift of the wind, wet weather comes, and living turns to a lethal lie, drops fall on the just and the unjust. As I pondered in silence, I understood, this is what happens when the past and present wilt. Rain falls as natural as the sun, as beautiful, too, and at times, making a mess on leaves of grass during our free flight into the wordless. ---------------- Prompt: Include a literary allusion |
| Emilia comes in tiptoeing inside Tim's room with blue wallpaper and dead orchids on the nightstand, while on the living-room's sofa, alarmed at what her son could do, Maud acts as if she sleeps, snoring even. Emilia, bumps into the dresser knocking down knickknacks on the rug unsure of what to do with her hips smelling of another man, while on the living-room's sofa, Maud acts as if she sleeps, snoring even. Emilia slips inside the bed, spilling lies on Tim's sheets louder than anything on the big-town scene, and Tim turns to her in barricaded pain, while on the living-room's sofa, Maud acts as if she sleeps, snoring even. =============== Prompt: Create a tense mood with the poem. |
I sensed your existence before my inner fish crawled out of the ocean, and now, experiencing you gives me wings. |
| You shook the world downed the towers downed the loves plotting our demise in your rabid habits. Just what was its shape, your hate? My pain fed your pleasure. Your pathetic posture with sharp fangs injecting venom tattooed torment in my heart. Inside my mind, I have killed you thousands of times way before the ocean took you. Still, I can't kill you enough, somehow. |
| March 21, spring equinox a grand affair. Remember how, that morning, you woke up feeling younger and smiled, while I wondered about our nest with empty shells and fleeting bird calls? You said our spring would never leave since you could smell orange blossoms, but didn’t two hurricanes, one after the other, take down our orange trees nine years ago? As to balance, we’re on a seesaw tipping either way. I hide behind my facts and words, You hide behind your imagined luck. |
| When Wanda heard the blackbird sing, she was under the slippery elm. A twig snapped, breaking off, then a branch fell and the whole nest, same with the daughter long past her bloom, swept down by the same spring wind. Nothing she could do to save them. As time throbbed in her temples Wanda turned the calendar's page, discovering silence in the old space, illusions, delusions like shards. In clear daylight, I spelled her out, through my neighborly manners, while, whirling above, that blackbird sang. Nothing I could do to save her. |
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