Prompt 505

Hello poets,

It’s almost the end of April. To be honest I have been completely lackadaisical in writing. My mind isn’t employed, not here, but in other things. As in life happens. So I guess Barbara’s prompt of “Absent Mind” hits the nail on the head. Perhaps if you have been following her prompts, you could revisit the ones you missed out in June, when your mind comes back in focus. Why June? Because you have another month to muse, or be mused. Muse being the operative word. If you like to backwrite to her prompts go ahead in June.

28) Absent Mind

In May, you could revise the poems you wrote in April. Your rough drafts sculpted into stone. Just look at the poem in question and you will notice superfluous words, lines. Trim, trim. I don’t think one aims for a poem par excellence, but something you deem worthy of sharing. If you end up with a couple of new poems you like or could add value or interest to our pov, thanks to her prompts, you could submit to redwolfeditions@gmail.com
For a prompted poems anthology. Submissions close end June 2024. Anthology targetted for release in July 2024.

Home

The Absent Mind

To have a flounder as a pet was a dream.
A flat fish, blending with the sea floor.
Transplanted to a tank. I said no.
Batshit crazy. Still she longed.
I would not think the worst of her.
Her sweetness of affection, various
kindnesses. The mind isn’t employed
in fish-keeping, and the heart follows
through a door, to another road.
The fish had disappeared.
The dreaming mind is all.

Prompt 504

Hello poets,

I’m glad you guys are still paying homage to poetry. What are the sources of poetry? Do you pluck it out of the air? Well, you do have your sources often memory or something. A prompt such as Barbara’s Day 20 prompt is also legit a source. She asked that you look at another poem for inspo, borrowing a line.
That’s the whole point (prompts) of this prompt-driven anthology that I’m dreaming of. You can read about it here (point number 1).

Home

And here’s Barbara’s prompt.

20) Poem Starting With a Line By ______

And here’s my poem, which takes the first line out of Ruth Stone’s poem. It’s a long poem actually, about a widow. The title appearing in section XX is ‘A Widow’s Song’.

Poem Starting With a Line by Ruth Stone

Crow, are you the widow’s muse?
Do you expect me to wear
the black shawl?
What of this thorn by my side?
I watched the offensive speck of black.
Despoiling and plundering.
My Porter is dead.
Body being dissipated in air.
I sat on my chair eating crumpets.
In the distance, the calla lilies
rocked as a storm approached.

Prompt 503

Hello poets,

I hope you’re enjoying Barbara’s prompts as much as I am. Day 19 prompt is about the narrator. Who can be anyone. The first person voice is the pov. Anyway the first person voice is God in what I wrote. Between the monster and God I choose God.

19) The Eye In The Poem

Divinely Speaking

For years my customary absence would
be replaced by the presence of others,
or other things–trivial pursuits, fresh
adventures, the weather changes.
But this spring you would be brought
to me, to be baptized.
There had been a windstorm.
You found me cleaving to
the hawthorn, in a dream,
suddenly within range, and ran
to a creek that ran beside
the road, water running through
your fingers. Like a stream, things being
eclipsed out as you got older.

Prompt 502

Hello poets,

Day 16 prompt is a lesson on abstraction. Make an abstraction (eg love, freedom, friendship, whatever) particular and concrete, and do not even refer to the abstract word you have in mind, in your poem. Refer to it only in the title.

16) Abstraction(s)

We have about 13 days left in April. Step on your writing game will ya?!

Presience

What was that, she’d asked, in playfulness.
It was a gesture of sorts. When I saw her,
she was always providing, cooking
a meal, carrying on, not hemmed in.
But all that had dissolved in a day,
when she wanted out. Perhaps
she’d already gone to immerse
in the river of Lethe. She’d looked out
over the hill, into the city she’d loved,
could not leave. And the other one,
she would not know, but nay.
She would not live out there,
grey, for the rest of her days.

Prompt 501

Hello poets,

We’re already done with the second week of April. Barbara’s Day 13 prompt is to tell someone’s secret in thirteen lines. It would be a telling prompt. What is the thing that needed telling? It’s hard because it’s buried in the lines. There’s no telling.

A Mended Crack

I wondered if it was something she needed
to go through, to save herself?
All that roaring and danger for
a mended crack. He was lacking, too much
a materialist. She would like to hoist
herself up, to God, to provide.
With luck it could all be managed.
She would be calm and reckless.
With distance she had achieved
a kind of willpower. Like a winter pudding she ate,
relished, till it was coming to an end.
Not a negligible truth–it would wrap all
around her like the smell of lilacs.

Prompt 500

Hello poets,

Barbara’s Day 9 prompt is to write a poem using special knowledge. Do you have special knowledge? Or knowledge special to you? It’s easier to go with the latter, I feel. Here’s the link.

9) What Do You Know?

If you’re feeling bleary eyed already about this daily writing habit, you don’t really have to write daily. Just one in a couple of days would be fine too. That’s what I tell myself. You should smell the flowers first then write about them. Conversely you could also read about the flowers first and then go find them to smell. That means when you read you’re sent on a quest. And when you write, then the quest is related to poetry. Bingo!

Of Azaleas, Rhododendrons and Magnolias

Delving deeper, into azaleas,
rhododendrons and magnolias—
learning what my Chinese name meant
so late in life, romantic and passionate—
you would have knowledge special to you;
knowledge imbued you with something
to hold on to in a fragmented world,
might lead you to think,
isn’t the universe meant to teach you
something; as you learned more
wouldn’t you be more steeped
in the world you find yourself in,
wouldn’t you have thoughts
like a beacon shining a light
on your consciousness, and
wouldn’t you, steadily reading, long
to smell their perfumed notes?

Prompt 499

Hello poets,

Today’s is a Day 7 prompt. So we’re a week long into National Poetry Month. We’re still celebrating aren’t we, by writing?

The prompt is to write a poem using a chosen quotation as an epigraph. The quotations are here.

7) Epigraphical

Here’s my choice.

Nature likes to hide itself
– Heraclitus

That would be man, whose physical
self having fallen off from
an astral plane, would change
with time—shape-shifting from public
to private and to the secret presence,
whose tone, whose depth,
whose light would change
in a mere whisper.
Whose range would sometimes come
out in language, like a poet using
language as a compass
to find God, or meaning,
who is “not all there”,
whose diffidence,
whose jauntiness, is all
concealment, whose connection to
the stars an uninhibition, is
a longing, and a sanction.

Prompt 498

Hello poets,

Are you feeling stuck? Writer’s block? That’s normal. But don’t give up yet.

Day 5 prompt from Barbara is one I like. It is to choose from an index of first lines. From here.

5) The Firsts

Use that as the title, the first line, the ending, the springboard. Altered or as is.
I chose one and used it as the title.

Thank you, my heart

Continuous heat relieved by no rain.
We went out for nourishing soup,
had to burrow in the heat.
We ducked into the aircon
and then once stepped out the
cold would dissipate like flour
coming apart in your hands.

There is a gulf between us, not
least the weather, though that’d helped
with the crops of radishes, leaf
lettuces, onions and bok choy.
All the green and spring-like
full of ordinary delights.
Grateful pleasures were meant to tell.

I watched the New Jersey earthquake
that rocked your world.
Strange and rare it seemed
and no lightness of heart.
An emptiness and confusion
sifting through us like forebodings.
Crystallized into ease and hope.

Prompt 497

Hello poets,

This is a Day 4 Prompt. It’s called the Name Game. Barbara wants us to go to Poetry Foundation and find a title that somehow attracts us. And come up with a poem to match the title. Interesting game.

Here’s mine. I found a title that somehow attracted me. Here is it.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/161658/your-fade-out-is-a-tiny-philosophy-but-no-less-true-for-that

Your Fade-out is a Tiny Philosophy But No Less True for That

To the woman in the green patterned bralette,
Adidas pants with vertical grommets
and matchy green socks peeking out
of your gold sneakers, I say,
your intense devotion to colors
and color blocking skills
is admirable. It shows an insidious
choice, which only some people might notice,
and some might say, an observation not deserving
mention, definitely not a ground for poetry.
Yet isn’t poetry a useful handle for an aesthetic
approach to life’s pleasures?
Or should we constantly look toward
horses feeding, or tortoiseshell cats,
or blackthorns, or holly trees?
I’ll let nature poets have their day.
Weakening at the sight of colors,
made up in the fabric of everyday lives,
not faded but vibrant, stylized,
that can be solace, and poetry yet.

Prompt 496

Day two, and already I’m lagging. Never you mind.

Barbara’s Quickly prompt site (https://imprompt.wordpress.com/) gave us the idea of two things, the thing of which you decide for yourself. Two. A quick trick is to put two and two together. In my case, it’s love and hope, lilies and narcissus.

Are you writing to prompts yet? I know you are. It’s happening. Yay!

Aspiration

She traipsed over to the herbaceous border
which was just by the alfresco table,
cutting off the stems of some flowers to
put in glass vases. I liked watching that.
Often the distant chimes of a church
accompanying a wedding or a service.
Once she had cried–it was so beautiful—
the real reason of which I had forgotten.
They’d host parties out in the garden
or just beyond the pergolas inside the
greenhouse. Her dachshunds which she called
sausage dogs, would grope in the mud
–she’d bathed and groomed them to perfection–
or simply choose a sunbathing spot to lay.
There would be a cake made by hand in a stand,
a chantilly cake with seasonal fruit. Could this be
my little version of heaven to claim, with my man,
clad in a gillet, festooned in love and hope,
climbing into a dark green Land Rover Defender
as I roamed between the narcissus and the lilies?