Sonnet for the Future-Mama’s Warning

Day Ten, final prompt of Writing 201. How did we get to the end so fast? I will miss the class. I feel like I hardly got started with the material, but that’s the way it always is. That means there is more to do, more to write, paint, photograph, and create! Hope you guys have a great weekend. (((hugs)))

 

Prompt: future

Form: sonnet

Device: chiasmus

 

If, in a moment, the future I could see

The earth’s children, healthy, well-tended and fed,

The loveliest flower would overcome all misery,

Garnering finely threaded futures, not futures of fine thread.

‘Tis never for myself concerned am I;

Rather I am grievous over the suffering of mere innocents.

Who doth laugh in the face of tragic moments, look to the sky,

For your power is tendered by the trumpet’s lament.

You will stand with insatiable greed, your greed never filled,

Like Scrooge, the chains will rattle because you lacked righteous vision.

And let me add further concerns for the blood that has spilled:

If you forsake the elderly along with your insensitive base derision,

Only to please the need for more and greater gold, the madness of gain;

You will never rest wisely for lusting after profit, profit not, my friend, from another’s pain.

 

Copyright ©2015 by Susan E. Rowland

 

Oracle of the Pacific

 

Writing 201 Day Nine

Prompt: landscape

Form: found poetry

Device: enumeratio (counting, naming one by one)

 

 

                                                                             Oracle of the Pacific

Little bird in a basket, flying to the sea,

I am an illustrated journal

exploring archetypal imagery;

I am the oracle of the Pacific,

stitching design, twining, splintwork, plaiting, weaving,

beading the light with 1000 spirit guides.

 

Discussion. This was  a free form take on nature/seascape combining basketweaving, oracles, and journaling which are some of my favorite things. Hey, what can I say? You never know what found poetry will bring. Have fun. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ode to a Junk Drawer

 

Writing201 Day Eight

prompt: drawer

form:ode

device: apostrophe (speaker in the poem addresses another person or object)

 

Ode to a Junk Drawer

 

The place where collective clutter is dumped

Why do you get such a terribly bad rap?

Doesn’t everyone have a junk drawer in the kitchen?

I’m most happy to admit ‘tis one in my own life.

Like a place where wayward thoughts and orphaned paragraphs reside,

Where batteries, paper clips, coupons, pliers and chip bag clips hide.

 

Oh little junk drawer, what would we be without you?

When children need an extra unopened toothbrush pack,

Or Dad is looking for a piece of tape and the way to finish a project with glue.

You hold such treasures, I’m always amazed to regard your myriad secrets,

Cleaned popsicle sticks, pens, and a favorite antique sealing wax,

Mom found the perfect tool for the job, right down to some yellow colored tacks.

 

Oh little junk drawer, how you long to be organized with care,

In one fell swoop on spring cleaning day.

We gathered all your contents sorted and arranged so well,

Scissors, a couple of good forever stamps, and a tiny travel pack

complete with comb, nail clipper and emery board,

A gift from Aunt Mildred, I continue to hoard.

 

 

Journal prompt: Do you have a junk drawer in your house? What do your drawers generally look like, if you are willing to share. Write about the contents.

 

 

 

 

 

Prose Poem for Jesse

Prompt: fingers

Form: prose poetry

Device: assonance

 

Meeting Jesse

Sure you had me at the handshake and I glanced at your fingers, the warmth came through them at hello. People tell me at the party that you are single as was I, they love to say your name, Jesse. My heart had been flighty after a decade of fighting. My kid’s dad was bitey; we argued like oil and water. A picky man has skinny fingers, yours were nice and round. You sanded wood with those hands, stacked the wares in your shop. A man of chess, your fingers were firm, slow, gentlemanly, sometimes with an air of authority but I needed what you had and that would be security. It’s not my nature, baby, to be in combat so sure you had me at the handshake. Now the years have made us strong, we survived the tribulations.  When we hold our old hands I’m still basking in the man, because of the name they all loved to say, baby, you had me at the handshake when I met an artist named Jesse.

A Ballad for Rosa Parks

Rough draft

    Day Six Writing 201

Prompt: A heroic, or a heroine-type personality using Ballad

Device: epistrophe

 

Dear children gather ‘round and let me sing you a ballad

For certainly now’s the time to be saying,

She was born on the fourth of February 1913

And would help change the course of the world, oh sing praises,

      She would change the course of the world.

 

Now people would talk about the bus ride that day

When Rosa’s finely-done job served her rest,

A bullying bozo tried to push her around,

But she said no and changed the course of the world, oh sing praises,

      She would change the course of the world.

 

Now kids, don’t ever let the story be ill-related

About how Rosa Louise stood her ground,

When her last straw was tested, she looked the devil in the eye,

She said no and changed the course of the world, oh sing praises,

      She would change the course of the world.

 

Now let me say it out loud all my brothers and sisters

Lest the month of Black History quickly pass,

It’s time to sing the ballad of a lady who gave us courage

She would change the course of the world, oh sing praises,

     She would change the course of the world.

 

The important day was not something she’d  planned, my friends

Her personality was pious, devoted to others,

However when the brutality of Jim Crow could n’ere be avoided

She would change the course of the world, oh sing praises,

     She would change the course of the world.

 

So it is time for my ballad to come to an end, dear people

And should you travel to Alabama some day,

You might want to take a look at the sun on the streets,

She would change the course of the world, oh sing praises,

     She would change the course of the world.

 

© Copyright 2015 by Susan E. Rowland

 

 

 

A Wayward Leaf

 

Prompt: fog

Form: elegy

Device: metaphor

WordPress Writing 201 Day Five

 

 

A Wayward Leaf

 

You appeared as a wayward leaf

Outside my window whispering “time is a thief.”

How you disappeared so quickly, my friend,

You died during heavy rains of confusion, a Piscean end.

 

Yet in the misty, watery, bayside moorings,

I knew you had suffered and cried in the mornings.

We knew all you ever wanted was a family of sweet kindreds,

Yet the anxiety bottled up blasting inside your head.

 

I wept at the injustice day after day,

Thinking about the wolves that  kept you at bay.

They came up with all kinds of psychological labels,

It was much too late; you  longed for a happy-ending  fable.

 

The lightest, most delightful red ruby hummingbird

Caused gaiety and laughter, uttering not a word.

How could it be that you had to so quickly depart?

And leave us to wonder if you ever knew your own heart.

 

Came a glowing cherub, the  angel of deafening fate,

A thrift store treasure found during my melancholy 1998.

Little friend, I often wonder if a fairy tale had been written,

Could it have saved your life, instead of you being bitten?

 

When, at summer’s finest end, the leaves do fall,

I stop to pick them and ponder it all.

The things that delighted our senses were many,

Like googley-eyed frogs, blooming roses and the shiniest penny.

 

If you are reading this, over my aging rounded shoulder,

Kiss now your loved ones, savor each pebble and boulder.

Give me a sign please, just one in the evening

And let me know again that you knew you were leaving.

 

 

 

Copyright ©2015 by Susan E. Rowland

 

Journal prompt: write a no-holding back elegy (see above) or page about a death or a love. This poem is one of a series that is emerging on my friend and co-worker Jocelyn who died in 1998 from an aneurysm. She was only 38 at the time. She loved nature and collecting pretty leaves, and anything with googley eyes. She was born in Nashua, New Hampshire and passed away in San Francisco, California. We both lived in a small rural town about two and a half hours north of the Bay Area. Her husband Pete, died six months before her after a long illness.

When I think of my friends who have crossed over I can smile again. I look at death differently. They want us to carry on and to be happy.

I am not posting a photo of her here, rather I’m posting a picture of the things she loved.

The Condor

prompt: animals      form: concrete poetry   device: enjambment

Condor

majestic Andean kuntur and Spanish cóndor flies enlightening the sky with each lifted wing through windswept air is free, free free                                                         because

it survived man’s leaden pollution.

This was a really tough assignment. Concrete poetry is intense. I’ll be working on learning that in the five year plan. It’s going to take some time. On to the next project.

I wanted to make the words look like the condor, but that is going to take some skill. I don’t know what is wrong with my WordPress format but it is really frustrating to figure out the technology. Someone told me Word doesn’t copy and paste well into the online format. Well that’s  no fun. Who’s in charge here anyway? No art for you guys tonight, sorry.

Plus I can’t stand this font size. Going to sleep, kindred spirits and fellow poets.

Over and out!

 

 

 

An Acrostic Internal Rhyme about Trust

 

 

   Assignment for WordPress class: prompt- using the form of  acrostic poetry   and the device is  Internal Rhyme 

(Please excuse the wily coyote format)

                                                                                            

Later or soon, I had to change my tune

Over from sadness to gladness then to

Veracity and tenacity

Ever, forever, is  love and trust, to believe in the good, I must, I must.

 

Journal prompt: study the terms acrostic poetry  and internal rhyming and see what you come up with.  Then try writing a poem using internal rhyming. Combine them.  Do you like to play with words or are you more interested in content?

Discussion: I am having so much fun learning new things in a WordPress class. Aren’t you just so interested?

Moral of the story: It’s never too late to learn about writing and creative expression!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a Young Spirit Named Sue

 

Writing 201 _Limericks

There was a young spirit named Sue

Who loved to bring joy to a few.

She sang and she danced

And when happy she pranced,

So that’s how she beat back the blues.

 

There was an old man named Clyde

Who never ate salads,  he just fried.

When the potatoes were done,

All the guests would run,

He’d simply tricked them so his eating he’d hide.

 

There once was a classy woman named Jane,

Who spent too much time on the plains.

When the suitors came ’round her

They never could find her

She had left all the chaps in the rain.

 

There once was a dapper named Stan

Who couldn’t make peace with his clan.

His friends all went a kilter,

Because he simply had no  filter

So Stan had to shape a new man.