Window Stay – Day 30

Day 30:  Prompt minimalist poem

 

Window Stay      

 

lost

one small pin

in a strong gust of wind

 

Benita H. Kape © 30.4.2019

Our final GloNaPoWriMo 2019 day.  You will see there are two versions of the poem here. I prefer the first due to syntax.  I messed for ages with the visual and not till later did I realise I’d missed two words. Whether I can reverse that picture above I’m not sure. I just go until I get it right. Cheers to all who have taken part. See you next year. But will continue to catch up on our April writings. ‘Til later.

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We Have the Best of It – Day 29

 Day 29: Prompt, a poem of meditation

 

We Have the Best of It.  

(a meditation on a change of season)

 

There is outside my window a hibiscus bush.

I meditate on this; a few florets, a rich engrossing

red. They become smaller at this time of the year.

 

Though smaller in width the blooms assume

a blowsy show with closer packing of this

their double bloom, for lack of thorn

cannot parade as a rose. Nothing like

the rose either in texture and frills.

Next to it another hibiscus, single

in her bloom and being orange/yellow

more a sister to the sun.

 

I meditate on the survival of these

two sturdy bushes, the alcove

suits them well. They are hardy,

lacking water and nutrient

and never let me down.

 

Only one of these bushes is

in need of pruning back this year.

It’s the red and, as if she meditates

on me, she blooms these several

small but vivid blooms to a lack

lustre sun.

 

I beat the next grey shower, plucking

all blooms that opened for the day;

spent blooms of yesterday I gently toss

at her feet and go indoors to float

a summer brilliance of florets

in a bowl trying not to meditate

on the change of yet another

season. I wait now, a strangely

similar bloom, the camellias

early buds almost ready to form

and will be the next in show.

But today I meditate on hibiscus.

Here sturdy and subtropical.

 

Being on the cusp of things

our season changes are a little sad

but never severe. We have the best of it. a

 

Benita H. Kape © 30.4.2019

Poem Meta: Changing the Dates! – Day 28

 

Day 28: Prompt to write a Meta Poem which is a poem which talks about itself.

 

Poem Meta: Changing the Dates!

 

A charcoal etched date on the walls of a house.

The sad bones of an adult and two children

lying on the floor nearby: the search goes on.

 

The poem is the excavation of

a destroyed city. The poem is

a frightening year, 79AD.

The poem has a struggle as to

which month exactly. And that’s

the reason the poem is interrogating itself.

 

The poem is beauty and rediscovered art

on the walls of the grand houses

of Pompeii.

 

The poem is a ‘maybe’, nothing more

than a scrawl; charcoals’ life use

is limited. Maybe it was a date

set aside for some other reason.

Someone’s relatives coming to stay?

The time some crop or other must be picked?

The poem is not changing her mind.

She has more questions than answers

but she has no mandate to solve this riddle.

 

The poem is the remaining mystery:

Vesuvius and that all important date.

 

Benita H. Kape © 29.4.2019

 

 

 

High Maintenance – Day 27

Day 27: Prompt to write a sonnet. I took Shakespeare’s Sonnet 4, line 8 as my starting point.

 

High Maintenance    

 

So great a sum of sums yet canst not live.

So early in the piece and you are broke.

A girl like her with many charms should thrive.

New this, new that, that which stands bespoke.

 

The smartest clothes, hats, shoes, newest trends;

I struggle to keep up, to keep this girl in style.

She began as she meant to go on, high flying at the week-ends

And when not partying hard, checking out the mercantile.

 

She has never in her life made do; high maintenance.

She tries her best but she cannot do a millionaires’ mile.

While I, it’s true, am trying to introduce some measure of prudence.

I am working very hard at setting up an easy come, easy go profile.

 

So it had to end; it’s been going too hard, too long to overcome.

I can no longer pay her bills; she is too great a sum of sums.

 

Benita H. Kape © 27.4.2019

Cancelled – Day 26

Prompt Day 26: Poem using repetition

It’s been said many times that anything’s up for poetry.  And it is, even when things don’t go as you’d planned, maybe especially when things don’t go as planned.

 

Cancelled  

 

Come Monday I was to have been outta here.

Not so, this coming Monday I stay.

I stay, come Monday morning because

the Doctors have called a strike.

On strike, come Monday morning;

Come it then I’ll be still in bed late.

We were prepared Monday morning,

to travel now everything’s changed.

It was, or would have been a long way

and two nights to stay.

 

Come Monday morning I’ll be waiting.

Another month is now the estimation.

Tuesday was the day the Doctors (now

calling a strike.) Tuesday the Doctors

were to have inserted my stent. Come

Monday I’ve been waiting way too long.

Come Monday probably another month.

 

Benita H. Kape © 26.4.2019

My Song of Spring Beyond all Sadness – Day 25

Day 25: Prompt to write a poem on a season and which mine is a very different way of remembering a particular season.

 

My Song of Spring Beyond all Sadness

 

I read Keats, his poem To Autumn.

How many years ago now

I wrote an essay to spring

using that first line.  Where,

did that come from? I have

no recollection of having

read the poem myself, or

of anyone reading it to me.

But begin the essay that way

I did!

 

I’ll put it down to an earlier life.

You can argue if you like.

 

My English teacher never raised

the subject of the poem but

I do recall his excitement at the essay.

I was what is called, a ‘mature’

student, coming back to classes.

 

Came time to sit the exam

I started; but then I walked out;

that being the anniversary of his birthday –

our little son we’d lost.

 

His hair never soft-lifted

by a winnowing wind.

And then Keats goes on

Where are the songs of spring?

 

My song of spring

was to my infant child;

his sweet smell, the few hours

I held him, his weak cry.

My lips pressed softly to his fontanel.

He was my spring song —

and gone. I want to scream

a tiny wisp of hair never soft-lifted

by a winnowing wind

memories of five senses

and the exam I could not sit.

 

Benita H. Kape © 26.4.2019

 

Day 25: Prompt to write a poem on a season and which mine is a very different way of remembering a particular season.

• Is specific to a season
• Uses imagery that relates to all five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell)
• Includes a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”)

Looking for Sceptres I got Carpet Cleaners – Day 24

 

Looking for Sceptres I got Carpet Cleaners

 

Having no real part in this medieval ceremony,

they though are now recorded; the carpet sweepers.

 

So with respect: first the cloak and then

Her Majesty turned around that all may

see. And now the Sceptre and then the Rod.

And load thus up the crown comes next.

The world for a second held its breath.

 

So long after a Queen looks upon and

has a conversation on the beautiful tools

of her office. Magnificent, even to her.

How much water under the bridges

of the Thames.

 

Watching a video today someone:

(amused no doubt) recounts

how a full  to overflowing Cathedral

awaited the coming Queen to be crowned.

Anything at this stage might arouse them.

And so it did: some movement or other

and eight thousand subjects stood up

while out of the organ loft came

four cleaners with their carpet

sweepers. And here in video,

a medieval ceremony of power

and commitment was coupled

with the extraordinary every day.

 

Not quite the expected scene

of path-sweeping for a monarch

but history has it now

by way of video.

 

Benita H. Kape © 25.4.2019

Today’s (optional) prompt is to write a poem that, like “Dictionary Illustrations,” is inspired by a reference book. Locate a dictionary, thesaurus, or encyclopedia, open it at random, and consider the two pages in front of you to be your inspirational playground for the day. Maybe a strange word will catch your eye, or perhaps the mishmash of information will provide you with the germ of a poem. For what it’s worth, my 1961 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 11, has just informed me that despite “his beauty,” the “profligacy” of the Emperor Heliogabalus’s life “was such as to shock even the Roman public,” while also presenting me with a lovely little line drawing of a variant of heliotrope, the flowers of which are said to smell like cherry pie.

Decided not to do a visual for above today.

The Goat and a Young Boy’s Vanity – Day 23

Day 23  Prompt to write a poem about an animal. And I’ve done too many ‘cat’ poems so that today I chose to write about a Billy Goat. I took a scene depicted both by Captain Cook and one of his crewmen. When I say ‘today’ – (I am late.) Had two goat poem I’d written a while back but it wouldn’t be playing the game to use something so out of date. So here I am, a new poem and quite pleased with it. Research is always fun and exciting. To be late at this end of the month is no shame I feel.

Aboard the Deal Castle 1775 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,  UK)

The Goat and a Young Boy’s Vanity 

 

The father had come to trade. To Captain Cook,

he offered green stone chisel and blades. Cook,

in return, offers this Maori man “many little presents.”

To the man’s young son, a shirt of his own. Now,

with no little vanity, the lad shewed of his finery.

That beautiful proud parading ‘tamariki’ *

swamped in such unfamiliar cloth as to make

some theatre. But theatre, on this ship’s deck,

belongs it would seem to Will the Ram Goat:

and so he rushes the child who is now skid

in dirt and seeking sympathy from his father.

Will the Ram Goat would like it otherwise yet is

restrained while no pity given unto this father’s, (a Chief’s)

humiliation. The crewmen seek only good intentions

and thereby refresh both boy and shirt. Whereupon

that same shirt is wrapped then close in the

thankful father’s possession.

While Captain Cook gifted a few goats to Maori

too soon they were made a meal and that was of little

purpose; breeding may be more helpful. And

so in more devious fashion Cook released the

goats in unpeopled bays. Will the Ram Goat

was likely left on deck. Some goat as returned

to their homeland, England; some as not.

Benita H. Kape © 24.4.2019

* tamariki  =  child or children

Moon in the Grass – Day 22

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that engages with another art form – it might be about a friend of yours who paints or sculpts, your high school struggles with learning to play the French horn, or a wonderful painting, film, or piece of music you’ve experienced – anything is in bounds here, so long as it uses the poem to express something about another form of art.

I often uplift photos my daughter sends me and write poems beside them. However, today I use a photo I took myself. I actually wrote this poem yesterday but find it fits.

Ours’ is an Open House – Day 21

Day 21 Prompt: a poem which incorporates wild, surreal images. Try to play around with writing that doesn’t make formal sense, but which engages all the senses and involves dream-logic.

Picture per Pexels

 

Ours’ is an Open House

 

Trees growing at such a rate they scratch at the window

with a language that says crash, crash; ‘Now let the tigers in;”

one tiger at this window and one tiger over there. What does

a happy tiger smell like? I know what he feels like. I can sense

his deep purring.

 

We open the door, “Come in,” I say to the giraffe who arrived

by yet another way. However, he can’t quite make it. Which, was

a shame said he. And because it was wishful thinking on his part

the roof lifted right out of his way. He was much harder to read

as he now strolled front door to back.

 

The Tigers are laughing, so pleased with events are they.

 

Come back the tigers and I call. But he’s out of here. Crash went

the windows again as the tigers took off after the giraffe.

I thought I knew the smell of fear. But not when it’s a giraffe.

 

“And that,” I say, “is the last time we’ll hold Open House.”

 

Benita H. Kape © 21.4.2019

 

We have neither tigers nor giraffes in my country so this has to be surreal.