This is the Song – Day 21

This is the Song

This is a song for a sunny day
This is a song for greeting
There is another song for fare-welling
This is a song for many countries
This is a song for the ocean
This is a song for the sky
This is a song for my home and my land
This is a song for the birds that sing
This is a song for the cataract gone
not just from one eye, but both eyes now
This is a song for the music I see
This is the song for a good cup of tea
This is a song and I love to sing

Benita H. Kape (c) 22.4.2021

Notes:

And now for our (optional) prompt. Have you ever heard or read the nursery rhyme, “There was a man of double deed?” It’s quite creepy! A lot of its effectiveness can be traced back to how, after the first couplet, the lines all begin with the same two phrases (either “When the . . .” or “Twas like,”). The way that these phrases resolve gets more and more bizarre over the course of the poem, giving it a headlong, inevitable feeling.
Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like this one, uses lines that have a repetitive set-up. Here’s an example I came up with after seeing this video of . . . a bucket of owls.
Bucket List
Several owls can fill a bucket.
Several buckets can fill a wheelbarrow.
Several wheelbarrows can fill a truckbed.
Several truckbeds can fill a song.
Several songs can fill a head.
Several heads can fill a bucket.
Several buckets filled with heads and owls
Sing plaintive verse all night long.

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They Make ’em That Small? – Day Ten

They Make ’em That Small

Mother always said there’d be days like this in my Junk Drawer Song.
I say a little prayer for you.
What to wear.
Success is a dream not a destination.
My make-up, my candles, my batteries, my comb.
My tiny doll with plaits, her hat and her apron.
Break ups – and a tiny heart-shaped photo stand –
Believe me. A roll of fuse wire for repairs.
I’m still in love with you.
A beaded crystal to hang at my window.
No other, this is my prayer
Along with a prism. My beaded crystal hung –
Run for the bus.
Mother always said there’d be days like this.
Darling believe me, turn up a tiny vase.
And yeah; this dinky remote for the air fan.
(They make ’em that small?) In my Junk Drawer Song.
Now we can chill Together.
I just take my time.
We will never part –
my junk drawer and I.
Run for the bus.

Benita H. Kape (c) 10.4.2021

Song – I chose “I’ll Say a Little Prayer For You”, an Aretha Franklin favourite. Endless things in my junk drawer, (mostly tiny things), including several fridge magnets. Note in my poem all words from the song are in Italics. All the things I found in my drawer were surprisingly small.

Notes:

Finally, here’s our daily prompt (optional, of course!). It’s called “Junk Drawer Song,” and comes to us from the poet Hoa Nguyen.

First, find a song with which you are familiar – it could be a favorite song of yours, or one that just evokes memories of your past. Listen to the song and take notes as you do, without overthinking it or worrying about your notes making sense.

Next, rifle through the objects in your junk drawer – or wherever you keep loose odds and ends that don’t have a place otherwise. (Mine contains picture-hanging wire, stamps, rubber bands, and two unfinished wooden spoons I started whittling four years ago after taking a spoon-making class). On a separate page from your song-notes page, write about the objects in the drawer, for as long as you care to.

Now, bring your two pages of notes together and write a poem that weaves together your ideas and observations from both pages.

It Helps If I Know (Day 5 NaPoWriMo)

It helps if I know

what direction to follow

composing a new song to sing.

Leading me onward or back

Image and sound

brushing by me

a heartbeat, a message,

a ring of roses.

Relive or relinquish:

loquacious the melody

roves in my mind

over a bottle of wine.

Benita H. Kape (c) 6.4.2021

Notes:

I took as my example (not exactly after therefore) Elizabeth Smither’s poem “To a Friend With Osteoporosis”: which is a condition I myself have. However, I found myself wanting to take a happy, positive direction. Hence lots of scratching out, especially in the middle stanza. An exercise I thought would flummox me left me a little deflated at how quickly I got there. But I like. But looking back I am a bit short on line length as per ES. I’m short on time for close of Day 5. And I do like to go within that 24 hour timeframe.

“And now for our prompt (optional, as always). I call this one “The Shapes a Bright Container Can Contain,” after this poem by Theodore Roethke, which I adored in high school – and can still recite!

This prompt challenges you to find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem. If I used Roethke’s poem as my model, for example, the first line would start with “I,” the second line with “W,” and the third line with “A.” And I would try to make all my lines neither super-short nor overlong, but have about ten syllables. I would also have my poem take the form of four, seven-line stanzas. I have found this prompt particularly inspiring when I use a base poem that mixes long and short lines, or stanzas of different lengths. Any poem will do as a jumping-off point, but if you’re having trouble finding one, perhaps you might consider Mary Szybist’s “We Think We Do Not Have Medieval Eyes” or for something shorter, Natalie Shapero’s “Pennsylvania.” “

Viva la Poets: NaPoWriMo, 2016 – Day 7 – Tritina

Viva la Poets, One & Many Tritina Song

Will this be my tritina song?
No reason it should not work.
Rhythm & rhyme, song in good voice.

The melody, the thought, the chord, the voice,
By the end of the day, a poem a song.
A practice, a praise to all poets’ work.

In the new world, the old world, they work,
Geography and accent, a planets’ voice.
Elation as one, then all, join with the poets in song.

Man as beast work, birds sing, small voice in song.

Benita H. Kape © 7.4.2016

Our (optional) prompt for Day Seven comes to us from Gloria Gonsalves, who challenges us all to write a tritina. The tritina is a shorter cousin to the sestina, involving three, three-line stanzas, and a final concluding line. Three “end words” are used to conclude the lines of each stanza, in a set pattern of ABC, CAB, BCA, and all three end words appear together in the final line.

p.s. “late” but sometimes I want to cry when it happens. love to all my fellow poets.

NaPoWriMo 2015 – Day 28 – Write a poem about bridges – Singing to My Dead Mother

Singing to my dead Mother

.

What are the bridges

of your remembrance

a word, a song,

a name.

.

The bridge you crossed,

a great ocean; going

you said,

to the end of the world

when I say his name.

.

Glad you were, that you came;

and now the bridge of research

has uncovered

a mother at last to proclaim.

.

Too late for the asking,

what are the bridges

of your remembrance;

a word, a song,

a name.

Benita H. Kape © 29.4.2015