Possible You

Composed 2/27/14
Description: My LAST assignment for Writing 201: Poetry. Our final challenge was a sonnet about the future using chiasmus. I struggled and struggled about whether to go funny about future inventions or serious about the problems my whole generation faces (being forced to choose a career at a young age mixed with dreadful uncertainty about finding work, etc.)… but, in the end I thought, hey, it’s a sonnet. Let’s make it about love.

I don’t know if I’ve seen your face
Or heard sweet whispers from your lips
Likely I’ve not beheld your grace
Touched your hand, let slip a kiss

You’re not a shadow of my past
Nor a friend who walks beside
Instead, the sun in which I bask
Steady at the horizon’s line

My future’s filled with my unknowns
Though I plot and scheme to picture each
But you’re not a thing to plan or grow
You’re a questionable concept not surely reached

So I dream of a possible you each day
Of a possible you I dream and pray

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View From a Bedroom Window

Composed 2/26/15
Description: For Writing 201: Day 9. Found poetry about landscape using enumeratio.

This one posed a challenge. Found poetry is extremely limiting; however, I understand that heightens creativity! My problem is I get stuck trying to use a meaningful “found” medium. I finally decided to describe the view from my bedroom window using the books from my bedroom bookcase… Thus, this found poem using book binds.

down
ever a gothic dream
a ghost dance
a white journey
night story

time changes
the woods web mysteries
ever

 

Books referenced: Watership Down (Richard Adams), Ever (Gail Carson Levine), Gothic Dreams Steampunk (Henry Winchester), Ghost Story (Jim Butcher), A Dance with Dragons (George R.R. Martin), White Night (Jim Butcher), The Time Machine (H. G. Wells), Changes (Jim Butcher), A Week in the Woods (Andrew Clements), Charlotte’s Web (E. B. White), Five Classic Murder Mysteries (a collection of Agatha Christie)

For Emergencies (mostly)

Composed 2/25/15
Description: For Writing 201: Day 8! An ode using apostrophe and a drawer theme was my challenge for this day. I wanted to write a serious ode, because the last ode I wrote was about fruit loops, I believe… But, in the end, that didn’t happen. However, it rings very true to me… and hopefully to some of you.

When mountains of stress fall upon
When friends betray and lovers reject
And bodies curl with symptoms ill
There is only one comfort that truly succeeds
In dulling the sorrow, the anger, and grief
It breaks and melts troubles away
It sweetens the most sour of days

Oh, open for me, dear drawer!
Reveal to me my life sustainer!
Let me see
Let me taste
My chocolate

Fingers

Composed 2/24/15
Description: For Writing 201: Day 7. The theme was fingers, the form prose poetry, and the device assonance.

The prose poetry bit turned out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. This perhaps stemmed from my constant indecision as to where to take the theme. In the end, I settled with this, which I am fairly pleased with. Though, I think my favorite poem about fingers/hands will for a long time be the one I wrote about books.

My lips release sounds clipped for consumption. My fingers confess the words of my heart. My lips filter and lie. They provide alibies for the desires of my heart. My fingers lack such constriction. Instead they dance and fly. They run full out. My fingers are the connection between brain and heart; they are my most vital artery.

Do you want to know me? Forget the sounds I make. Read the ends of my fingers. There you will find me. Do not speak your love; I know lips lie. Instead, lace your fingers in mine and never let go.

The Legend of Aang

Composed 7/23/15
Description: Running a tad late on my Writing 201 class this week! Yesterday’s assignment just hit me when I was, well frankly, POOPED. I just collapsed on the couch after work. Didn’t move. Watched the Oscars. You know how it is.

For this assignment we were asked to write a ballad honoring a hero while using anaphora/epistrophe.

I decided to write about one of my biggest fictional heroes (Aang, if you hadn’t guessed), which seemed fitting since the Avatar franchise just hit its 10th anniversary a few days ago! This show is, seriously, one major reason I started writing. If you don’t watch it, you should. Seriously. It’s that good.

Anyway, here is my tribute to Aang! I like to think of it as an old song sung in that universe. 

He was the boy who left
The boy the ran into the rain
The boy who fell into the sea
For a generation unseen

He was the boy who came again
Melted, as the world caught fire
Who journeyed far to make a change
For the good he’d known before the rain

He was the boy who gathered friends
Who held their lives and advice dear
Friends who helped him conquer sins
The fire of greed that sparked within

He was the boy who saved us all
Despite the worry, despair, and fear
Showing even gentleness
When the fire he put to rest

He was the boy who left
He was the boy who came again
He was the boy who gathered friends
The boy who saved us all
Wisdom and power so great
It inspires us even now

Glory Days

Composed 2/19/15
Description: For Writing 201: Day 5, which tells us to write an elegy using fog and metaphor.

Thinking about the past and fog together reminded me of dementia, about which I have ever-increasing experience.

Did you know her in the glory days?
When she smiled that Hepburn smile?
When she danced to Frank Sinatra
And flirted with the navy boys?

Did you see her marry on a whim?
Rub the growing life inside?
Fretting over baby books
And shopping for baby carriages?

Did you see her raising four young boys?
Commanding their whos and whats and whens?
Sending each off with a bride?
Then Tuesday nights with girlfriends and bridge?

I never saw her this clearly
No, I only see her in the fog
Sometimes she reaches out
Sometimes I catch a glimpse
But the fog pulls her back in

Only you remember the glory days
So cherish every memory
Because once she stepped into the fog
They weren’t so certain
They’re mostly gone

Kitty Cat

Composed 2/18/15
Description: For Writing 201: Day 4, that challenged us to write a concrete/shape poem using an animal theme and enjambment.

My animal inspiration came from the cute little fluffy thing that I share a house with. Shape poems can be challenging, but I hope I succeeded with this one!

What It All Boils Down To

Composed 2/17/15
Description: For Writing 201, Day 3, which asked us to compose a poem with the theme of trust, in a form that utilizes an acrostic and internal rhyme.

These themes seem to strike me on perfect days. Today I spent a fun day with my best friend, with whom I share the most enviable of friendships, I think. So I wrote about our friendship, largely drawing inspiration from the rhyming of “sister” and “whisper,” which I thought of quickly once I decided to write about her. The acrostic was harder, since I had a good poem before adding it, but I did end up using the now-beloved though recently discovered reverse-acrostic (in which the acrostic is at the end). After all, what does friendship all boil down to at the end?

Sister, our whispers shout
Encryptions in levels ever deeper
Secret novels of joy, what pains me and you
And with an eye, with smiles
We know to never speak out

The Journey Back

Composed 2/16/15
Description: Writing 201: Day 2. The Challenge: a journey theme in limerick form with alliteration.

Today’s poem was inspired by my snowy commute (to and from) work. Not sure I succeeded much with alliteration, but I had to change my rhyming choices so much, I didn’t much care to make more of an alliterative effort afterwards! 

Light flakes heaped soon into domes
As I nervously drove through the foam
I’d let out a breath
When the brush of my death
Occurred one minute from home

Forgotten

Composed 2/15/15,
Description: Wow, is it the first day of Blogging U’s “Writing 201: Poetry” already? Well, I suppose it seems a bit earlier for me; you see, since I am located in the mid-west, I get these assignment a few hours before the “official” day-of. But I am definitely excited to get started!

Today’s assignment combo is water/haiku/simile, which made me happy enough! I am, of course, no stranger to haikus (e.g. a, b, c, d), and, in fact, my most popular poem ever is a haiku!

I was struck with an idea rather quickly. Likely, this was heavily inspired by the Bible study I was working on when I received the assignment email… And, for me anyway, it is still Sunday, so I guess it’s appropriate that my water-themed haiku with a simile is spiritual in nature…

The puddles ripple
In my wake but like God they
Soon forget my steps