With Thanks to Clyde Long for Naming That Title & 3 Words!
It’s been the same, old thing, year after year:
You mope around, all gloomy and convective,
grow turbulent with variable shear…
Learn more about the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project here
With thanks to Matthew & Cameren Harper for Naming that Title!
Having risen well before daybreak hitched
the Silver Bullet Airstream to the SUV stashed
the buck knife beneath the driver’s seat & crept…
Learn more about the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project here!
With thanks to Robert Okaji
Another death hoax? Gee, how original…
Learn more about this project here
To submit, or not to submit–that is the question:
Whether ’tis wiser to pay another
Reading fee (speaking of outrageous fortunes!)…
I’ve really done it now… Starting today, for the month of May 2017, I will be participating in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge—a program that both raises funds for a non-profit champion of the literary arts, and provides an online platform for poets to showcase their humiliat-er-heroic efforts to take their writing practices to new, poetic heights—which means that I will be relying on a month-long, panic-induced adrenaline surge to compose a new poem each day for 30 days!
But wait…there’s more!
In order to make my poetic endeavors as fruitful and rewarding as possible for all involved (because, face it, I will involve you, one way or the other), and to encourage your generous funding of a cornerstone of literary excellence in the independent publishing industry, Tupelo Press, I hereby offer these valuable incentives for DONATIONS in the following amounts:
$15: Commission a Sonnet! Shall I write of Rainbows? Broccoli? A Colonoscopy? Porcupines? A Holiday or Event? Your wish is my command (as long as it won’t get me arrested)!
$15: Specify 3 words for me to include a poem. If it’s Google-able, it’s fair game!
$15: Name that Title! You provide the title, and I’ll provide its poem in an unspecified format (probably free verse, but it could end up being rhymey and/or metrical). If you can think it up, I’ll give it my best shot to do it justice!
$25: Combo Deal! Choose any two of the three options (Sonnet and Words, Words and Title, or Sonnet and Title).
$35: Best bang for your buck! Combine all three options!
Donate Here , then submit your assignments to me via my email . Your requests will be honored in the order in which they are received.
$Any Amount: Express your support for this worthy cause at your discretion! Your vote of confidence in me (and in the poetic arts) will be of enormous help!
Thank you, Everyone, for your support and enthusiasm as I take on this unprecedented (for me…) challenge!
‘Twas feckish, and the irkly grobes
Did fark and fistle in the slade;
All dingly were the rectiprobes
And the dampnuts updrade.
“Beware the Trumplewock, my friend!
The bigly mouth, those puny mitts!
Beware the Tweet bird, and off-fend
The cronious Perkletits!”
She packed her poisal voice and went:
Fat chance the vapid imp she’d spare—
So quivered he ‘neath his Cheato tree,
And feebly cried, “Unfair!”
And, as the greelish light grew pale,
The Trumplewock, with wits of wood,
Came grabbling through the femly vale
Because he thought he could!
Eins, zwei! Eins, zwei! And quick as pie
The poisal voice sliced fierce and true:
“Go flay yourself, you mawkish elf,
And burn the residue!”
The Trumplewock would rue the day
He left his diddlepot of lack.
The frankish words would haunt him ‘til
He went galumphing back.
‘Twas feckish, and the irkly grobes
Did fark and fistle in the slade;
All dingly were the rectiprobes
And the dampnuts updrade.
Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s unmatched feat of “glorious nonsense,” JABBERWOCKY.
My poem, “Prologue to My Birth,” is up at esteemed editor, translator, poet and artist, Bonnie McClellan’s 2017 International Poetry Month Celebration! Bonnie will be featuring a poem per day for 28 days following this year’s theme, “Neural Networks: The Creative Power of Language.” I hope you’ll enjoy following this rich, diverse, international network of creative voices. Thank you for your support!
I am participating in the January 2017 Open Mic on Words and Feathers. Please go to the link provided to hear a rendition of my poem, “Anatomy of a Fustercluck,” which was recorded with help from my son, Matthew.
Many thanks to Crow for hosting this event!
Anatomy of a Fustercluck made its first and only prior appearance on Rattle magazine’s website in February 2016.
It’s a new year. We’ve all got these feelings still building up inside us like moisture inside a kernel of popcorn If we don’t let them out soon, POP! out insides will be outsides and no amount of butter and salt will make it better.
I’m here for you. The January 2017 Open Mic is now open for you to record your poems/songs/rants/diatribes. But please, no money-making schemes.
View original post 247 more words
I am a pink rose petal’s pale glow
black ash tamped in furrows
between the breath of the living
& the souls of the dead
the dawn’s blush unfurling over sand dunes
& seagulls soaring on thermal spirits
of iodine salt & shellfish
& sometimes scattering in the wind
I can’t find where everything else ends & I begin
Now rising from the morning hush this cloud of me
speaks to the red tail hawk perched on a streetlamp
& tells her I’m fine because I’m still not sure
how to talk about not being fine
I am an instar trying to be
the clearest version of myself to sculpt
a final skin of lucent crystal
so that when you come to see my cinder eyes
glinting diamond dust I will be
the embered dusk bleeding into the sea
& you will know the truth of me
A previous version of this poem first appeared in Sixfold magazine, winter 2014.
They creep along the crease where plaster’s link
with geometric terra cotta inlays
slips beyond the statutory pane’s oblique
illumination Squalor’s dreg-lined byways
evince these shadows’ huddled histories
of furtive ventures through the crevices
where nights yield to darkening that sullies
the dark & dank spore-stippled surfaces
despair the light of noon to bare their scourge
No teakwood bed nor wicker chair will mask
depravity as Geishas deftly forge
refinements to obscure the blights of dusk
What’s bent by vice yet breaks for dearth of rest
& makes its bed with vermin as needs must
SLHARPERPOETRY 