To stay on the poetry theme, I’m going to share a few of the poems I wrote during Robert Lee Brewer’s April 2014 poem a day challenge. This year he asked a daily guest judge to determine each day’s winner. I haven’t heard any results yet, but no matter. I feel like a winner just having produced thirty poems during the April challenge.
Day 7
Write a self-portrait poem.
Two Self-portraits
Dorianna sits lonely
and forlorn in my attic.
Her wrinkles deepen
her liver spots multiply and enlarge
her hair grows dirty white, straggling
down to cover her sagging breasts
that splay over her bloated belly.
The joints of her hands swollen,
stiff, grow more immobile
by the day.
All the while I live downstairs.
My face clear, almost devoid of age,
my figure svelte and supple,
my legs always yearning
to keep moving.
Here I sit tapping my fingers
quickly on the keyboard
to keep up with my racing mind.
I wonder when
Dorianna and I will meet.
Our son Paul who died in 1999
Day 16
Write an elegy.
You’re still there up on the mantle
almost fifteen years later
Your face is turned toward the camera
while your body looks the other way.
You wear your usual wry closed mouth smile
and white Gap tee
your hair, buzzed just right,
the color of rust.
And you show us my favorite part
thick brows over the ice blue
Of your eyes
After fifteen years I’ll never forget those eyes
The other parts: your music, your candlesticks,
your toy cars, your Buddha pose
we’ve integrated into our lives.
But your eyes, they are gone
along with you.
Oh, how I miss you
and those eyes.
Day 18
Write a weather poem.
Weather Girl
I watch the weather news
from the elliptical at my gym.
Every morning a young woman
with long flowing hair
and Paint the Town Red lips
stands in front of a map pointing
here and there to indicate
cold fronts, heat waves,
tornado or hurricane paths
or whatever bizarre weather
the teleprompter has told her to report.
Here on the West side of the states
it’s always the same.
No rain, boring sixty
to seventy-five degree temperatures
and maybe a few clouds or fog in the morning.
She’s always the same too.
She’s bosomy
She’s got legs up to here
and a waist I could wrap my hands around.
She also has gorgeous buffed arms
that fill me with jealousy.
No matter how hard my daily workout
mine just flap and bounce
like kimono sleeves in the wind.
Okay. That’s enough for now. I’ll share some more in a couple weeks.
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