Day 21 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2013

Day 21. The card game Blackjack is sometimes called "21" because that's the score that trumps all others. There's the 21-gun salute in military honors for heads of state. 21 is the title of a recent album by Adele. If we put our minds together we could probably come up with 21 21s, but I bet you'd like to get to the poetry. Okay, then. Robert Lee Brewer suggests, "write a senryu. A senryu is like a haiku with less restrictions and different subject matter. It's a 3-line poem with a traditional 5/7/5 syllable (or sound) pattern, and the poem typically deals with the human condition" (Poetic Asides). Maureen Thorson challenges us today to "re-write Frank O'Hara’s poem 'Lines for the Fortune Cookies' . . . the ideal fortune is a one-liner, and one-liners thrive on a very poetic compactness of expression." (NaPoWriMo). I tried to mix the two prompts again, and it was fun to channel Frank O'Hara, but he's hard to top. Hope you enjoy this little ditty: fortune cookie slips that are precise senryu. Fortunes You'll win Powerball but have to share with millions of perfect strangers. Each and every time, your Magic 8 Ball will say I'VE GOT A HEADACHE. A dark, handsome man will hook up with you shortly. He'll be four foot ten. An uncle will die and leave you a huge fortune but the check will bounce. You will find true love, then all the leaves on the trees will fall to the ground. You'll take a long trip then come home and discover it was all a dream. You will be hungry again in an hour so order take-out now. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] The last one is actually a found poem. I got a fortune cookie fortune in December 2012 that said something pretty close to this. Unfortunately I've misplaced that slip. Once, maybe 21 years ago, I got a fortune that plagiarized an entire Frost poem, "The Secret Sits"! Alas, I've lost that one too. I started off planning to write 21 senryu here, but the task was harder than I thought it would be. Nevertheless, the poem is 21 lines. That's enough Day 21 for me. Come on back tomorrow. In the meantime, won't you comment below? Look for a blue link below that says "Post a comment"; if you don't see that, look in the red line that says "Posted by" and click on the word "comments." Ingat, everyone.   ;-) POEM-A-DAY 2013 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30