Friday, April 2, 2021

Day Two ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2021


Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today’s prompt, I want you to answer the question, ‘What does the future hold?’ Then, make your answer the title of your poem and write your poem. Your answer could a general idea about the future like ‘Robots Will Rule the World’ or a more personal thing like ‘Veggie Pizza and Sweet Tea.’ Even if it’s not in your title, I’m hopeful the future holds a lot more poeming.”

Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “In the world of well-known poems, maybe there’s no gem quite so hoary as Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken.’ Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about your own road not taken — about a choice of yours that has ‘made all the difference,’ and what might have happened had you made a different choice.”

Alan’s poem today addresses the NaPoWriMo prompt, speculating about the speaker’s “own road not taken.”

Willi

My high school German teacher
decided I should earn
an MBA. I’d be rich,
he thought, a happy man
in my hometown, all the banks
inviting bright young men
to keep the books on others,
count their worth, hold their deeds,
and live a ledgered career,
count their wives and children
as assets, join big churches
and make it all balance.
If I had realized then
that the girl I would write
poems every single night
for was reading them all
to her boyfriend just for laughs,
then I would own the bank
that crushed the competition,
buy myself some judges,
put some fool in the senate,
and then despise myself
just as my cousin Bryan does,
who took that man’s advice
and had no better nature.

—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]

I am writing today’s poem using both prompts, but not vis-à-vis my own life. As some of you may know, I am writing a novel-in-poems about aswang, mythical Philippine monsters. Several of the poems have appeared as April compositions in this blog over the last few years (to read them, click here). You can also read ten of these poems in the Making the Novel website here.

In the plot of the novel so far, two aswang lovers, Clara, a vampire, and Santiago, a weredog, move from the Philippines to the US where aswang are not known, and try to live as ordinary humans. After they have a son, Malcolm, who turns out also to be an aswang, Santiago fights in WWII and is killed. Eventually, Clara works as a horticulturalist-in-training, concentrating especially on medicinal plants. Today’s poem — a triolet — picks up there, where Malcolm, a young man, has just been told by his mom that they will be returning to the Philippines.
 
Malcolm on Going to the Philippines with Clara

Mom and Dad have been this way before
but for me it’s a trailblazing path.
Never been to the Philippines where
Mom and Dad were born. But soon we are
going “home,” says Mom. Where she can share
with people her life’s knowledge and myth.
Mom and Dad have been this way before
but without me. Now it’s my true blue path.

—Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]

Finally, speaking of triolets, there’s a board game called Triolet, I discovered today, which looks like scrabble but with numbers instead of letters. Might it be a “word” game for mathematicians? A 3D sudoku-of-sorts? Anyone played it? Or know of it? Tell us below, would ya?
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!

Ingat, everyone.   


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1 comment:

Thomas Alan Holmes said...

It's odd how I remember my German teacher from high school. He was a fine man, and I still respect him a great deal. And, I have to admit, he was sure I could have made a fine living with an MBA. I never saw him again after I graduated high school decades ago, and I wonder what he would have thought of what I turned out doing.




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