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

For Poem-a-Day, Robert Lee Brewer suggests: “For today’s prompt, write a communication poem. All poems communicate something, I know, but I’m thinking of different ways people can communicate: text message, letter, signs, and even speaking dialogue. Of course, there are forms of communication as well, because people love communicating.” At NaPoWriMo, Maureen Thorson says: “This one is a bit involved, which is why I’m giving it to you on a Saturday. Today, I’d like to challenge you to make a ‘Personal Universal Deck,’ and then to write a poem using it. The idea of the ‘Personal Universal Deck’ originated with the poet and playwright Michael McClure, who gave the project of creating such decks to his students in a 1976 lecture at Naropa University. Basically, you will need 50 index cards or small pieces of paper, and on them, you will write 100 words (one on the front and one on the back of each card/paper) using the rules found here. Don’t agonize over your word choices. Making the deck should be fun and revealing, as you generate words that sound ‘good’ to you. The fact that the words are mainly divided among the five senses should be helpful in selecting words that you like the sound of, and that have some meaning personal to you. For example, my deck contains ‘harbor,’ ‘wool,’ ‘murmur,’ ‘obsidian,’ and ‘needle.’ Once you have your deck put together, shuffle it a few times. Now select a card or two, and use them as the basis for a new poem.” Alan's poem today comes from the Thorson prompt, which he called a "creativity card exercise." The words that were drawn were blow, notch, useless, and whistle. Cornus Ten years have passed, the cherry tree gone after fierce wind, fallen, grazing our neighbor’s house, its trunk big around as a VW bus, and today, the dogwood, its petals not yet pure white, blooms its greenish yellow, precursor to its creamy blow. So crooked, useless, lacking even one firm twig straight for a finger’s length to notch a willow whistle, its trunk has turned as leaves so many summers soaked sun through months of afternoons, from Easter to Hallowe’en, out of the cherry’s shade, its uppermost twig reaching straight as Heaven’s plummet. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Here’s my 100-word “personal universal deck” from the Thorson prompt. . . . I bet this lexicon would be completely different on any other day! cerulean shh run guitar umami funky blue slippery rain splash whoosh vinegar gold purple wine rose wave glass paper tink click oily sampaguita rock vermillion fuck sand perfume indigo bamboo sleep tick gritty molasses kahlua stinky ridged obsidian penis orange thrum silky yellow bass lily skin syrupy kiss vagina wood green lazy sweaty dusty breast shimmy salty venus sawdust emerald mars plastic pussy clang shitty boom violet burny cock dance steel petrichor sperm drive grrr devil whir white careless saturn hiss liberty sour pissy silver earthy aluminum whistle walk dragon bang soil siren cream shake bitter angel pheromone black sweet Probably did this wrong. Too programmatic. Too generic in some cases. Not enough of my bad side, surely. Next time. Here is today’s poem, a curtal sonnet depicting another narrative development in my novel-in-poems, the aswang mother with her aswang son moving to the Philippines. I skipped the Poem-a-Day prompt today, though of course one could maybe see this poem as a communication of the pair’s life transition. I followed the NaPoWriMo 100-word prompt, and I successfully used ten words from my “personal universal deck”: bamboo, oily, orange, salty, sampaguita, steel, sweet, thrum, vermillion, and wave. On the SS Gabriela Silang Mother and son hold hands as the steamship sails outward under the vermillion span of the Golden Gate Bridge, Clara’s last view of the States the same as her first: curveship in orange steel. Pacific sunset again, but this time their destination, anew. Before, Santiago and she had fled. Today, she and Malcolm head for haven. Oily, salty waves the ship’s thrum cuts through presage a sweet sampaguita beachhead,                                     young shoots of bamboo. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] A couple quick notes: the passenger ship is named after a female hero of the Philippine revolution against Spain in the 1700s, Gabriela Silang, called the “Joan of Arc of Ilocandia.” Also, I offer tribute here to Hart Crane, who coined the word “curveship” for The Bridge, his book-length poem on the Brooklyn Bridge. I have long been intrigued with the parallels between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, both trailblazing suspension bridges in major American cities. The word “curveship” appears in the last line of Crane’s poem “To Brooklyn Bridge,” excerpted here from The Bridge. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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