Day 30 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2024

Well, last day. Let's end with the Day 30 blog intro from that great year 2013: Day 30. One of the hallmarks of my "teenagehood" was the slogan of the youth movement of the '60s: "Don't trust anyone over 30." This turned out to be a severe irony of youth because all those people eventually turned 30 (who'll you trust then, Mac) and surely most of them are now double 30. Mick Jagger, for example, will be turning 70 soon. Who'd a-thunk it? He's still doing live performances with the Rolling Stones but now keeps a tank of oxygen just offstage so he can keep up his energetic on-stage persona. Good ol' Mick, now 80, still performing with the Stones. Probably still got that tank of oxygen handy! And now the last April poetry prompts for this year. Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo suggestion: “Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend, as in Claire Scott’s poem ‘Scheherazade at the Doctor’s Office.’” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's Two-for-Tuesday prompt: 1) Write a The End poem, and/or . . . 2) Write a Beginning poem. After all, endings are just opportunities for new beginnings, and beginnings tend to be the first step on the path to future endings (and so the cycle repeats).” Today, I'm writing a terza rima haiku sonnet to finish off a poem I've been working on for some weeks. My next book of poetry will be titled Dragons and Rayguns, and I have been trying to write a definitive raygun poem for that collection. Today's poem is the third section of "Time Lord Thief," which imagines a Gallifreyan cat burglar of rayguns, wily as Doctor Who, but not the Doctor himself. This poem merges the three prompts: the speaker likens himself to Loki, the Norse god of thieves, the poem tells of the beginning of the character's interest in rayguns, and then the speakers brags of his current thieving skills, his end of sorts. The form terza rima haiku sonnet is composed of four haiku-shaped 5-7-5-syllable stanzas rounded out by a 7-7 couplet, rhymed in interlocked terza rima: aba bcb cdc ded ee. I invented this form in the late 1970s and have written quite a few here during these April games. Time Lord Thief       1. I’ve had an interest in rayguns since I was five, when I saw my first. Father shot a live bird dead, right between the eyes. A needle hole gave the lone hint of why the bird had died. I was hooked. Some years later, I began to collect rayguns, from the famous and infamous. Intrigued by how anyone could end a life so quick, on command.       2. I tried to visit many warriors and spacemen’s chronotopes — planets and ships — for a chance to steal their weapons. Phasers hijacked from Captains Kirk, Picard. Blasters from Han Solo, Chewbacca. And Marvin of Mars — his trusty Acme pistol. Paralyzer gun made by Doc Zarkov for Flash Gordon (once Tarzan). My TARDIS filled with rayguns.       3. Friends, my life has stood — a loaded raygun, fully charged and ready, good for battle, truly primed. On Earth I’m like Loki the Trickster, wooly, wild, ghostlike, smoky. I drift like the breeze; you won’t see me, way low key. That’s how I’ve purloined these celebrity rayguns, magicked and siphoned in mystical elegance. I’m gone. And so’s your raygun. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Space Pilot X Ray Gun made by Taiyo (1970s) I had toy rayguns similar to this when I was a kid. Well, friends, there we go. Thirty days, thirty poems. Thanks for reading this month. See you next April! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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