Day 23 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2026 / Stafford 97

Hello again, friends! My poem today is #97 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #462, including last year's Stafford Challenge poem count). Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Try your hand today at your own take on a villanelle, and have the poem end on a question.” Here's a great page on the villanelle: https://poets.org/glossary/villanelle Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a juxtaposition poem.” I'm happy today to present a villanelle on my hometown and its juxtaposition of variations, for example, bringing together native San Franciscans with other residents born elsewhere, including foreign countries. City of Juxtapositions             —villanelle Come with me to the place where I was born — San Francisco. Each night I was soothed to sleep by distant foghorns crooning, “Come with me to Dreamland.” They called out to people foreign-born, “San Francisco can be your refuge, your home. You out there feeling lost and forlorn, come.” Youth moved to the City when I was a teen, to the Haight-Ashbury, and turned San Francisco into a sanctuary. We loved it, too, we San Franciscans, native-born. Come with me to San Francisco? —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Haight-Ashbury District in San Francisco, Cole and Haight Streets. (Photo Source) Today, Alan is also combining prompts, with the juxtaposition of professorial exigencies with what Gotera wants (who is that guy?). Gotera Wants a Poem Every Day Gotera wants a poem every day in April, when I have enough to do, and yet I try to write one anyway, though April, in its headlong rush to May, has reams of paperwork I must work through. Gotera wants a poem every day as if exhausting meetings leave some way for one’s creative side to feel fed, too, and yet I try to write. One anyway he can preserves a preference for play, like Johnny Cash, when he sang “Boy Named Sue.” Gotera wants a poem. “Everyday I Write the Book”—Costello’s songs convey the notion love’s an act of art. That’s true, and yet I try. To write one any way I can, a promise kept, a vow, let’s say (although remaining rhymes are far too few) Gotera wants a poem every day, and yet, why try to write one, anyway? —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Very funny, Alan. Great alterations in the refrains, especially through syntactic manipulation. Thanks for visiting, everyone. See you again tomorrow? Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ