Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “[T]ake the phrase ‘Get (blank),’ replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles include: ‘Get Smart,’ ‘Get Incredibly Overwhelmed by the Beauty of Spring,’ and/or ‘Get This Poem Written.’”
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt today is called “Junk Drawer Song” from the poet Hoa Nguyen. First, listen to a familiar song and take notes about it, "without overthinking it or worrying about your notes making sense. Next, rifle through the objects in your junk drawer [and] write about the objects in the drawer . . . Now, bring your two pages of notes together and write a poem that weaves together your ideas and observations from both pages.”
Working just with the NaPoWriMo prompt today. Lots of batteries in my junk drawer today.
Santana at Woodstock 1969
exploding
soul sacrifice . . .
all the batteries
in
the world
couldn’t broadcast energies
like
that maelstrom
bass organ guitar
erupting
drums congas
bueno para gozar . . .
half a million
fans’ minds blown
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Photo by Tucker Ransom / Getty Images
This is, by the way, a hay(na)ku sonnet (an invention of mine), rhymed how my friend Bruce Niedt does it.
Also, look at that little boy right in the center of the picture. (Click on the image to see him better.) He's right there smack dab in the middle of the Santana performance. Wonder where he is now?
If you haven't seen this Santana performance, here's a video: https://vimeo.com/231111863. Enjoy! Imagine you're that little kid on stage!
Oh, also, the phrase "bueno para gozar" is from the song "Oye Como Va," and means "good for enjoyment," or maybe more like "good for the gusto," without the cheesiness that accompanies that phrase now.
Alan followed both prompts again today.
Get Up and Do It Again
In our house just off the freeway, an older house
that sits on what was once divided farm land,
the house where one of the kids lived
as the parents divvied up the property
and let their daughter take boards from the barn
and make rustic décor so that when we moved in,
thirty years later, the cabinets had started to loosen
just as the harvest orange carpet started to harden,
we moved in only literally, just days ahead
of getting another child, so how,
when we get up in the morning
and go to work each day, were we supposed
to sort through everything before
or even after we got here? When the evening rolls
around, the evening chores set in,
and, even years later, if we make
the inviting mistake to lay
our bodies down on a couch, we sleep
like happy idiots, or at least blissful ones.
In the kitchen, the utensil drawer holds
almost every spoon we’ve ever owned,
even the rubber-coated ones for baby food,
the one that the old garbage disposal gnarled
before we tore it up, and some old knives
my dad got for free in a steak house
promotion. We’ve been here over twenty years,
just long enough to know what kind of house
we should have wanted when we moved here,
but we have learned not to believe
in whatever may lie in those things
that seemed, at one time, proof
to our doubting family that we could make it,
but our home slept in four different rooms
for a while, and now it does not all sleep
under one roof, and I hope we have
enough good judgment not to foist
on them the hand-me-down material
that we accepted in surrender.
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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1 comment:
Bravo, and thanks for the nod!
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