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Yearend Challenge
Today I challenge myself to write 100 poems by midnight 1 Jan 2024. During this challenge, I will forego alcoholic beverages and drink ginger-lemon tea instead. All poems will be blogged and sequentially numbered. Daily poems are expected; numbers deprioritized throughout the week must be made up on weekends. Minigoals: 12/4 20; 12/11 40total; 12/18 60t; 12/25 80t; 1/1/24 100t.
Most poems are expected to be quatorzains, though not required (it merely follows the evidence as my forte).Poem 1
Happiness is such a huge idea,
But what is it, specifically? Is it
An emotion? A mindset? A heart tuned
To the favor of fortune, God, nature,
Or specific higher powers unnamed?
Is it pleasure prolonged? Joy unbridled?
Perhaps merely security ensured?
Such a broad range and deep is happiness.
Joy is much simpler, I think. And as such
More readily attained. What each is worth
Certainly must remain a subjective
Case. How attainable each certainly
Must depend on mindset, for even those
Sorely traumatized have sought and found both.Poem 2
Despair is the dragon. Has it always
Been? In childhood, dragons seemed plentiful
As wasps and spiders – all the scary things
That sting and burn and bite. Now adulthood
Spills in on tides of years and washes clean
The earth of most such fears. But despair, dark
And cunning serpent that it is, curls up
Within the deep shadows of unconscious
Mind, the turbid depths of the heart, and lurks
Await . . . death visits to rob us of dear
Ones, and the beast arises to devour
First our pretty red hearts, then our grieving
Minds, takes hostage confidence and poisons
All . . . how can we slay this dragon within?
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Picking Back Up…
From my apparently unrecoverable blog bitterhermit.wordpress.com
The 1000 poem project was completed some time in 2013. Time to start another challenge. Perhaps a bit less ambitious? My day-job pays the bills, but sucks the soul out of me; I write in fits and starts these days. We’ll start with a hundred-poem challenge and see how that goes.
Top of the Hour
blurry eyed too close to waking
allergy season – not a favorite time of year
coffee calls, and I waft in on its aroma
content in the kitchen to wake slowly
14Sep2023
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All Bosched Up
QUATORZAIN 41
In the garden of freshly pierced hearts,
I’m doing time with a shadow of you,
thorn quivers in your hand crimson blood-stained;
and I stare hollow-eyed all bright with
soft admiration and honeyed words begging
you to forgive my tenderness in light
of your crystal ice delicate touch. You
pirouette in time to music I’m deaf to,
and I misstep cloven-hoofed to your tune,
bells ringing, clanging, dissonant and shrill
over your demands of loyalty,
forking from your unfaithful tongue, eyes green
with lies and adulteries of omission
cruel as inattention turned my way.David M Pitchford
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Your Church and Mine
driving through this rainy morning Sunday
you in your puritan dress and humming hymns
and me trying to remember when last I went
to service, to the gathering of the faithful, when
last I broke bread with the brethren and
feasted on the flesh of a two-thousand-year dead
savior, heard the word beat into the pulpit straight
into my mind and soul, thew and bone, had guilt
rained down on me like hail and brimstone . . .
Now, you reach over and remind me that Jesus
loves me, that I am His lamb, that we are chosen,
and I smile knowing that I shall take you to the gates
of the church, escort you to the door, and walk down
a more familiar road to grab a beer and praise the sky
for raining after a long, dry summer . . .DM Pitchford, copyright September 2011
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Sophist on a Soapbox
Let us dance among clouds singing of Death
such mornings as we awaken to predawn
and dancing fall from heaven, though it’s merely
sky, and drub our heads against another
day as the planet turns on its axis
chasing this eccentric path around our sun
spinning in Earth’s backwater neighborhood
in a galaxy we call Milky Way –
and what is death? merely a transition?
thermodynamics teaches us plainly
that energy and matter are permanent
despite their fluctuations over time.
As we are an amalgam of both, it follows
that we, though mortal, remain permanent.DM Pitchford copyright 2023
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Working on this Sonnet
SOULFUL?
How much in our lives do we give away?
And for what? To whom? How much love we spend
unwitting, never counting returns until
broke and wanting with hunger-angered fists
clenched in supplication. Some say power
is the social currency, but I argue
here that suffering buys all resources
meaningful to the soul – and what is ‘soul’?
Some may ask – young, fool, or soulless wretches
more wont to ask than most – yet philosophers
for ages valued introspection, self-
truth as the catalyst for righteousness
and the impious never beyond themselves
could realize this fullness we call soul.It falls apart at the volta. Any suggestions? It almost seems like two distinct poems rather than one…
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THAT GREENBAUM DAVE
back in the day, was a cat named Dave Ross
used to come ‘round to Yella Dove with fresh
cut grass – no one was ever sure if he grew
it in his greenhouse over by Quincy
or in some nearby field, but it was either
that or his ice-fishing expeditions
to Canada – anyway, they called him
Dave-the-one-hit-wonder; he was mythic
for his whiskey stamina, but when it
came to puffing smoke he was so lightweight
he’d reel from a good deep toke off the bat
as long as it was his grass in the dugout.
we heard in ninety-one the DEA
caught him somewhere in south Minnesota.copyright April 2022, DM Pitchford
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Today Sisyphus
time to put fingers to keys and clack out
some semblance of a poem. sonnet? this
verse will not rhyme. morning beckons, my mind
resists this invocation – will this, then
turn out another stillborn poem? why
must life be such struggle? what can we do
but push forward, Sisyphus pushing on,
the stone of the world rolling back to crush
exhausted toes . . . yet we push on. life insists
perseveres, and carries us, drives us, life
persistent even more than consciousness.
and this is the wonder of life, that we
struggle to one day overcome the hill
and sculpt these burden stones into idols.Copyright 2022 DM Pitchford
Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com -
Theodorian Rhapsody
future uncertain but certainly – bright
angel on my shoulder, lucky clover
filling my pocket with wishes I ride
like horses into unicorn meadows
overgrown with posies gathered from all
those forgotten nursery rhymes . . . o Seussian
life: how can I unstar my belly to stride
proud among these lovely other sneetches?scrape from these foolish eyes all delusion,
o father Reason! shine down untainted
truth; let me no longer wade dark water,
pull me from Lethe’s fatal illusion
forgotten in denial – leave unpainted
Platonic cave walls; trade dream for Matter.copyright 2022 David M Pitchford
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Sonnet Exercise
this is just an exercise, no actual sonnet was written:
when I procrastinate, my muse, let’s call
her Liza for the sake of argument,
badgers me like a boubous boiling up
under my metaphorical skin – which
is very similar to corporeal
skin, but itches via dissimilar
senses . . . she castigates me now for this
strange digression into metaphysics,
but it’s all sound and fury between this
ear and that. It niggles, though, at my soul,
to be behind the timeline I myself
declared by gauntlet, self-challenge leveled
whether declared or silent or slapped loud
against the silence of virtual Cloud.copyright 2022 DM Pitchford
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Another Lost Sonnet
If Furies were muses, what poet would
dare the empty page? tongue stuck in dry cheek,
brain electric with fear, yet thrilled to seek
glory against their rage. what laurel could
then suffice to crown our versed heads? or should
we boldly sing our yawp for silent bleak
awards of empty lauds? no longer chic
despite traditions so long-lived have withstood
until recently the facile, fickle,
fragile flights of popular poesy –
evolutions: pretentious fads that tickle
new definitions a fortnight, faux assay
of what is barely realized, each ripple
but a gnat’s buzz to Parnassus’ Poesy.
copyright DM Pitchford 2022
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Forgotten Treasure
I work my day job too much. It doesn’t give me time enough to write. I have to steal time – usually from the Sandman. And that has never much worked for me; I’m a guy who needs his sleep…
But it turns out to be less catastrophic than I tend to think. I was scrounging for recent poems just now to bolster this blog a little, and I found a folder of 61 sonnet drafts from April 2022. They are raw, of course, from lack of practice. But they are something, and that is more than nothing.
Here is the first of those:
04/02/22.
here we go again, Liza, another
marathon of words and rhymes iambic
running into small, labyrinthine rooms
to build hospitable fires. some other
might find them stifling – their limbic
brain in rebellion. dwelling in dank tombs
I fell off the track, Liza, which way now
to go with this one? shall I take a bow
and exit stage left – but no! the show must
go on! even first missteps are steps
taken and better than nothing ventured
nothing lost . . . fortune favors the bold, Liza,
so onward we march our little iambs
slow out of the gate, yet resolved to place!
DM Pitchford copyright 2022
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