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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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66 Lothario
Poem 65
I slew five dragons for you
with a bic pen and A4 notebook
walking you to college
both ways uphill
in thundersnows
of CO2 sleet
swam the Ohio river
nude under the new moon
in January to fetch your bagels
cleaned out your stables
by diverting the Mississippi
while slaying seven hydras
to gain the shield of Perseus
with which to defeat Medusa
with whose head
I stoned Hollywood itself!
then worked a decade
selling used cars to refugees . . .
and still,
you call me Lothario.dm pitchford 12/28/2023
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Dancing with Rumi: #61
Poem 61
I dance again, drink the more, again
continue this dance from 2011
dogear Rumi
age him to death
young we were when we beganRumi, we danced
with so many poets
that brief age –
Borges, Bukowski, Frost and Neruda
Eliot, Crane & Crane, Hart and Steven
Lisel and Louise, Emily, Mrs. Parker
Edna, Anna, Thea, Kat and Anita . . .
so many dancing with words
muses in disparate rhythms gyrating
I grow dizzy with memory
lost in maelstroms of time
while stumbling feet
try to step me rhythmic
across hardwood floorsdm pitchford 12/27/23
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62
Poem 62
O to be a fish
says the poet,
incapable of drowning!But what of the drought?
and the longing
for feathers?dm pitchford 12/27/23
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64 and Going
Poem 64
coffee is on
yet not ready
I wonder what’s in my head today
fingers eager on the keyboard
dance to my heart’s stagger
yellow daffodils in a green glass vase
tease my memory
or perhaps my imagination
context eludes
but the image endures
three yellow daffodils
clover-green glass vasedm pitchford 12/28/23
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Challenge Poem #57
what ode can I write of a Monday morning
predawn? seven hours until the guests
arrive, and so much is left undone. we
have prepared this and that – her vacancy
haunting here and there – the gifts are all wrapped
and the tree proclaims our celebration:happy birthday, dear saviour, though the date
may be pagan inaccurate, Thy grace
shall see us through – heaven knows our motives
regardless of strange circumstance and times’
slippage as history distorts from telling . . .
let us be the wise men or kings or pilgrims
seeking now the star and the infant and grace
holding love and kinship on this Christmas Day.
12/25/23 dm pitchford
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Challenge Poem #56 after WWordsworth
Composed Upon a Nameless Bridge, Dec 25, 2023
nothing more fair in darkness has this world
that we dull of soul pass by daily anon —
a sight untouching, missing touch of sun
until morning graces with skies unfurled
in truth and beauty clad, painted in cloud-pearled
Kentucky blue – horses racing, they stun
in their purebred pedigrees! and what none
can boast or decry, all hold in cells curled
in nucleic truth! O Christly we stoke
this ostentatious morning! merry we
among gentlemen and working-class folk
the Elkhorn wanders wisemen, casting thee
Godward in jollity – drives us unyoked
in brotherhood toward His salvation free.dm pitchford 12/25/23
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Challenge Poem #54
poetry, says the professor, is always a conversation
always
as with most conversations, it is often
and predominantly
one-sidedwhat you must decide, as a poet – should
you decide to join the honored, infamous ranks –
is how much and what end of the conversation
you write and in what or whose voice . . .
and with whom is the conversation?
the muse? some ghost or another?
specific poet? or the canon in general?
zeitgeist? or the general audience?
for myself, speaking from the studious perspective,
I prefer conversations with the canon
or the zeitgeist,
as I find them the deepest and most . . .But, professor, I think they are not
as you suggest
so deep as the solitude
whence we study
and pore over them.dm pitchford 12/24/23
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Challenge Poem #53
I get itchy
if I go too long
without
writing
as though . . .
the world can’t revolve
sans wobble
until I spill words
into lines . . . no matter
how unbalanced
or unartistic
perhaps this is some
ancestral ritual
my dna demands
perhaps
it is madness
or addictiondm pitchford 12/24/23
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challenge poem 49: Hypomania
it wasn’t your hypomania per se
nor your insane neediness for ego feed
ego greed, ohmygod,
I understand need, I do so understand
it was your toxic narcissism
taking without giving, taking and giving
poison for potion
it was your pushing of buttons
after I restrained my own toxic nature
learning to love as I learned of hate
anger displaced upon one not guilty
it was your reaction to trauma
unrefined by consciousness, untrained
and unrestrained upon one not guilty
my understanding only shielded me
so long . . .dm pitchford 12/24/23
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