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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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Challenge Poem #18
seventeen black birds sitting on lamp posts
seven on this side and seven on that
and three down this side next to the four-lane
gazing all this direction bold as blue skyhooked necks craning, marking them buzzards
not ravens, never saying ‘nevermore’
and Hitchcock in the passenger seat nods
appreciation, those birds are not his birds
and Kentucky sure ain’t Kansas, Toto!so what the hell do you call a plurality
of black buzzards on Cherry Blossom Drive?
an omen? a vigil? or perhaps portent?
I wasn’t superstitious when I got in the car,
but now driving to work of a Tuesday,
I’m haunted by the echo of their refrain:all day every day, life is Death’s buffet
every day all day, death is Life’s buffet.12/10/23 dmpitchford
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Poem 17
I feel stupid; you’re contagious. I walked
into your epidemic, expectations
befuddled dancing drunk through all those
isolation wards maskless fey and anile
your lilac-scented antimicrobial
smells faintly of vinegar – warn all the fruitflies
what happened all those months in isolation?
it seemed so short a time taking forevernow the freedom feels like abandoned faith
leaving us rudderless upon the vast
shining sea as we dehydrated stare
full at the moon in questioning wonder
how did such a tiny device drive all
reason and proportion from our world?dmpitchford 12/10/23
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Poem 16
Words: something from nothing
Dan calls this Cognitive Alchemy
this combination of disparate threads
into articulations of versesuch miracle of nature, this
system of symbols from gray matter
to black on white – ink on page
page to book – book to librarypoets are alchemists
creating gold in crucibles of thought
mining the heart of self and society
for lead and tin and pyrite
from which to blend mystery
and reason, conjecture and fact.dmpitchford 12/10/23
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Poem 15
Uphill from here, she says.
Unintimidated by aught,
I climb Parnassusthough I stumble betimes
though stones bruise my bones
and storms wash me cold and damp
down weathered heights
undaunted I stride
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Poem 14
I am thinking of time-blindness today:
it’s a talent I use at work to while away
hours as my hands do what it is we
trained them: plugging this and that connector
one car per minute or thereabouts – me,
I’m a million miles distant as my hands
dance their intricate dances, conjecture
and narrative and hasty judgement lands
my mind here there then and now somewhat lost
to the present – yet the mind seems to itself
ubiquitous, eternal, and beyond
distinctions of self . . . until time returns
to mind, and the hands, observed by my self,
falter in their dance, fail, their rhythm lost.
dmpitchford 12/5/23
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Challenge Poem 13
there’s a gene in me wants to hibernate
it is not the dog’s cancer-cough today
that makes me want to stay abed, though that
does weigh my heart with utter gravity –
it is the dropping temperature and damp
of this Kentucky winter day. cold front
moving in with wind and rain and tonight
forecasted for a hard freeze. I’m second
shift, so when I emerge from my nine hours,
there will be ice on my windshield and I
am likely to forget the ice scraper
yet again and be forced for safety’s sake
to sit in the warming Cadi and watch
invisible armies combat Jack Frost.
dmpitchford 12/04/23
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challenge poem 12
sometimes there’s a yearning. often. sometimes
the need hits too strong to submerge – you must
have a companion for your present debauch:
morality does not figure in. No
judgement -that is, condemnation, anyway –
can touch the drunken, dancing sufi self.
you dance and sing and no word is profane;
you sing your song and dance life’s dance – profound
and sacred because it is by Spirit
demanded of you! for survivals’ sake
you dance and drink and revel, writing lines
in zen sands gone, gone with a sudden draft
sideways of creation . . . its fulfillment
and in the morning grief feels like remorse.
dmpitchford 12/04/23
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Challenge Poem 11
I’m not telling you how to avoid the road
to hell while shaking my finger at you;
I’ve been down that road, love, and I’ve seen
the dragons that feast on its travelers.I’m not telling you how to behave as saint
for the sake of heaven, love: I’m no saint
myself as well you know! but I see much,
eyes open though I walk with blinders on
in many senses. Believe me, Kindness
and love and tenderness drive my resolve,
my words, my advice to you. heed me now
when, in utmost compassion, I exhortyou: take the path of truth, my love, walk it
in patience and prudence, and blessed be.dmpitchford 12/04/23
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poem ten
feeling deeply unsafe, I avoid life
in what they now call bed-rotting – mother
issues again. Goddammit, we burnt her
once, can’t do it again! she twice asked me
soon before her sleep apnea departure:
how did I raise such hateful sons? Mother,
you did not – not hateful. Rage was the milk
that flowed from your bosom. can you fault us
for drinking in what would sustain? can you
fault us for the failures you yourself were
wont to parade like badges of honor?
I feel unsafe and so avoid life deeply,
though Nature Herself abhors such vacuums
as the thoughtless mind, so sapience runs on . . .dmpitchford 12/04/23
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Poem 9
oh historic asp of fortune, strike true
my breast and lay me low upon the ages!
beside cleopatra, though no lower
pleb than I ever was born. strike true, asp!
strike true that I may die with my beloved!
strike true that I do leave this tortured world
behind to the hands of anonymous
others who might or not love with passion
all that I have loved, or stare in wonder
at all that mine eyes have beheld in life!
I petition not to die – oh great Geist –
but to live now more poignant than ever.
beat true, oh heart! limp not in grief – beat now
our triumphant tattoo miraculous!dmpitchford 12/4/23
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