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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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Poem 8
what would a lion write of the hunter?
what story would he tell – being hunted, did
he lead the hunter away from his pride?
did he sacrifice himself to save his bride?
what final thought went through his heart and head?
did he think himself brave or the coward
as he fled from the realization
of a predator’s predator, his own
predation coming with a crack of thunder,
hot searing of the full metal jacket
through tawny mane, perhaps, to his vital
organs – or tearing agape red vessels
whence flows that most precious of waters . . .
“I lived according to my nature,” says he.dmpitchford 12/03/23
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Poem 7
Too much knowledge exists to be truly wise
in one lifetime. how were we to know? truth
is but the carcass, feathers the facts that
tailor the bird . . . what evidence reveals
we all too often disregard – we of the
sentimental persuasion, and victims
of formative faiths in our hostage years.
Too much of faith remains to be truly wise
in any life. how are we to know Truth?
oh gods of empiricism, will you
not lead us again to an age of reason?!
the world is burning, and we hold matches
alight and smelling of brimstone! Oh, we
peoples of the Earth! unite and grow wise!dmpitchford 12/02/23
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poem 6
it matters nothing that the screen is blank
it matters nothing that the screen is filled
the flow of words, the stream of consciousness:
do these matter? what matter? what meaning
to find in these ancient letters – magic
that we scribble thus and it causes us
to hallucinate in a predictable
pattern we call reason or logic. yet
reality abides not our fantasies.
concrete is concrete – abstraction remains
immaterial, conceptual, un-
real. it matters nothing that the unreal
mimics reality, for it is not
real. it matters nothing but for the real.dmpitchford 12/02/23
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poem 5
searching for a couplet in the dim din of my mind
just a muddle and chaos do I find:
too little sleep, too much worry, it all
adds up to knock you down – a working stiff
finds little peace throughout the week. you fall
into exhaustion’s ruts and wonder if
the whole damn shitshow isn’t some vicious
lie, some trick – but played by who? gaslighting
hobgoblins who steal our lives by the hour
paying dimes on the thousands to grease us
for the wheels of their capital capitol . . .
the dim din is too much in their rhythm;
in that muddle of chaos, how to find
a single stanza, verse, or rhyme in mind?dmpitchford 12/02/23
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Poem 3: Prognosis
grieving from the prognosis
trying to rest a moment
(recovery is not yet possible)
“Lay your head on my chest,”
my darling wife invites.
I do.
“Sorry,” she whispers, “time and
gravity have pulled my pillows
into my armpits.”
(humor always our drug of choice)
“It’s okay,” I murmur, dimly amused
in the darkness of grief.
I don’t need pillows, Sweetest;
what I need
is your heartbeat against my ear.dmpitchford 12/1/23
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A Lilly for Willow
send a flower for our darling dog
she’s been our sunshine these stormy seven
years but now the Cancer has her and I
can’t even breathe – the shear thought of her gone
bleeds my heart to Black. Send a flower
for my Sweetest wife – how her red, red heart
bleeds as well to Black! Our mutual sunshine
is ravaged, savaged in the Cancer’s teeth
too slowly – yet all too quick! A flower
send for Sparky: his only sister too
soon going to the Undiscovered Country,
and who now his anxiety to ease?
Send us flowers; our little family,
too soon less one by Cancer, bleeds to black.
12/1/23 dmpitchford
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Kali Dances
we went to kinney’s down on sixth because
we like the jukebox, filled with old jazz and blues
standards and classics from the nineteen-twenties
on. kali especially likes munk and duke
ellington and hoagie carmichael, and
kali sizzles when she dances, so we
all kept her happy, pumping dollars one
after another and in fives to keep
the music fresh and hopping as well as
tossing drinks down and around and eyes
glued to her body as it swayed in the
smoky night out on kinney’s tiny dance floor.
when she got hit and killed by a drunk driver,
we all went sober . . . until beth came along . . .dmpitchford
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undergods of creation
I have just set the sun in the sky, slightly
angled toward afternoon, when my ghost comes
to tell me my images are again
infantile like a child drawing with crayons.
where are the birds, the jet from chicago
streaming its way to houston, or perhaps
a reiterated ‘v’ of migrating
fowl—it is the season—and where those leaves,
richly colored in the bright november
clear . . . again, I drift in thought, wondering
whose poem this actually is, and why
it is this ghost haunts me each time I come
to type these verses—and to color skies
vivid in prismacolor on newsprint . . .dmpitchford
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Humiliation
this image of the eagles down at our
river keeps recurring. this bald eagle
dives lazily, riding gravity, over
the water, skimming just over its top,
and then shoots out its talons to grasp a fish
but something goes awry and the fish flops
several yards across the river surface.
unconcerned, the eagle loops back into
the gloaming sky to make a second pass;
this time his success is certain, he curls
westward toward the bank and a tall elm, where
he proceeds to feast on fish unperturbed.
would I, I wonder, have looped back around,
or would I fall to the water abashed.dmpitchford
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