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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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Poet & Muse #197
shit, I write, is all we are. society
a cesspool and each a turd swimming in
miasmas of piss and tears . . . very good,
says the ghost over my shoulder. this too
is a poem of love. love? I spit. how
a poem of love? such bitterness, says she,
could grow from no other seed. love, I write,
is a bitch ready to bite her owner
for having touched the runt pup mid-suckle.
yes, says my ghost, now you confess to all
absence of knowledge, knowing nothing of love
save perhaps what some poetic boy wrote
five hundred years ago in a book of sonnets,
or perhaps bitter is all you know of love?dmpitchford
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Her Name Escapes
no words of longing could express this nag
of memory scratching at my skull like
three white mice trying to claw their way out
and these bits of bone floating in my brain
pickled in thirty years’ wine and whiskey
all swirling like snow in a globe of some
city to which I’ve never been but in youth
earnestly desired to visit . . . all this
to distract from the loveliness she stole
not from me—that would count no loss—but from
herself, robbed by vice of pissing virtue
into the alley pavement and taking bribes
from all the punters pounding away her
dignity for the sake of an hourly bump.dmpitchford
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art to optimism
ughf! dyspeptic morning and the whole day
yet to go. oh, but I took a vow of
optimism: how am I to face this
in brightness, this overcast november
morning with my belly aching and head
filled with allergy cobwebs, eyes itchy
watering and thus painting the world drab
water color . . . and now, suddenly, I turn
my mind to matisse and visions of renoir
reverberate through visual memory
and the day seems more mysterious, more
cunning and deeper in rich longing, some
impression, some expression, of wonder
and miracles never cease for going unseen.dmpitchford
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Filler
this is a filler sonnet. it has little
life its own, is meant to wedge in between
poems in a collection — for you, dear
reader, because at this point you’re inun-
dated with poetry and likely not
paying close attention, and not every
verse can be a work of genius, even
from a writer of great talent or skill.it’s not my fault I’m a silly waste of rhyme;
a lazy toss off from a poet off
his game — had he compassion for his works,
his creatures, he might take a bit more time,
a bit more care to craft me into something
to catch your fancy and endear me to you.dmpitchford
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Correspondent Love
break me out, she said. I will love you, she
swore. her letters always brief and to the point.
halfway to indy from here, barreling
down i-74 east, my first tire
blew out, shreds of tire across the highway
like feathers from a murdered crow. changing
the flat took an hour because my car trunk
is full of books and . . . distracted . . . later,
south-turning onto sixty-five, tank full
and a good station tuned on the radio,
miles melting behind me to distant gone
memory, rain to clear blue sky turning
to optimism when the second tire blew
and when I got to her house—already gone . . .dmpitchford
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Another Dave off to Cali
he’d had enough, he told us. ten years here
after high school and going nowhere slow
as a sunday drive in the country. now
is the time to start my life over, he said,
time to go turn over that fabulous
leaf and find out what’s beneath . . . driving out
west to california, he proclaimed. there’s
some fine woman out there worth driving two
thousand miles to meet and she’s been waiting
her whole life for a swell guy like me to
make that odyssey just on the slim chance
she’d still be available and wanting
a man with my particular talents
and sensitivities. he’s on his way . . .dmpitchford
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After a Classic Poem
thoughts contained in nothing run out, water
leaking from a cracked urn, and where is keats
to chronicle its ode? but, no, it is
not graced with fauns nor bacchants dancing nude;
indeed it is but a whitewashed vessel
of no particular pedigree, banal
and lonesome for its homeliness, common
enough to be found at any flea market
or the roadside shop of curiosities
pretentious of antiquity . . . yet each
urn unto itself’s unique, and this one
carries wine as well as whiskey, water,
and champagne. it begs now and then down from
its plinth to come and with its fellows mingle.dmpitchford
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she
she was alone, smoking a slim cigarette
and drinking chardonnay at the bar:
legs up to the sky, clouded gently by
a short skirt of diaphanous design;
this was back when one could smoke cigarettes
in public places. she was glamorous
despite that and the seedy dive, sinatra
playing over tinny speakers behind
a bar conspicuously out of style.
her eyes enticed as much as her smile,
which was coy and fleeting and should have warned
anyone sober or perceptive — any
man of the world could have seen . . . she was wild
hell, a woman scorned and out on the prowl.dmpitchford
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Equinox
we raised a toast to night and poesy,
we raised our toast to the muses nine;
she, smiling, reflected moonlight and star shine,
pale face floating above the campfire, light
as mist but clear as the evening’s chill outside
the campfire’s glow of warmth and hickory smoke.we raised a toast to tomorrow and life,
we raised a toast to passions unbridled;
and now the potency of silver moonlight
and strong, earth-tasting liquor work magic
among us as we rise to dance, pagans
in ancient rituals bowing to each
element and primary in turn, and
now the romp of savage fornications . . .dmpitchford
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Occult
mystery is a thing of feathers, flies away
on bat-wings, crawls into the earth through suspicious
burrowed holes, swims alongside sharks and within pods
of dolphins, sings with angels’ voices, screeching on
the strings of demon fiddles and beats with drumming
percussion through the blood of all sentients. mystery
the lifeblood of knowledge and breath of wisdom, inhaled
brings curiosity to awaken bright minds.exhaled, it is the voice of elders educating
peoples. hymned in rituals, it threads together
generations, unifies and divides cultures
while defining what is human, shifting with each
age, the spirit of each age defining value,
providing focus in its search of mystery.dmpitchford
Fringemonkey Scribbles 