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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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Alzheimer’s
lost to himself he wanders . . . away
from himself trying to find what was lost,
but having no memory of that, he searches
high and low with eyes blind to all meaning
save what’s seen in surfaces. there are times
he picks up objects simply because some
impulse demands it, a moment passing
and he stares in consternation at what
his hand holds as though it, his hand, has by
its own accord grasped the book or tool or
food which even now migrates toward his mouth,
which unaccountably drools, saliva
running down his chin . . . what does it mean now,
pooling on his white shirt, cold on his skin.dmpitchford
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Antemeridian Monday
eyes too fatigued from letter and allergen
even to dream, bloodshot and weeping air
where no tears will form for sloth and ailment,
even the brain is hazed, dazed, sluggish to
form, frame, interpret image . . . here the world
melts away into pools of abstraction,
not only meaning but the compulsion
toward meaning slips away, absents, escapes.here, in the imaginary land of sense
deprivation, reality re-forms
itself from experiential construct
to the most concrete abstractions, and hence
chaos is made law whence reason deforms
logic and the ego self-deconstructs.dmpitchford
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This, Too, Shall Pass
There!
Did you notice?
Did you hear it?
The world
Changed
in a heartbeatSssshhhh
listenIt did it again
Focus:
It happens
Around us
Despite us
Every heartbeat
ContinuouslyThis world
Is not the same
As when this poem began.dmpitchford
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PBJ
something wholesome and American I
miss about the old sack lunch days, up early
to spread peanut butter on cheapass white
bread and slather on some Smuckers and toss
in a vend-a-size bag of chips and an
apple in a brown paper sack with my
name scrawled on it in smelly black sharpie,
toss in a li’l debbie snack and hoof it
on my way to a busy day filled with hope,
optimism, and the American
dream . . . but it all falls apart from there with
the fear of following that with hamburger
helper and its postmodern alchemy
of proactive, sterile embalming agents.dmpitchford
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Cafe
a conversation you’ve wandered into;
that’s what this is all about, he said. It’s
sitting back in your booth in Ed Hopper’s
diner and listening in to the three or
four conversations around you and grafting
the disparate threads into a cogent
conceit; there may not be a natural thing
about it, but, seriously, art and
nature certainly have their separation.
god loves diversity. thing is, most of it’s
white noise . . . but sometimes even the banal
can catch your ear if you pitch it right — or
just one iron detail catches the light
enough to sparkle at the edges.dmpitchford
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This Ain’t the Movies
he and nick and I were having whiskeys
down at an eastend dive last saturday night
when phil came in with a gun pointing it
and actin all gansta on nick and him
and jawin’ about his wife and pictures
on the internet, and nick and him start
(I was way back in my seat by then so
as to leave a clear shooting lane) so nick
and him tell phil to go talk to his wife
about it ‘cause they were in no mood for
his bruce willis bullshit and—anyhow,
phil, you were always more bill paxton—and
the gun goes off and everyone screams
and nick and the unnamed friend wet themselves.dmpitchford
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Our Lady of Needless Tears
she weeps night after night into cupped hands
because she never learned how to pray, her
sadness and misery have an author
whose name she refuses to think or speak
swearing “I’ve moved on” or “I’m in a new,
a different, chapter of my life now.” This
morning she swore to her well-meaning sister
she would start mass next week, but she’s never
been in a church without an escort and
she really rather not walk into that
change. Faith, she says, is a private matter,
not to be flaunted or forced onto others
even kindly; live and let live, she says.
Meantime, still, night after night she weeps.dmpitchford
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Fly
mountains, the placid water, sluggish at
river’s bend, the fly placed just right, quick flick
of the wrist and timing is everything,
the trout strike in the dying day . . . I watched
the old man tie this lure, enchanted by
his fervor and curious how a twist
of thread and wire becomes siren to these
river dwellers. He’s gone now, so this fly’s
a treasure I cannot replace . . . and yet
it would seem a dammed disgrace to leave it
unused in a shadowbox after all
the old man’s passionate toil. Besides, this
is my first four-pounder in three decades
of fishing; the first for wall, not skillet.dmpitchford
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Edward and Lisel
today I’m stealing poems from Lisel
Mueller’s Alive Together. my copy
riddled with small book marks: six neon green
sticky flags and one hunter orange, one
receipt dated 2004 from Barnes
& Noble, and two rogue Yahtzee score sheets,
completed without dates. Thirteen pages
are dog-eared. Rare as it is, I have scrawled
marginalia alongside several poems.
I recall now that it was Lisel who
introduced me to Edward Hopper, whose
blank spaces I am still trying to fill.dmpitchford
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Of Death She Stays Aloof
she always was an odd child, fascinated
with death and dying despite her sheltered
life early on and into adulthood;
never lost a friend or close family
member to it, not even so much, or
little, as a pet goldfish; she had no
use for dead things, things she said were merely
discarded clothes, the truth of life being
something merely disguised by material
trappings—the body itself being some
sort of iron maiden of manifestation.
It was the dying that fascinated her.
Those closest to their final
departure her chosen companions. To
her, what most of us consider a life-
time was merely an interlude in flesh,
and her time was all about preparing
to make her way home to whatever “true
life” awaits beyond Lethe’s foggy shores.dmpitchford
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