a clockwork orange tingling in my mouth

I’ve been luminous, I hope, trickily
putting oranges into the fruit bowl,
tapping a pomegranate with a wooden spoon
so the ruby seeds would all fall out.

What is the shape of the thing you’re looking for?
Its taste? Its smell? Is it making a point?

I wish I did know. I imagined these oranges arrived
neatly packed in a paper box, tied with string.

I used to pace the hall memorising names–
a clockwork orange tingling in my mouth,
a paw out for sweetness, and I’d turn over
so words could pet me in the belly.

With scissors, I cut the string,
names whispering as I took out oranges,
their shiny pitted surfaces returning
a pure definition.

The fruit bowl stands luscious,
brims with oranges & rubies.

Process notes: I’d count this as Napowrimo #1. If you’re participating, you could post a link over at We Write Poems if you like. The post should be up later today. The wordle this week, twelve seeds making up the poem, are from The Sunday Whirl.

30 poems in 30 days

Bells and whistles! Napowrimo is finally over.

I guess I’ll catch up with reading what other Napowrimo-ers have written. Lots of catching up actually.

A big bouquet for everyone. Time for a shower!

Protected: Napowrimo #30: A love letter to poetry

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Napowrimo #29: Politics & poetry

Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.– EM Forster, Howards End

There’re half-truths and lies, he said,
pounding his fist in air.
The words weigh, and fly.
The country is in jeopardy,
the ship will sink like the Titanic.
Every time we forget,
someone hammers the air.

I picked up the manifesto
she described as glossy,
words in bullet points, pictures
that are pretty, and I think of
packaging like this. I think of mud
touching our shoes last night,
and I think the words fell
into the mud.

**

Poetry needs no patronage.
My poems are free, like
the air you breathe.
Words reverberate with
the pulse of the personal,
wanting to connect again
the prose and the passion.
Where passion is felt, rose
the lilt of poetry as muddy
as stilted prose, listening to
a still beating heart.

The world without poetry
would simply be glossy,
casting off the human dross
like the poor, like the old
that we will become.

How do we explain fragments
of human experience?
It isn’t starched clean and white,
straight and narrow, it isn’t that
at all. It is a woman, and a son,
whose voices rose higher than air,
claiming the personal in politics.
It’s not pointless. Poetry exists
when the heart caves in to desire,
exhales like mud.

Words like falling rain.

Process notes: The world without poetry, which fits the Poetic Asides prompt. Went to a political rally last night. I guess I’m not the first to fuse politics and poetry.

Is Napowrimo over? One more poem to go, for me at least.

Protected: Napowrimo #28: On reading Norwegian Wood

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Protected: Napowrimo #27: off center

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Napowrimo #26: childhood games

One of the first things I remember
are fighting spiders in a mason jar,
going for the jugular, arachnids
in gladiator splendour.
A game that fell out of flavour,
along with blue fighting fish in plastic bags,
and games using rubber bands,
and cloth pouches with beans inside,
called five stones, which girls played.

I liked the see saw, a kind of bonking fun,
when you rose like a butterfly and fell
with a dull thud, or just tripping up
and down the swivelling plank.
I liked my turn on the swing,
my dog on my lap, breezing high
and low, the tinkering of bells from
the ice cream seller in our ears.

Most days, my mason jars are empty,
except when there’re biscuits,
but mostly, just air.

Process notes: Write a poem about mason jars. Sudden waft of nostalgia, and now I’ve got to run to work.

The new list of the Big Tent Poetry prompts are:

1. Write a poem about things in mason jars.
2. Write a poem about a bad idea.
3. Write a poem in which you are kidnapped (by whom? what do they want? what does it mean?)
4. Write a poem about what’s at the center.
5. Write a poem about floating.
6. Write a poem in which the wheels (of a ____) fall off.
7. Write a poem about a stranger buying you breakfast.

Protected: Napowrimo #25: Clues to puberty

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Protected: Napowrimo #24: strange pairings

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Napowrimo #23: skin

I am not a beauty junkie but
for a woman, the light that comes
from within, needs sustainability.

There was a time when skin
became blemished, imperfectly
red, lacked translucence.

But I will not be another bimbo.
Surely, light comes from an intellect
that shines from a face devoid
of illuminating miracles.

I still remember, though,
how soft that youthful skin,
pink and glowing.

Slowly I came to know the lie of doing
absolutely nothing. I now believe in
a miracle jar, the algae that will turn
back the self-deprecating clock.

Process notes: The above follows a prompt which Donna shared, which goes like this: (stanza 1) tell us what you are not (stanza 2) say where the light comes from (stanza 3) give three details about the hardest year of your life (stanza 4) tell a lie about who you are (stanza 5) tell us something you remember involving light (stanza 6) share a good memory (stanza 7) admit to the lie (stanza eight) describe an object that exemplifies who/what you are.