NaPoWriMo, Day 4 (Catching Up): A Poem in the Form of a Blues Song.
Author Archives: Marilyn Cavicchia
NaPoWriMo, Day 4 (Catching Up): A Poem in the Form of a Blues Song
I was dreading this one because rhyme and form are not usually my friends. But I actually had fun with it, trying to fit within the form but also say something real about my son and how we relate to each other.
The Mother-Son Blues
Oh, I have a little three-year-old boy
I say, I have a little three-year-old boy
And he brings me nothing but pain and joy
My boy, he likes to burp out loud
Yes, my boy, he likes to burp out loud
But when I scold, it just makes him proud
He acts a fool whenever I’m looking
Oh, he acts a fool whenever I’m looking
Then he gives me a hug, says I’m his cookie
Sometimes I don’t know which end is up
Oh, sometimes I don’t know which end is up
Is he a demon from hell or a cute little pup?
All his jokes are about tinkle and poop
Yes, all his jokes are about tinkle and poop
Sometimes I laugh, then I have to regroup
He makes me laugh, he makes me cry
Oh, he makes me laugh, he makes me cry
And I’ll be his cookie til the day I die
NaPoWriMo Day 5 (Catching Up): For Baseball’s Opening Day
Seventh-Inning Stretch
My mother was a Yankees fan,
had a jersey and everything;
she wore it with Keds and little
socks that didn’t match at all.
I don’t know anything about
this game, only that it made her
happy to root for someone.
In my mind, I can see the logo:
the bat, the hat, stars and stripes.
I can see her, too, if I really try, but
the image gets hazier with each
new year. I swore it never would.
NaPoWriMo Day 10: Borrow (or Steal) a First Line
With many, many thanks to complynn, who told us all about “Enter SHIFT” for returns within stanzas (and thereby stopped my growling).
Cousin Fergus
(after Who Goes With Fergus? by William Butler Yeats)
Who will go drive with Fergus now?
That’s what I’d like to know about it.
I could ask him, but he’s always
half in the bag, and the stench
knocks you back a ways. He lives
down at the end of that crooked
road, in a split-level he stole from
his aunt. He has filled it with his
leavings, the odd little dolls he
whittles, tries to give away to
children, whose sensible mothers
pull them closer, keep their hands
from reaching, reaching toward
Fergus, his dolls, his beseechings.
Who will go drive with Fergus now?
All he has left is a motor scooter,
and it can’t climb hills very well.
There are things he needs, and
I suppose I’ll drive him, though
his aunt was my own mother,
and every time I see that stolen
house, it splits my heart in two.
NaPoWriMo, Days 6, 7, and 8
All right … Can any fellow poets tell me how to override the WordPress tendency to double space after each hard return? (And am I phrasing this correctly?) The only workaround I found is to manually add spaces so the text wraps to the next line. Pretty tedious. Oops — it’s worse than I thought. It’s not WYSIWYG, apparently, and so my poems went all crazy and r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r-like. I am not e.e. cummings. I am a WordPress dunce … If you know how to get around this formatting, please comment! For now, I had to go with the blasted double spaces. Grrr.
Day 8: Outdoor Poem
Egg Hunt
My mother-in-law’s dog
is retrieverish, but he points
to each plastic egg. My daughter
is sharp enough to pick up on it.
My son blunders in wet grass,
gets as many as he can
without any interspecies help.
This is the day we leave,
gray and cold, like so many
Ohio Easters of my youth.
Concrete Buddha on his tree stump
watches as we do this, all in our
pajamas, before we dress, load up
the rented car, slowly go back to
who we were before this morning,
before this search in the damp.
Day 7: Color Poem
Orange
Double hot
sparks a flame
nothing can
cool off; orange
knows its own
particular ways,
does not mind
that few people
love it, does not
wish to be loved.
It carries, after all,
its own warmth.
True color of
the leaves once
all the green is
drained away.
Once the sun-
food cells
switch off,
the leaf can
dance, show
what it was
always made
of, the secret
we never knew
until, one day,
orange told us.
Day 6: Animal Poem
Bonobo
You confuse us.
Are you a chimpanzee
that looks like a gorilla?
Vice versa? Neither?
A sign at the zoo
calls you
the “forgotten ape.”
Your rear end is hard to
forget, your genitalia
comically swollen,
on display, always
ready for action.
You are the cousin
we seldom visit, the one
who believes sex can solve
anything. You try to show us;
we watch but never learn,
never can get it right.
NaPoWriMo … Oh, no? Day 9 (Day 1 for Me)
So, I was already doing the Poem-a-Day challenge, and then I found out today about NaPoWriMo, which is also great … and which is also this month. And I was out of town all last week. I eked out some rather lame PAD efforts from various living rooms and basements and Red Roof Inn bathrooms (free WiFi, kids sleeping, you get the picture) on the road. As a good friend just put it, I have a lot of pos to wri this mo. Indeed, I do.
Below is my effort for Day 9 of NaPoWriMo, based on the prompt to write a persona poem. I have a thing for solitary bees lately. Seriously, they’re cool. Thank one today (or tomorrow — let them sleep). I did days 8, 7, and 6 as well, and will post those *soon.* Then I’ll continue to catch up on the rest of the old prompts and keep up with the new ones. Whew!
Solitary Bee
If I find your flowers
I will fill these baskets on my legs
Sun is high day is long
I am all that I am
Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia 