30 Days Has April

And I successfully have 30 new poem drafts! 

POEM-A-DAY FOUR 30 DAYS

April is coming  and there is no stopping it!  With it will come Baseball, tax deadline and poetry.  Hopefully you dread the tax deadline more than you dread poetry. I would imagine those reading this are likely fall into that category.

Some years I have taken the 30 day 30 poem challenge and some not. I plan on jumping into the month with both feet firmly on the ground and running with the poem-a-day challenge.

Robert Lee Brewer with Writers Digest has a slew of outstanding poets to serve as guest judges of work  for their annual 30 Day Challenge that they promote each year.

You can fine the specifics for the Writers Digest 30 Day Challenge by clicking  [HERE]

Even it you are not inclined to participate directly in the challenge, there is no reason you cannot  take the challenge. Or  try to write at least  something towards a completed poem each day of the month of April.

There are a lot of other exciting things lined up around the country related to National Poetry Month.

There are a whole series of blogs that are participating in the Poetry Month Free Book Giveaway  that  Kelli Agodon organized several years ago and continues to grow.   [CLICK HERE]

I'll have more Poetry Month Information in a couple of days.

Day 30 - Poem-A-Day

April Adieu

So long National Poetry Month-
You were just thirty days out of a year.
You brought heaps of poems
to my email, so many that reading them all
will stretch well into May, when many others
have returned poetry to the back burner.

Gone too will be my open opportunity
to preach the virtues and love of poetry
to the poetically deprived.

Even during your own month, we risk
retribution from many who will not
allow us to share what joy we find
woven into the soul of your many stanzas.

But not all is melancholy today-
No, today too ends the Poem-A-Day
challenge I undertook at the onset.
To take a predetermined prompt
for which I have not control
and mold it into a single, artful, cohesive
poetic unit each day.

Even the love of poetry-
yes, even a driving passion for writing
cannot prevent such an undertaking
from taxing the mind and sometimes
in the late hours of the night,
the body as well.

So, goodbye poetry month. So long
for now. I shall not stop reading
what many great poetic minds created.
I will turn to you over and over
throughout the year. And probably
after a momentary pause,
I'll return to the page with ink
and write from that place deep
within the human spirit
where poetry is born.

Maybe, just maybe-
come next April, in a weak moment,
I may forget how difficult
the daily birthing process
of creating these poems was
and again accept the challenge
of a poem-a-day.

Poam-A-Day Challange day 17

All I want is a little Peace of Mind

I don't ask for much.
A late morning rainfall heard from my bed.
The mail man passing my house,
not a single bill delivered.
The sun setting gently, unshaken
and lifting a glass high in my honor.

No grimy hands pulling at my trouser leg,
no cold empty bottle of 2004 Sea Smoke Cellars
Chardonnay- languishing in the refrigerator.

A pristine moment alone
in my head, the visions of sugar plums silenced
by time out in the corner and the constant drumbeat
of a drummer, different from all others,
whose sticks mark time with untold stories and
misplaced swallows who for the first time
have not returned.



[yesterdays prompt was "all I want is (blank)"]

Poam-A-Day Challenge (day16)

Black

Black wants nothing more
than to challenge transparency-
to turn the lights out,
have dominion over the day.

Black lives for that hour when the curtain
draws back across the world stage
and will not weep for the fallen sun.

It's the onyx of stones,
the dark loam beneath
our feet, the grounds
in the bottom of our coffee

cup- and the hollow
gut wrench emptiness
that overcomes us
when all alone.

And the Good News is....

I can imagine that many people participating in NaPaWriMO / Poem-a-day challenge or whatever you want to call it will agree with me this is a taxing proposition. (Oh! there is that nasty “T” word on tax day) Don’t think that many would disagree with me that this is not exactly the best way to create quality poems, but that also doesn’t mean that can’t happen.

With all the financial ills, unemployment, pirates, nukes, war, drugs, etc. (I’m sure I’m missing someone’s favorite malady) it’s nice to hear something upbeat; that someone did good.

So for all those suffering poets out there a bit of joyous news for one poet and an inspiration for the rest of us to keep plugging along on the last half of the poem-a-day challenge. Congratulations are in order for Christine Klocek-Lim, who has won the Annual Ellen La Forge Poetry Prize for her 2008 entry of six astrology poems (get this next part) written from last year’s NaPoWriMo. The added bonus is that money actually comes along with the award, which of course defies any logic since the product involved was poetry.

Three cheers for Christine… everyone keep writing!