Day 30. Praise - Cento

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting 

To feel that waking is another sleep  

Blind go the days, but joy will see

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

Now, in a breath, before we, too, grow old,

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out.  

We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd,       

Won't you celebrate with me?   

Lift every voice and sing                  

Praise for the height and depth

Spend all you have for loveliness,

Here, poem meets prayer.

Poets:

William Wordsworth

Jorge Luis Borges

Muriel Rukeyser

James Weldon Johnson

Alfred Noyes

Rainer Maria Rilke

Dane Gabriele Rosetti

Lucille Clifton

James Weldon Johnson

Marge Piercy

Sara Teasdale Nikki Grimes

Prompt:  Write a cento - a poem that is made up of lines taken from other poems.

Day 29. Fairies Flew about My Bed.

When I was pink and very new Wee fairies flew about my bed to sing their songs of mist and dew and weave their spells around my head They sprinkled love and tenderness within my safe and sheltered walls. Bestowing ease and playfulness and years of joy within those halls They showered me with gifts of heart, I‘m loyal, bold, and resolute I’m hopeful, brave and sometimes smart, and the love I share is absolute But the gift of words, I treasure best to share and teach, to play and read, I may be just a bit obsessed, but the fairies knew just what I’d need For I am cursed as well as blessed with a frightful nose, hair like string, I caterwaul instead of sing my back is bent, and, I confess I’m much too pleased with my stubbornness.

Prompt: Muse on gifts and curses of birth

Day 28. Raindrops

                 Prompt: Write a concrete poem.

Day 27. When I Was Five

Sunday morning, Dad would take me flying Just the two of us, in his tiny plane

His plane was just right for the two us
Tilting in the wind, we flew over green fields

The fields slid green and ripe beneath us As we skimmed the grass and landed fast

We landed near a hangar, open to the gass
filled with long tables and the smell of pancakes

Tables groaned under mounds of pancakes In the hangar where pilots flew in to swap stories

Hangar-flying - pilots swapping stories-
tied us together, strangers meeting to share

We shared breakfast together, strangers no more, because Sunday morning, Dad would take me flying.

Prompt: Write a "duplex"poem - a variation on the sonnet, developed by the poet Jericho Brown.

Day 26. Prey

She stalked me around the library like a skittish cat,

Twitchy, wary, full of hiss and spit.

Sitting fat, all tucked-up in her chair, 

ears pricked, her eyes cool slits of suspicion        

Watching, waiting, perched.

She’d slink behind me in the stacks

soft-pawed, stealthy, silent.

I’d imagine her fishy breath on my neck

when I stooped to shelve a book, or sat to read a review

My every movement consumed her, 

teased her like a flicker of laser on the wall,

a slippery shadow that looms and fades.

Irresistible prey.

She finally gathered herself up one day,

squared her old-lady haunches,

arched her bony back, 

and pounced.

But I was vapor in her claws,

She may embody cat, but I am nothing like a mouse.

Prompt: Write a poem that contains an "epic simile" - I went for an "extended" simile.

Day 25. Genevieve

First came her argent song,
a delicate tintinnabulation.
Her crystalline chimes a revelation pervading my slumber,
silvering my sleep.
She arose before me in my dream,
Kindly, divinely,
pine needles twined her elegant arms, agleam,
dewy, delicate like the finest lace,
She reached upward, in invocation, offering grace.

Genevieve, protectress of the twin pines that shade my rooms.
Madonna to woodland beings that thrive within her blooms.
Her eyes, the jade of hummingbirds’ wings,
Her cheeks the blush of a robin’s breast.
And her lips, trembling with the weight of being.
“Be still,” she sings.
“Lift grateful eyes.”
“Listen,” she croons.
“Lay bare your ears.”
“Cherish.”
She vanishes in a rush of invisible wings,
and yet, still, I hear her sing.

Prompt: In honor of the "aisling," an Irish poetic form, write a poem that recounts a dream or vision, and in which a woman appears who represents or reflects the area in which you live.

Day 24. Soft-Boiled Similes (featured on NaPoWriMo website)

She was a conundrum.

Confusing as snow in July

and as inscrutable as a course in theoretical topology. 

One minute, 

as mean as a rat defending a hunk of roquefort cheese,

and acting as tough as pot roast cooked within an inch of its life.

Then the next instant, 

her smile would slide by as sweet and smooth

as sipping dark chocolate mousse.

I was completely intimidated.

I felt as inadequate as a bikini in a blizzard

and as useless as a cheeseburger at a vegan dinner. 

I’d smile as stupidly as a mule eating briars

every time she’d glance my way, 

with her eyes as cool and blue as a glacial lake.

What could I do when she asked me to be her baby’s godmother?

How could I say no?

But now I’m as anxious as balloon at a porcupine ranch.

Prompt: Channel your inner gumshoe, and write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile.