Write with TLC

April is designated National Poetry Month . We are encouraged to celebrate poetry. by reading poetry, writing poetry, and sharing poetry. All poetry all the time for a month.  Then in May, we go back to our normal attitude toward poetry, whatever attitude that might be.  I'm fairly certain the intent is to remind people to embrace poetry all the time, but it doesn't seem to work that way.  People who truly love poetry, love poetry all year round. People who want to love poetry, tend to get nostalgic and determined during National Poetry Month. Those who hate poetry... Hhmmm! I guess they probably think National Poetry Month is a waste of time and energy, but I'm not really sure. Those who are apathetic toward poetry probably just don't notice National Poetry Month at all. As a reader of poetry, I appreciate the attention shift to poetry. I appreciate seeing poetry show up in places I didn't notice it before.  I appreciate people sharing poetry they normally wouldn...

Last month I participated in the Writer's Digest 2014 April PAD Challenge in my own way, but still I participated. I used their prompts to write poems and posted several of those poems on my blog - a minimum of one per day. I turned the poetry prompt into my own blog every day for a month challenge, and I did it. The poems for the April PAD Challenge can be found under the label Poem-a-Day Challenge . I've been writing a poem every day for quite a while. The thing I've discovered about writing a poem a day is that some days it's easier than others. Some days what I write is better than others. After a while, writing a poem a day became a part of my day that gives me joy but that I sometimes take for granted or even feel pressured to fulfill. Yet, I'm always glad when I finish a poem even if it's not perfect or even all that good. As someone who fights perfectionist tendencies, I have found writing a poem a day a way to let good enough be good enough... A...

Today is the last day of the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge , and the prompt is appropriately to write a calling it a day poem. There are lots of ways to look at endings. I'm one of those people who always look for the new beginning waiting behind the ending - well, at least eventually. I thought about endings and clocks and calendars. I thought about the sun and the moon. I thought about life's beginnings and endings - there are many and they often seem never ending as we transition through life. I've come to accept transition in my life as not such a bad thing. It is after all, life itself... As I approached this poem I thought not only about this being the end of the Writer's Digest, but also the end of my challenge to share my experience with the Writer's Digest PAD Challenge on my blog every day. I actually thought it would be harder than it has been... But, we shall now call the day on this project. I hope you've enjoyed it. Here is my poem for the call...

It's Two for Tuesday over on the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge , so we've got two prompts to inspire our poetic musings for Day 29... The two prompts are to write a realism poem and a magical poem... An interesting thing happened this morning as I began to think about these two prompts. I got the song I'll Fight For You by Foreigner stuck in my head, which reminded me of the last time I heard that song. It angered me. I used to love this song, but, man, did it strike a nerve the other day... I wanted to shout at it "Don't fight for me, love for me." I've come to believe that if you have to fight for someone to be in your life, you're better off without them. I want people in my life who are willing to love for me - love when things get tough, love when there's news to celebrate, love when we feel like we're drifting apart, love when life is mundane.... If we have to fight to love or if we force someone to fight to love us, we set up an adver...

The prompt for WD 2014 April PAD Challenge Day 28 is to write a settled poem. I like to read the prompt early in the morning and then go about my business while I let the prompt settle into my thoughts, find a place to resonate, and then bring forth something I can write. Today, I felt slightly unsettled by this prompt because nothing started churning for awhile. Then it hit me. I wrote a poem, but I wasn't happy with it. I pushed it to the background on my screen and worked on some other projects. Then a power failure occurred, and the poem was lost. I had to start over. The initial thoughts I had about roses and stones was still there, so I went with it. So, in reality, I wrote two poems for this prompt though one of this has disappeared forever... Here's my settled poem... Rose Petal Stones You scattered your love on my heart Like rose petals on flowing water Where it settled into the sediment Like stones skipped across a creek Your love found residence i...

For Day 27 of the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge, the prompt is to write a monster poem... I immediately knew I wanted to write about inner monsters, and started thinking about how our inner monsters can destroy what we want in life. I began to think about the havoc any "supernatural" being an wreak given proper motivation but also how sometimes there's a thin line between facing the truth and creating drama... Anyway, here's the result... Hope you enjoy! Monsters Meet Love me Like my vampire teeth never drained blood from your veins Like my wendigo jaw never ripped out your heart Like my werewolf howl never pierced your spirit Like the ghost of my past never possessed your soul Like my zombie stupor never infected your mind Like my demon fire never burned all your dreams for us to ashes Like my medusa revenge never turned you to stone Like my mermaid song never seduced your passion Like my witch divination never revealed your deception Like ...

Stratton Pond EKU Richmond, Kentucky We've reached Day 26 of the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge! Today's prompt was to write a water poem... Confession time: water appears in my poetry often in it's various forms - water, ice, the sea, ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, waterfalls, storms, rain, snow...I love the symbolism water offers and the inspiration of water itself. So, here's my latest water poem... Water Safe Silent water Still water Secret water Safe water You drank my secrets Like you were dying of thirst Absorbing them through your surface With a gluttony unmatched While I fed you ever more Until you contained more of me than I I stared into your silence I searched your stillness I sought your secrecy I needed your safety Perhaps the secrets you drank evaporated To be rained down on some foreign land To feed souls in need of the nourishment Cultivated in the secrets you so quietly gulped For a secret can’t be lock...

It's hard to believe we're already on Day 25 of the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge . When I read this morning's prompt, write a last straw poem, my first thought was "You took the last straw first" which on its face confused me, but the thought stuck with me all day. Finally I decided to just go with it. Here's the resulting poem... Last Straw First You took the last straw first My heart ached because Your greed made you jump To the end Before we even began I lamented your decision as you Chewed the straw trying to release All the moments that should have come before You tried to convince me One straw was same as the next But the reality is we both know When you take the last straw first You cheat yourself out of the joy Of all the straws leading to the climax Held within the final straw So maybe next time you’ll Leave the last straw until last…

Today's WD 2014 April PAD Challenge poetry prompt, Tell It to the..., intrigued me. Again, there were so many ways I could go with this one, but, to be honest, an idea jelled pretty soon after I read the prompt this morning. It's funny how some days the prompt just takes me for a nice gentle stroll, other days it smacks me down, and some days I pull on its leash while it refuses to take a single step forward until I finally give the leash some slack. This was a gentle stroll day through a meadow kind of day... :-) Here's my Tell It to the... poem... Tell It to the Heart My brain hears your words But my heart can’t make sense of them They resonate on a wavelength my heart can’t find Riding a storm of promise Through the sunshine of doubt On a broken branch of logic Leaving me like a hayfield waving in the wind I long for your words to be cut and dried To feed this aching heart the sustenance it desires Next time you wish to appeal your crime...

Today's WD 2014 April PAD Challenge prompt was location... And we all know just how important location is... Here's my location poem. Different Seas We tried to convince ourselves Staring at different seas didn’t matter The love in our hearts would overcome The mountains and valleys between us We spoke words of togetherness Yet turned away when faced with inconvenience Promises of reaching out tomorrow Turned into silence As you stood in your place and I in mine Staring at different seas Dreaming of letting the current connect us While we refused to make a move Each tied to a boulder we pulled in opposite directions Until we both dropped the rope and whispered “Someday, we’ll find ourselves in the same place at the same time Until then you’ll remain in my heart…”

Today was a Two for Tuesday on the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge . The prompts were to write an optimistic poem and a pessimistic poem. I thought about tackling my feeling that optimism and pessimism are rarely as cut and dry as seeing a glass as either half-full or half-empty, but in the end I decided to go another direction. I've also decided to share both poems this time rather than just one. Here is my optimistic poem... Optimistic Distance In my fantasies The distance between us Enhances the possibility of our love Seduces me into seeing you through A mesmerizing lens Where your future and mine intertwine  When we meet where we once stood Under the falling Autumn leaves As we now stand under distant blooming trees My dreams coerce optimism into A heart where doubt resides Since we walked in different directions Here is my pessimistic poem... Tried On I tried on pessimism once It never quite fit The short hemline exposed vulne...

Today's WD 2014 April PAD Challenge prompt was to write a back to basics poem. I rather liked the idea. I've been on a quest to simplify my life for a while now. I've discovered I need much less than I once thought I did not only to survive but to be happy. The boundaries between simple and complex have a tendency to blur... Here's my back to basics poem... Chaotic Simplicity I wanted more Always more More wasn’t enough Filled the empty spaces Overflowed the filled places Stuffed more in to the excess Until chaos ensued Numbing the voids within With stuff I forgot I had Looking for more and more Buying every opportunity offered Trying to find something that mattered Fooled myself into thinking I needed more Every time I gave away unneeded item after item Packed up a house full of material things Purged the unnecessary yet again Convinced myself I lived simply Only buying exactly what I needed and nothing more Throwing ...

I had a plethora of reactions when I read today's WD 2014 April PAD Challenge prompt to write a family poem. I've probably written enough family poems to fill a book. My mind first went to one of favorite poems, Maya Angelou's Human Family where she tells us "We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike." - the perfect family poem, in my opinion. Then my mind went to Sister Sledge singing "We are family/I got all my sisters and me."  in their song We Are Family , and, finally, Lisa Marie Presley singing "They are my chosen family." in her song Important . As I thought about why these were my first thoughts, I began to hone in on what I wanted to say about family today. Family means many different things to people. I've expanded my definition of family over my lifetime, and I'm glad I have because sometimes family chooses us rather than us being born into it... Here's my family poem... Became Family I took yo...

Bet you thought I wasn't going to make it today... Well, I haven't missed a day yet, and I'm not ready to miss one. We might be down to the last few minutes of Day 19, but I'm here with a poem... Today's WD 2014 April PAD Challenge prompt was to write a color poem. I read the prompt this morning, and, as is typical, had several ideas. My mind became focused on orange for some reason... So here is my color poem hot off the press, sts... Orange Magnificent swirls of Red and yellow make love Orgasm into shades of orange Light and dark across the canvas Showing us how when we combine We create a whole new essence Taking us on a journey From the deepest wells to the shallowest pools Teasing us from ancient wells of rainbows Stretching across our lives Enhancing the beauty entwined in the spectrum Light bouncing off light to invigorate each Coupling of color My eyes follow yellow and red swirls To the ...

Today's WD 2014 April PAD Challenge prompt was to write a weather poem. Weather often plays a role in my poems. I've written about sunshine, rain, tornadoes, clouds, storms, etc. I considered writing about hurricanes or typhoons, but my mind kept returning to droughts. The process of writing poetry is often one of surrender. One must surrender to where the inspiration takes one rather than going where one wants to go... Here is my weather poem... Heartfelt Drought  The drought took our future Turned our fertile hearts to deserts Our love wilted in the fields Our hope dried on the vines Our trust withered on the trees Our desire blew away on the wind Our kisses couldn’t cure the parched hearts Our embraces couldn’t revive our love Our deception couldn’t save our hope Our promises couldn’t save our trust One day truth rained on our cracked hearts We stared into each other’s eyes Was there anything left to salvage? Would the tears end our dr...

Today's prompt, write a pop culture poem, for the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge , left me feeling a bit like someone popped my balloon at a party... I've never been a big fan of labels, and I feel that labeling things as part of "pop culture" is one more way to divide and even to insult either those who fall into the trap or those who avoid getting jumping into the mix. To me, we need more cohesion in our lives. Just like what you like. I'm sure someone will agree with you just as someone will disagree with you... That's what I do anyway... Here's my pop culture poem... Pop, Pop, Pop Cool today, Uncool tomorrow I can’t be bothered to care My life is too full to worry whether I’m in touch with the latest cultural references Pop culture is just one more label Designed to separate us into groups Leave me out or include me I like what I like, cool or uncool If something sticks around, it becomes culture If not, I suppose it goes P...

Always in our hearts... This morning when I read that WD 2014 April PAD Challenge prompt was to write an elegy, I wasn't sure who I wanted to write about. However, as the day progressed, one person kept returning to my thoughts. Travis Wallingford was a classmate who died just before prom during our Junior year of high school. His birthday would have been April 12th, if memory serves, and the anniversary of his death is April 29th. With the prompt falling between the two, it just felt appropriate to write an elegy for him. For those of you who don't know, an elegy is, simply put, a poem for the dead. In this poem, I mourn a lost opportunity as well as a life ended too soon. Another poem I wrote about Travis, Stolen , appears in my collection of poetry, Memory in Silhouette: Poems . So this one is for Travis but also for his family, our schoolmates, and our hometown... Quiet Words We were tumultuous You and I Never quite getting along We argued We insul...

It's both the halfway mark and Two for Tuesday in the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge . Half the month is gone! Wow! How quickly! And that means on fifteen more prompts after today... Let's see how that goes. Today's prompts were to write a love poem and an anti-love poem. My love poems usually have some hint at both love and anti-love if you think about love as the absence or loss of love. I'm not sure what that says about me... They are opposites that co-exist in life. How can one appreciate love without having known the absence of love? Besides love is never perfect. I've written so many love poems, I often wonder if I have anything left to say about love... Yet, there always seems to be another one as I live a life built around love. If you'd like to read more of my love poems, I have a whole collection, Love in Silhouette: Poems , available. In both of the poems I wrote today, I explored the importance of love to life and living, but I decided to share ...

Cocoa Beach, Florida If I were... - a beginning with endless possibilities, is the prompt for Day 14 of the WD 2014 April PAD Challenge . The idea is to use these words, fill in the blank for the title, and then write a poem. My mind landed on one possibility and then another... If I were perfect... If I were your favorite fantasy (I might go back to that one)... If I were the sun... If I were your heart's desire... and so on. I came back to If I were perfect several times, but it just didn't feel quite right. As I went about my morning chores, I started thinking about what I'm not, what I'd like to be, who I'm not, who I'd like to be. Finally, I landed on the following "If I were everything I'm not...." I had no idea where I could go with it, but it haunted me, so eventually I wrote it down and immediately the second line showed up on the screen almost without thought. Then I was stuck. I had some abstract thoughts about trees and the sea an...

Oh, yeah... As soon as I read today's WD 2014 April PAD Challenge prompt, write an animal poem, I thought of passion... I suppose I could have written about my cats or my wish for a dog to share my life or horses or any number of things, but they just didn't fit my mood... So here's today's poem... Passionate Animal You reached into my passion Released the animal inside Took me to heights beyond fantasy Showed me pleasure beyond heaven As your touch traversed the jungle Where my deepest desires hid Among trees and vines Until you found that place I couldn’t deny And in that moment Your kiss Released the purring kitten Alongside the roaring lioness Are you ready for her hunger? This is a passion that could eat you alive…