The rules are pretty simple:
start writing . . . GO
I began my challenge on 9/11/11 (not a deliberate date, just coincidence). Currently at 625+
it’s all been done before, softly she says,
like the good book tells us. you can’t reinvent
wheels and gears and all that’s come before, but
you can do the best with what you have, and
you can make the best . . . but again monkey
mind distracts me to these other matters,
tangential concerns as meaningless as
each breath in the grandiloquent fable
that grand pantomime we call existence
dragging on beyond what we long to have:
all our stars tethered and angels wrangled —
control: this is the thing — o monkey mind
why so impatient and clinging, why so
desperate in spite of life’s abundance?
david m pitchford
26 May 2012
dank clinging miasma of humid heat
not even afternoon yet heavy the day
need a snorkel even to breathe o breeze
o sweet vesper o king aeolus whence
gone that you bless us so sparing what great
or small sacrifice do you require o
dead heathen god o personified wind
blowhard liar of beneficence this day
no god but nature and she’s stingy tight
with her breezes today and taking no
appeals so it’s more flailing whirring chops
of air from propellers and compressors
in their ironic acceleration
of carbon emissions and global warming.
david m pitchford
27 May 2012
who the hell is she;
I’ve never heard of her
why have I never heard
of this extraordinary woman
we love her, she’s a sensation
we want her riding our coattails
o what a bright galaxy
all her stars out and shining
david m pitchford
28 May 2012
much easier scaring crows across a field
than marching twelve-point roman soldiers off
the page with no brain to strategize verse
into these pretty little boxes called
sonnets. rhyme comes accidental often
but seldom when one wants to, especially
when one hasn’t a brain . . . perhaps we could
ask lion or the tinman — dorothy
surely knows a lyric from childhood. my
instincts speak of nothing but crows, dark omen
for one who wishes to pen poetry.
but then again, perhaps heart is apter
to spout iambs than is brain, sentiment
being there unhindered by good judgment.
David M Pitchford
22 May 2012
you live in a nowhere burg on a river,
chances are you go one of three ways once
they hand you that diploma and your folks
hand you their you’re-eighteen-now eviction
gift posing as a graduation present:
you join the armed forces to get out and
see the world, likely never to move back;
or, if you’re lucky or diligent, you
get yourself a scholarship and go off
to the big town to educate and make
a life for yourself elsewhere; or you stay
and commute an hour or two to one of five
big towns where the jobs come and go, and you
find yourself a place like our yella dove tavern.
david m pitchford
19 May 2012
