Poem-A-Day Project, Day Six - Iambic Pentameter

Laugh With Me

The act that I so love to act, in fact,

If not in deed, indeed, is not an act

At all.

This feat that makes me feel complete

Is transformation for its sake; to take

A cloudy visage, break it's habit bit by bit

And coax the sunshine from reluctance.

Me,

I say, the greatest act that I enact

Today is causing laughter to react

And clear grey storm clouds from your once-sad face.

Poem-A-Day Project: Day 5: Cinquain

Sound
Ecstatic vibrations
Sounding and resounding
Solving my many mysteries
Music

Poem a Day Project, Day 4

RAGE ON IN LONELINESS
A SESTINA

Everything is in its place on the table,
I sit menacingly at the head.
On either side of me, my arms
Are poised to strangle all of the life
From my past, which lies choked in grey death,
Gasping, rasping in a pool of blood.

I have furiously stumbled through my life,
Hoping to avoid an inevitable death,
Scrubbing in vain hands stained with blood.
At last I raise to the heavens my arms,
Held triumphantly above my head,
Standing rigid on top of the table.

I will rage on in loneliness inside my head,
Or until the last cards are thrown on the table.
And I will labor silently to cheat death,
Crushing that grim, grey Reaper in my arms.
Even though my wounds gush with blood,
I will fight until I drip my last drop of Life!


Note: This poem is not necessarily a true representation of my innermost feelings, but an excercise in form. The form I used is a Sestina, a highly structured poetic form that, quite frankly, I found VERY difficult. But I wanted to give it a try. There is a line from Jack Kerouac's debut novel, "The Town and the City" which ends a chapter that I have always loved: "So I will rage on in loneliness inside my head." I decided to use that line as one of the Sestina lines and then I had to pick the remaining five words that end all the lines ahead of time, so I picked ones that I felt would offer the most dramatic potential. -A.F.

Poem-A-Day Project, Day 3

Glare Haiku

Summer sun shines bright
Making my computer screen
Very hard to read

Poem-A-Day Project, Day 2

Shook One's Lament

When I
Shake it like a Polaroid Picture
The image doesn't always
Develop
Quite how I envisioned

Sometimes
I break it
When I shake it
Pieces
of what my mother gave me
Lie scattered
Shattered
On the floor

Maceo commands us:
Shake ev'rything you've got!
And then what
Do I have left?
Bits of "ev'rything"
Shaken
Not stirred nor stirring
Strewn behind me
In my shaken wake.

So you'll forgive me
If I'm a little shaky.

Is it really that time?
Time to shake and bake?
All I can do is take
I've nothing left to give.

Nothing left to shake
So my booty
And my tail-feathers
And my Groove Thang
And my tambourine
And the dew on my ever-lovin' lily
just lie there

Immobile

Not shaking
Just
Faking.

Poem-A-Day Project: Day 1

Morning in Sunset

A hill slopes downward
toward
Our house
Through the back window
The life of the hill
Reveals itself
Playing out
Before my eyes
Each and every day

Lavender
Buzzed by fumbling
Bumble Bees
Rosemary spreads
Expanding the limits
Of its tiny
Fragrant
Empire of green

Now
At the height of a fog-bound Sunset summer
That is no summer at all
The Lavender Blue
Dilly Dilly
And the Rosemary Green
Are surrounded by the
Straw-yellow of summer grass
The sand-brown of Sunset Earth
And the mist-grey of the Sunset Summer Sky