Month: September 2020

Still reading The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. Still writing my own poem each day.

This time, I picked eleven words from page 29 of the book: immunized, glass, desecrated, suitcase, astride, dust, strangers, photographs, stones, tomb, and collapsed. Then I used these eleven words in my own poem:

The strangers

rode astride

the dust tombs,

stones collapsed

beneath their

pride, desecrated

by the weight

of glass,

a pound of photographs,

and nothing left

to be immunized,

only a suitcase,

empty of letters,

dripping with

sand.

I’m gonna try to read a poem a day, and then write a poem a day. Reading The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov; today’s poem was “Succession.”

My poem is below. It’s using a prompt called “Shuffle a Poem,” where you take five random album titles from your collection and use them to write a poem. The titles have to be used intact (although they can be separated by punctuation); no removing or changing words.  Here is my shuffle poem:

I watched rain drops

Bleed the clouds

Until all soil ran red

And the seed at zero

Started to labor.

Gypsy punks say

“The stakes is high”

And they sigh when I

Put on my watering can,

Soaking everything

Too much, wondering

When the earth will

Grow up, and I will

Grow down.

No use. The organic duke

Has cast off his mantle

And settled down with the

Industrialist’s daughter.

Their progeny is sterile.

The orphan’s lament

Is thus: “The rain

Falls on the just and

Unjust.”

So the poets say.