Please follow these guidelines.
Place your entry on this thread if you belong to the community. If you do not belong to the community and would like to join in, email me at didimenendez at hotmail dot com and I will send you a Blogger Invite. Place your entries on its own thread and your personal blogs too if you like to receive comments. I will only be reading the entries though posted on this thread.
Write a poem using these 12 words/phrases:
cast a kitten
don't take any wooden nickels
giggle water
hair of the dog
"I have to go see a man about a dog."
iron one’s shoelaces
Joe Brooks
nookie
torpedo
What's eating you?
You slay me!
zozzled
If you are not sure of the meaning of some of these you could stop by here.
Use one of the words/phrases as your title (optional).
The best three poems (in my opinion) will receive a Bettie and The Poets Calendar.
One of the best three poems will also be published in OCHO.
Thank you,
Didi Menendez
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
(I hope this posts with the correct line breaks..if not, they're correct on my original post)
Don't Cast A Kitten
This New Years Eve,
like every New Years before,
body bent like a sleet-hit
tree limb, false teeth clinging
hopefully to his shrinking gums,
Joe Brooks sneaks out
of the nursing home to the corner pub.
Blue Suit.
Red Tie.
In need of some nookie,
he says, if asked.
What's eating you? he yells
to his half-deaf, half-dead
roomie, who turns up Friends
to the volume of a Dead
concert in reply.
The nurses toss back their hair,
giggling. Even Ms Sanders at age
sixty-two feels like a girl
next to Sam, a hundred and one,
now, if a day.
No need to stop him, one titters.
He always comes back,
begging for the hair of the dog,
next morning.
Back to his mind-numbing roll-up
bed, ten pills a day routine,
tellie blending day into night.
No wonder he needs to remember
when he was a stud, a looker,
he thinks when he hears them joke.
Really got zozzled on that giggle water
this time, he brags to the red-head
when she brings his morning pills,
her head too filled with Johnny Depp
to hear him. Don't take any wooden nickels,
he flirts, his once strong baritone voice
aliened into an old man's wheezing whisper.
They laugh again at days end report
at how he tells them he'll hire torpedos
to protect them or admonishes them
not to iron their stockings too many times
when the supervisor's around.
They wonder if he really can get it up
or if anybody will still have him,
cash roll regardless.
Well, I've got to see a man about a dog,
one says, finally, and they walk out
into the cold Boston night, shivering,
futures still writ in the stars above them.
They chatter about hair styles and nail polish,
swing their hips confidently,
never imagining their own teeth
in a glass or that they will one day
become an anachronism, too.
(Didi, I just saw your post above--I wasn't sure either if you wanted the entries posted here since these comment boxes tend to really mess up formatting, but here's mine for what it's worth):
I Have to Go See a Man About a Dog
Joe, brooks are made of stones
and—don’t giggle--water.
If you listen close, the water chortles.
It says: Go away, Joe. Just go. That nude
asleep on the torpedo-shaped boulder
isn’t posing for you or the photographer.
Sometimes, a picture or a moment needs
no words. Clouds mottle. The day is over-
cast. A kitten cries for its mother. Hit
by a car, she’s not coming back. Alas.
Didn’t you once say the world was cruel?
The hair of the dog will keep falling out
to spite the vacuum and her aching
back. She’ll surrender your best friend
to the pound where he’ll die alone. Give
until it aches. (Charity begins at home,
eh? The mice played and played
on your Egyptian sheets and king-sized
mattress, didn’t we? Wheee! ) Don’t take.
Any wooden nickels clicking in your pocket
should be buried for the squirrels to eat
like nookie on a winter body. Jaunary
is always so frigid, so unforgiving.
She forgot about the iron. One’s shoelaces
are sometimes all that contains the feet, keeps
the soles from running away. You have felt
the need to flee on the beach. The waves
are always ready to receive a prodigal body:
Come, my child. Don’t be afraid. Breathing
is for old men and babies. What’s eating you
is eating me, my sweet. Life and love are ravenous.
I /you (are) slay(ing) me. Still, I refuse to feel
shame. Look, the stars are zozzled tonight.
That’s no siren; that’s your wife. Your shirt’s on fire
and your house is being consumed by flames.
i dont even know what a thread is - but i know typographic control is dicey on this thing called internet / what the hell, my piece is prosey
quick visit
signed my name times new roman on
your plaster cast a kitten
drawn cute & japanese next to it a symbol that makes you giggle
water dribbles 40 degrees lip-to-cheek. after inflating surgical gloves
each finger becomes a mock-torpedo breaching your personal space
a doctor says don’t take any wooden nickels surely chiming in her
pockets (nurses uniforms have pockets too) i like the cut of her jib
& with my mind in the gutter you slay me with a look your silence
loud see she has hair of the dog her dog silky & loyal if ever i have to
go see a man about a dog he will be proverbial & without doubt this
doctor’s ex-husband. conversation lags the american talk small but
quaint only the master of innuendo his bed in the next alcove helps
a cackling half-reference to nookie or fcuk shirts barely heard still
the ironic potential solid as iron. one’s shoelaces will unweave
at the worst & best of times i think bending down all zozzled
yet particularly aware of the time. over farewells i spy
a nicely dotted j one simple character legible amidst the
doctor’s signature not jane not jess not jill not jeremy or joe…
brooks of ether & opium seem to babble but in a mean way
as i shoot down the hallway.
Post a Comment