Blue's Inspo Journal
20 posts in this topic.
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into the wild blue yonder
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goals for napo
- complete at least 4 poems to my own satisfaction
(i.e. completed enough to feel okay posting them for feedback)
- no haikus
(because I always use them to play catch-up)
- focus on clarity and conciseness
bonus: complete at least 4 poetry reviews -
checkpoints and details
- have one new poem completed each Friday
- par each poem down to the essentials
(try to avoid using five thousand metaphors & unrelated images in
a single poem)
- find figurative language that really works
(as opposed to using words that sound pretty but are unrelated
to the intended theme/emotion)
bonus: have one new poetry review completed each Sunday -
some inspiration
(Mt. Fuji out the plane window) -
some inspiration
(Five Lakes District, Kawaguchiko) -
some inspiration
[img]blob:https://imgur.com/4327af4c-1bf0-4e23-8e2a-42dd06cbf875[/img]
(I like the poppies in this one)(in front of the Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island) -
some inspiration
(I like the poppies in this one)(in front of the Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island) -
to theme or not to theme
- travel
- only if I do travel as a theme I want it to tie to an emotional theme or something instead of just "here are some poems about places I've been"
- then again I guess each travel poem could have a different message beyond "here is a place I went" but travel could be the theme that ties them together
- change/growth
- love but tbh that's a bit played out with me
- ditto nature -
some inspiration
(Pennies on Paul Revere's grave)(The Granary Burying Ground, Boston, MA) -
-
some inspiration, in the form of old poetry
Into the Wild Blue[Africa] - 2016Spoiler
April 29th. 8/30
[untitled so far]
I crave you. Not like the desert craves
rain, which is what people
always say.
People are wrong.
The desert does not crave.
She sleeps,
waiting
for her allotted centimeters.
If I slept so,
my heart would sheathe itself
in waxy leaves. In the glacial night,
it would race across the sands,
too fast for viper or fennec or
falling temperatures. I would crave you
like the desert craves rain--
which is to say,
not at all.
I am not so dry and vast.
I am a rainforest, teeming
with secret rustlings and matings.
Waterfalls thunder in my veins.
You move through me like a panther
in the night, a silky pelt slinking
through the shadows, paws padding
down my back.
Your teeth are gentle on my shoulder.
Soak into my skin like
the rain on a dart frog's bright back,
the droplets glittering on
bromeliads and the smooth skin
of river dolphins.
I crave you like the rainforest craves
its quenching meters, the deluge
it cannot do without.
The floodwaters that drive the cycles
of birth and death, growth and rot.
Life from life:
the way I flourish in your light. -
some inspiration, in the form of old poetry
A Teacher Lives in There - 2015
in which Blue experiments a lot with shape and formSpoiler
Cross-Curricular
The words in books reach back
through history, life connected by
a thousand invisible strings
to other lives
the way strands of DNA connect us
by evolution, history,
four proteins
to all other organisms.
Arborvitae aligned on the garden path
like mathematical certainties.
The stars as numerous
as sands in the ocean,
a multitude of drops. The great beast,
a biome in itself.
Heavenly bodies trace a universal equation
across the sky, the ecliptic's eternal circle.
All things flow together like a river.
We cannot tug on one thing without
finding it bound by a thousand invisible strings,
like adenine to thyamine,
like guanine to cytosine,
like tendons connecting muscle
to bone,
to everything in the universe.Spoiler
Love Notes
Dear Sir
______Love letters bound up in
____________long walks on the bike path,
______stride matching stride,
________________________and in
______bird calls: I teach, you learn
____________cardinals following us in the branches
______and blue jays you always spot before me.
______Love letters whispered and laughed
____________on our dirt-stained elbows and knees
______in the fresh spring soil and grass
________________________you tell me
______you want to tour all the waterfalls
____________in the state, learn to paint, and
______eat tomatoes from your own garden.
______Love letters bound up in
____________texts--who would've thought--
______but I ask you out, Dear Sir,
______and you reply, Delighted,
____________Dear Madam: the form
______our love notes take.
______Still, I can't tell you the ocean I feel
____________when the pavement ends and
______you drive away.Spoiler
One Man
A solitary section of split-rail fence
squatted in the middle of a path
that was not a path,
which ran up a tussocky hillside
to a single, spreading oak.
The rails were splintered and old,
wet from the morning's rains.
Nearby, the scent of flowers
not yet blooming. Sneakers had beaten
a track around the posts,
up the hill
along the path that was not a path.
The fence standing, stretching,
unable to keep people in or out
but trying.Spoiler
Fledgling
Young bodies snake through the gymnasium
in a musicless conga--
_______loud
_____________laughing
_____________________joyful.
Teenagers with their lanky grace,
fourth-graders tumbling after them
like a litter of puppies:
_______a tangled mass of youth
_______winging through a clear blue sky.
They are fledglings learning to fly,
soaring into adulthood--
_______their wings
______________not yet clipped
_____________________by the cares of the world.
I feel like a flightless old hen. -
some inspiration, in the form of old poetry
Into the Wild Blue(Africa) - 2014
in which you can see my uncertainty with myself and my lifeSpoiler
The clank and rumble of the
railway yards, the trains
clattering down the tracks
and the drawn-out lonesome
whistle:
I cannot sleep without it.
Part of the rush of the city,
the gleaming racecar colors
and sunlight shining
on the manyvaried windows
of office buildings.
Downtown. Sky-scrapers.
Like a utopia
across the river--
anyplace is beautiful at
this distance.
And sometimes closeup.
Like when I'm walking on
brick sidewalks, through stalls
at the farmers' market or
driving
on 75 with the windows down
and my dad's old CDs blaring.Spoiler
Elizabeth
Her name has never really belonged to her,
or, perhaps,
she has never really belonged to her name.
The confidence in the slant of the l,
the husky beauty in the buzz of the z:
not her.
She is more the quiet type,
the hidden-in-her-bedroom type,
the reading-Mary-Oliver type,
the solitary-walk-in-the-forest type.
Not a queen,
nor an actress,
nor a fashion-designer.
But sometimes,
just for a moment,
she catches hold of her name by the tail of the h.
Glimpses it and holds on because she knows it to mean her:
when she sees it printed on a note,
her;
when she hears it roll off the tongue of a blue-eyed boy,
her.
A bird-watcher,
a book-reader.
Not actress, designer, or queen--
but sometimes
she catches a glimpse
and it's enough that she aspires
to be herself.Spoiler
It's the kind of day that needs
stick-shift driving foot on clutch to rub away
the itch that clings to the soul
classic rock blasting through the stereo
Jethro Tull or "Born to Be Wild,"
Bob Seger, Kansas, and Metallica blasting
until you can't hear
wind-blown hair in the open window
snip cut curls shorn onto the floor
the wind whips your hair back
and the sunlight warms it
leather jackets and denim to keep you warm
and oil-free while you change the headlight
change the fluids change
any kind of change that keeps
the motor running.
Today is the kind of day that needs
a change
stick-shift music haircut oil anything
anything that keeps the motor runningSpoiler
Hometown
Always feel like driving north will freeze
the anxiety, the thoughts of money and work and
how will I be me,
and the homesickness.
But when I stop driving I feel
more homesick than before.
The people who bought our old house tore down
the fences we built, hours of
post-hole diggers and unraveled wire.
They filled in the marsh on Starville,
where cattails lined the ditches and
red-winged blackbirds
made their nests
and my sisters and I
hunted tadpoles.
The cafe where my dad ordered poutine for breakfast
is closed now.
Just another empty-eyed facade on the river-front.
The church is still standing, there on
South Water Street,
but our priest has moved on and school attendance
dwindles daily.
Closing soon,
the cracked and barren car park says.
I wanted to come home but
my parents live four states away now
and my grandfather is dead
and my grandmother is depressed and confined
to a wheelchair
and I'm more homesick now than I was
when I left.
Always feel like driving north will freeze
the truth of reality burning inside me,
but I guess I didn't drive far enough. -
god it hurts how much i used to hurt -
some inspiration, in the form of old poetry
Into the Wild BlueAfrica - 2013
in which Blue clearly felt a lot of worldly guilt that yearSpoiler
I.
One summer she spent
holed up in the kitchen,
canning homemade jam.
In August I announced
that I only liked jelly.
II.
She tells me,
If anyone asks you
if your mama's Catholic
and can she make a roux,
you can say yes.
III.
One winter we built
a sled-hill from the snow
dumped on our corner by the plows.
Four hours she traipsed
up and down our three-foot hill with us.Spoiler
Kratts' Kreatures
I still believe
in the tail-end of the
Tasmanian tiger
that went whipping around
a corner
and vanished from sight
the way a child believes
in Santa Clause.
My hope for the world.Spoiler
She dove into the Baltic just to feel
the frigid water smooth against her skin
and scaled the Ural Mountains like the bear:
to see what she could see on the other side
of Narodnaya.
She hiked the Balkans next,
hiding small secret things in
their woods and creeks, dark with summer:
silk-furred mink and padding lynx.
And then she trekked the Serengeti,
keeping company with
giraffes who watched for danger
and straddled the water's edge for a drink.
In Melbourne she listened
to the legend of Baiame
and the creation of the world and all beings
during Dreamtime;
in Tiwanaku she watched the Aymara yatiri
raise their palms to the solstice sun
after the longest night of the southern year;
then took a canoe down the Amazon River
to swim with pink dolphins.
But when she came home,
she slept wrapped in sheets like
the mummies she'd seen in Cairo:
alone, beautiful, and perfectly preserved.
Instead of mountain paths and woodland trails
she walked the city streets,
her hair blown back by diesel winds.
She came home only to leave again.
Only to rest on cotton sheets
when she would have preferred a bed
with the swift green scent of grass.
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