1000 lines of blank verse! Lines 317.5 - 345.5

McKees Rocks, PA (Along the Ohio, 2)

Right outside of Pittsburgh where the tracks
just vanish into grey and no one sees
them end, there is a woman who knows well
where trains go when they pass this empty hub.

She leaves no tracks in snowfall, makes no sound
just hovers in the spot where her dad crashed.
She waits for trains, and sucks each one into
the void where she is stuck is search of him.

It’s been one hundred years that he’s been gone
Since then she’s absorbed 18 errant trains
one for each year she lived, and still no Da.
It’s only coal cars that go down this route,

a turnoff by the river isn’t clear,
from time to time a train gets lost and ends
up down here at the vacant railway yard,
with station house worn bare of paint and panes.

A neighborhood behind pretends it’s gone
except for dogs who run along the tracks.
The children won’t go down there since they fear
a ghost, and parents will not speak the word.

Authorities have come in search of trains
lost off their routes, but never find a thing
suspicious, though they do report a chill
even in summer, when the heat is damp.

She doesn’t rattle chains, or stomp, or drift
along the tracks in phosphorescent haze.
Her goal is not to scare, but just to find
the father she has lost, so they can rest. ¶ 7:38 PM 0 comments

1000 lines of blank verse! Lines 294.5 - 316.5

Benton, WV (Along the Ohio, 1)

Out here all turns are sharp, all hills are steep,
rainwater drains so fast the grass won’t grow.
My porch is a brick buffer from the cars
that race down this curved alley every night

down to the river, and then back uptown,
youths risking themselves, and their mothers’ love.
I sit out on the porch and hold the phone
I wait here for the crash, so I can help.

I know each boy in town by how they drive,
their peeling tires stink rubber down my road.
I know each risk they take by how they take
the turn of the back alley by my house.

The careful ones slow down at sight of brick,
maybe not much but watching them has taught
what caution looks like even when it’s fast.
But danger boys speed up when they see me.

I smile at them, I rock, I show the phone
so they will know they’re safe, but they speed up.
They scoff at kindness from an old lady
who's known their mothers and their fathers well,

knows how they died,
if dead,
knows where, knows when
and does not want to see the sons die too. ¶ 9:02 AM 0 comments

1000 lines of blank verse! Lines 280 - 293.5

breaking the blank verse for a minute just to say....yesterday i was accused of being 'warm & fuzzy' (thanks, thane! ;)) and today i sound whiny & angsty. neither is really me. i'm having a hard time finding my voice when writing in meter. maybe it will get better....

anyway, back at it:

I am not ‘warm and fuzzy’ I am not
why does my blank verse always read that way?
Can’t I be bleak in meter? Shakespeare did.
Perhaps I’ll have to write a tragic play.

I’m here for now. I’m worried and can’t write
too much to say, too little time, and fear
holds back my fingers

Insomnia (I wish I had)

The depth of sleep covers me like a cloud
of sadness, and it brings dark dreams. The taste
of sleep addicts me with a drop. Wish I
could lie awake and count the cracks in our
new ceiling paint, instead I always fall
asleep and stay that way for far too long
and wake depressed, with sunshine in my eyes ¶ 9:03 AM 0 comments

1000 lines of blank verse! Lines 248 - 279

There is a glaze of something on my pond
a haze a stain of thickness like a film
I don’t know if it killed the baby geese
but I have not seen them in quite a while

It started at the end down by the road
where people dump things into the culvert
along the state highway on which we live.
There’s always something floating on our pond.

And now it’s moved down by the house to drain
into the field where overflowage goes
to kill what’s there and maybe start a fire
and poison rabbits as they chew the grass.

I think I’ll get a big ‘no dumping’ sign
and put it by the culvert by the road
and seven big rottweilers who will guard
the pond from garbage dumpers. And from trolls.

Animals in Places they Ought Not be

I heard about a bunny once who jumped
up on a chair, then to a table top
then to a ledge, and finally up onto
the kitchen counter, where he stayed and ate
a loaf of bread, an apple and a pear,
turned on one burner on the kitchen stove
burned half his whiskers off, and went to sleep.

Once my dog Emmett climbed, when left alone,
onto the table in the dining room
where he got stuck, and I came home to find
him standing on the table quite forlorn
head down, ears low, he knew that he’d been bad
but, scared to jump, he couldn’t hide the fact
that he’d been climbing. So I scooped him down
tried to be stern, but couldn’t help but laugh. ¶ 1:52 PM 0 comments

1000 lines of blank verse! Lines 215 - 247

Slept in again and missed the sun, I hate
when it gets up before I do. I miss
the haze that rises off the pond. I know
it won’t be back again today. I hope
tomorrow I’ll get my butt up. I will
not hit the snooze a billion times. I swear.


Hummingbird

Small bug of whir and bird beak buzzing by
the buckeye tree outside my window here,
the tree that’s not in bloom, but trying hard,
as hard as those I saw an hour south
with handfuls on each branch, a cone of bloom
just there to make a nut. But bird, you look
so hard for nectar still. Here by the lake
it’s cold, we wish for spring. We all do, but
I wish it most for you. So tiny, you
don’t make sense, shouldn’t live. You’re just a snack.
(‘Small popcorn birds….five dollars for a batch!”)

I want to feed you nectar from a syringe
to keep your tiny strength up, you will need
first to outsmart that cat, you know the one
that has no tail? He has his eye on you.
(I heard he lost his tail fighting an owl
and birds are on his shit list ever since)

So hummingbird, come here into my dream
where trees are always blooming and the flowers
are up high out of cat-reach. I will keep
the bunnies from you with their harsh hind legs
(the dogs would be scared of you anyway).
I’ve built a garden for you in my mind
and you can buzz you bug buzz while you sip
the nectar that my heart has brewed for you.
But it spoils quickly…hurry while it’s fresh. ¶ 11:13 AM 0 comments

1000 lines of blank verse! Lines 189 - 214

Imagine, I Thought I'd Have Nothing to Write about Today (a true story)
(actually written the other day for PDFP, but I never posted it)

At home alone with husband working late,
and I, a city girl, scared of the dark
(out here where there is little else but it).
I'm talking on the phone and look outside
to see a cow face calmly looking in.

She's not ten feet away from my back door
and glows in the fluorescent motion light.
She hovers in the darkness like a cow
(not like a ghost; I don't believe in ghosts).

I guess it's just the shock of seeing her
that makes me gather dogs, and lock the doors
as though she'd ram her big cow body in
(perhaps in search of carrots--we have lots).
Or maybe my small dogs have pissed her off
by barking at her tonnage from a safe
distance, while she's behind a barbed-wire fence.

At any rate, I know that cows are nice
but quite surreal when standing in your yard.
I wonder just what made her come to me,
perhaps she knows she's safe from eating here,
but it feels like that episode of 'Lost"
when one day without warning: polar bear!

Good thing the neighbors gave us our first year
a list of who to call about lost cows.
Seemed freaky then; seems kinda normal now. ¶ 8:05 AM 0 comments

1000 lines of blank verse! Lines 133 - 188

Fog rising off the pond up to my room
where bunnies and I greet the morning light
the goose babies have not been seen for days
and might have found some trouble, or found flight

(stop it stop the rhyming stop it now!)
(I even yell at myself in IP)

we’re talking about gravy and the rab-
bit gets a little scared and hops away.
I really think the bunnies always fear
that we’ll be eating them eventually.
I wonder if it’s cruel for predators
to give a home to animals of prey.

(I am still fucking rhyming make it stop!)

the cherry tree that weeps outside my room
does not obscure my view as it does Dave’s
in his office that’s right next door to mine
and does not have a rabbit, but the dogs
do come to visit him from time to time.

(Now really now this rhyming thing must stop
let’s get that said, and then just move along
this is a blank verse challenge it is not
a lame attempt to write a country song)

(I can not stop it can not I can not)

The low fog, creeping, steps among the trees
to spread its darkness and obscure a cat
intent on killing chipmunks and to please
her person when she leaves them on the mat.

It seems to me I’ve hit a blank verse wall
when everything I write sounds cute, not real
I’ve let myself go sing-song is the thing
my challenge now—to keep my blank verse bleak
so end stopped lines must go I must enjamb
most every line, and for god’s sake not rhyme
as though I were in high school trying to show
a teacher that I know what rhyming means,
with no regards for use or quality
I’m not opposed to rhyme I only hate
when it seems to be there because it’s there
with not regard for impact or for craft
but cuz the form demands it or because
the poem is crap. That is the problem here.

Sonnet on How My Husband is Making Me Fat, Wherein I Randomly Change Rhyme Scheme Mid-Poem for No Reason Whatsoever, but Decide to Leave it because, Hell, this is just Practice and Hell, the Original Rhyme Scheme was Wrong for a Sonnet Anyway.

I look up and gaze down my long driveway
to see a man who’s walking, dressed in grey
it’s just my husband going out to get
the paper in his jammies, sure, but yet

it startles seeing his form in the haze
of fog that’s lifting up and off the pond
and it occurs to me that in my brain
the chemicals don’t know that I am wrong

to startle, only know that I felt fear
and set to work to normalize and keep
homeostasis, try their best to clear
the panic chemicals, and what is cheap

to use in this process is cortisone
which leads to belly fat. So, there you go! ¶ 8:03 AM 0 comments

1000 lines of blank verse! lines 45-132

A few more lines I really hate to put
up on my blog but that’s the choice I’ve made.
I find it hard to write this way and not
make cheesy rhymes, and thus sound very lame.

*************************************************

Controlled Burning

There used to be a house across the street.
Now there’s a clearing, centered between pines
where deer graze the new grass with shallow roots
that sit on the foundation of a life.

Toxic mold condemned the house to death.
The vacant lot was bought up by a group
of hunters from the city, and their shots
are heard as I sit by the pond and look

for herons, or a muskrat’s shallow ‘v’
to trail across the water to his safe
burrow. They burned the couch and bedrooms first,
most flammable, the fabrics of a life.

We watched the windows flicker like a show
a show you think you’re not supposed to see.
The address was the final thing to fall.
It stood, proud posted, by what used to be

the front door, where I’m sure they greeted guests
and repo men. It had to be knocked down
or chopped off with an axe, I don’t recall.
We scavenge willow branches from the lawn,

plant them in water, bravely they grow roots.
We’ll have a tree like that to weep with us
to keep us safe, to buffer us with shade,
where we can sit and watch deer graze our grass.

*************************************************

It’s finally warm and half the pond is green
an algal bloom has popped up over night
we need some fish but what’s a girl to do
unless she can locate a fish rescue?

It’s hard to focus once the sun is up—
the bunnies hop, the dogs are soon to bark
and husband sleeping—he’ll work late tonight
to write a poem seems a selfish lark.

*************************************************

Goose Poop

The geese go bobbing down my long driveway
the babies heads are higher than the grass.
Are they teenagers now? Or young adults?
How long does it take goose babes to grow up?

Their feathers all have changed from green to brown,
a little yellow lingers by the ears.
(Do geese have ears high on their heads like us?)
They’re still cute now, but I know what this means:

more grown-up goose poop in the yard to clean.

*******************************************************

I dream I am longwinded, I can talk
for hours about the government in Spain
or whether some new half-synthetic cloth
is better than the last one that they made.
But in reality my words are short,
and said with caution, weighed & overweighed

*************************************************

I smell things that aren’t there, it is a sign
of worsening depression, I must be
careful not to let it take my mind
I need less sleep, more time for poetry.

*************************************************

Like Love

The bunny grooms his bunny-wife, and she
sits loaflike there and lets him, like a queen
until he starts to hump her, though he’s been
long neutered, and his wife she is long spayed

Does springtime make the bunny want to hump?
Are hormones in the buckeye tree outside?
Or did the cleaning of her little cheek
remind him of the fun they used to have?

*************************************************

Also Like Love

My house is kooky, and has hybrid trees
that grow half apple, other half cherry
a weird quirk that was probably quite hip
back in the seventies when it was built.

But in the springtime it looks beautiful
when apple blossoms mingle with the plum
and upright cherry branches stand above
the weeping cherry branches spilling blooms

Their symbiotic thing is just like love:
one tree in two. What happens when one dies?

*************************************************

I find it hard to write this way and be
concise: there’s extra space for extra words
Perhaps by line 800 I will learn
to make each count, and not just sound absurd

I’d like to write a sonnet, I will try
to write one every day, though they’ll be crap.
A sonnet every day? No, that’s too hard.
To try a thing like that would make me snap.

I’m more than halfway there if I keep up
my silly ramblings on this silly task
7:19am, is that too soon
to ditch the tea, go up and grab my flask?

A sonneteer alas I’ll never be
I’d be content with you to warm my tea. ¶ 8:34 AM 0 comments

1000 lines of blank verse! Lines 1 - 44

I’ve stolen an idea from some people
(much cooler than me, but I doubt they’ll mind)
to write in blank verse for 1000 lines
Why do I find it makes me want to rhyme?

Abandon rhyme and crude inversions, go!
I heard a teacher (Maggie Anderson)
Once say she likes to think all in IP
It seems a practice that could help a lot
if metre is a thing you need to learn

I can not stop it, now I talk this way
I hope to do it now for all the day
But this is cheesy, really,
anyway…

**********************************************

Goose Babies

Last year she laid her eggs right by the edge
of the pond water, sadly when it rose
her nest went out to sea, we tried to see
if we could save it but those fragile eggs
would have been crushed by any tool we’d used
we took our chances (but the chance was theirs)
that nest and all would float back to the shore
it never happened, no geese our first year.
But this spring we have families one and two
The first group popped up…yellow heads one day!
A great surprise, we hadn’t seen a nest.

We wondered how soon goose babies could swim.
Turned out they swim as soon as humans come
with cameras and true non-gooselike love
This family stayed together all the time,
Big goose in front, then babies in a line
Big goose in back.
But also on the pond,
a lonely goose just hanging by the side
I should have known, they always have a mate
one day my phone rang, though my hub was late
he’d called to say, on his way out the drive
that there were gooses, baby ones again
another family, tiny heads more green
but soft and fuzzy, marching near the pond.
The babies were so small I lost their heads
as they bobbed pertly in our too-long grass
but soon they were in water, swimming small
while mom and dad chased muskrats from their pride.

****************************************************


Wow, that was easy, not that it is good
but good is not the point, it’s just to try
to learn to think in meter all the time
perhaps one day I’ll even think in rhyme!


(44 lines) ¶ 10:06 AM 0 comments