30 in 30: Day 6

Prompt: use the same (or similar) words in both your first line and last line, but change the order or the meaning of the words from the first line to the last line.

Form: Free Verse

You look at me, I look away.
The table sprung for miles
As the head's gaping mouth
Took freedom from our necks
With paralyzing fire.
It bullied the bulletin
And ripped the racks,
Spilling markers to the matting.
It flipped our folders
And gripped our pens,
Filling empty space between blue lines.
Seven and a half decades of minutes
Crawled from face to face. They
Left their mark with bloodshot eyes,
Making for the door.
The auricularly mannered ingress
shut. It's shut for but two days.
I look at you, you look away.

30 in 30: Day 5

Prompt: pick three words that you absolutely love the sound of and set out to use them in your poem.

My words: beyond, salvation, colossus.

Form: Distich

My time is dying, a death unfair, moving
Beyond the scope of books and study.

Beyond the standing pen and paper,
The soaring colossus that is my room.

Beyond that colossus, that fetid death,
It dies to find salvation.

Salvation found beyond itself, hidden
In hearts unseen. Unseen by that colossus!

That hungering beast, with such false passion,
Seeks pretentious looks and grandeur.

To that I die, admit my loss, no more
Time to waste. I meekly seek my savior.

30 in 30: Day 4

Prompt: write the final line to your poem first, and then write the poem to get to that ending.

Form: Tanka

Beckon me once more,
Chilled air. How the light dances,
Swings between the trees!
Guided by a curling hand,
A willful wind tossing leaves.

30 in 30: Update

I know that I'm behind a few days, and for that, I'm sorry. My excuse is that I've been home for fall break and have been terribly preoccupied with old friends and a paper on Kant due Monday. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to make it top priority to catch up to where I'm supposed to be. Just giving you guys (however few you are) an update and apology.

Special thanks to Angie for holding me to my word!

30 in 30: Day 3

Prompt: write a poem that begins with a proclamation.

Form: Kyrielle

I will not let my body rot!
To waste I know that I will not.
Like if to then I have forgot,
Day's sweat and blood my body needs.

Such simple food I should intake,
Yet I never fail to mistake
Nutrients of green beans with cake.
And so for this my body pleads.

A day spent out below the sun,
An afternoon spent on a run.
Why do I fail to see this fun?
Such a healthy bodily deed.

I hate the type of man I am,
One who does not do what I can.
Instead of heeding healthy plans,
On trash and filth my body feeds.

30 in 30: Day 2

Prompt: write a poem that begins with you waking up.

Form: abababcc, no meter

Down my face, a sweat bead slips,
A moistened trail, a salty stain.
An ardent smile, brown hair to miss,
So surreal and full of pain.
A jolt of life as her hair flips,
Lucid à lonely once again.
Too many times, this splendid love
Is day's first blush, too quickly snubbed.

30 in 30: Day 1

Today I found this blog series called "30 Poems in 30 Days." The idea is obvious: to write 30 poems - one each day - in thirty days. The catch is that the author of the series announces a topic, prompt or guideline each day that you must follow. The series is annual, and it's already been concluded for this year, but I'm going to undertake it a month late, anyway. Call me out if I start to slack! I really want to do this.

Day 1's prompt is to "use the word Pattern in the first line and/or the last line of your poem."

Form: Free Verse

Patterns of a private campus,
Like muck, grimy and malodorous.
An infectious disease with the greatest of ease
Spreads the plague of uniform thinking.

In vain I left my coat at home,
My aegis from the sludge.
My boots, as well, sit in my room;
My body is a sponge.

Every day I tread the waters,
A straw in my mouth just in case.
I absorb the foreign manners of life
Unwillingly, but am sure to throw them up.

Be transformed! Renew your mind!
I hate what I see,
Such thoughtless thought.
Do not conform to the patterns of this world.