April 30th, 2022 Poems

On the home stretch. Here are my poems for April 30th. Links to my previous April poems follow:

Saturday, April 30, Day 30:

NaPoWriMo Prompt

True Love Cento NaPoWriMo

There must be a million ways
To say I love you
But these words will suffice for now

“Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all:

“If ever two were one, then surely we.”
If ever wife loved man, then thee.”

“O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.”

“Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine.”

“Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.”

“Lying in bed I think about you,
Display thy breasts, there let me
Behold that circummortal purity.
Between whose glories,
there my lips I’ll lay,
Ravished in that fair Via Lactea.”

“Rare bird,
extinct color, you stay in
my dreams in x-ray.

“The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!”
The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,
Bright eyes, accomplish’ d shape, and dangerous waist!

Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes.,

Poetic sources

Jake Cosmos Aller A Million Ways to Say I Love You
Joshua Beckman Lying in bed I think about you,
Anne Bradstreet To my husband
Valentine Lorna Dee Cervantes
Ben Jonson Song: to Celia [“Drink to me only with thine eyes”]
Morris Egan Bar Napkin Sonnet #11
Jennifer Michael Hecht Love Explained
Robert Herrick Upon Julia’s Breasts
John Keats The Day is Gone
William Shakespeare Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all:
William Shakespeare The Spring
(from Love’s Labours Lost)
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 65: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
John Updike Penumbrae

And now – our final (but still optional!) prompt. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a cento. This is a poem that is made up of lines taken from other poems. If you’d like to dig into an in-depth example, here’s John Ashbery’s cento “The Dong with the Luminous Nose,” and here it is again, fully annotated to show where every line originated. A cento might seem like a complex undertaking – and one that requires you to have umpteen poetry books at your fingertips for reference – but you don’t have to write a long one. And a good way to jump-start the process is to find an online curation of poems about a particular topic (or in a particular style) and then mine the poems for good lines to string together. You might look at the Poetry Foundation’s collection of love poems, its collection of poems by British romantic poets, or even its surprisingly expansive collection of poems about (American) football.

Three French Forms

I Drink My Coffee With My Wife

Coffee morning
I drink my coffee with my wife

Coffee morning
Drinking coffee makes a good morning,

At sunset, I drink wine enjoy the nightlife
Thinking to my wife, I have a good life.

But I shift to tea mid-morning.
Coffee morning.

The Rondel, Old French meaning small circle, is a 14th-century verse form. It is a member of the Rondeau family of forms but differs from the Rondeau in the number of lines and the pattern of rhyme. The Rondel came to England in the 16th century. Sources indicate the Rondel is better suited to French than English yet Dobson’s Wanderer is a fluid lyrical example of why the Rondel is adaptable to English. A variation of the Rondel is the Rondel Prime or French Sonnet. The elements of the Rondel are:

a 13-line poem made up of 2 quatrains followed by a quintain.

isosyllabic, often written in 8 syllable lines, but the lines can be any number of syllables as long the measure is consistent throughout the poem.

rhymed ABba abAB abbaA, A and B being refrains. In French one rhyme is feminine and one is masculine, it doesn’t matter whether the feminine rhyme is the a or the b rhyme.

composed with 2 rentrements. L1 is repeated in L7 and L13, and L2 is repeated in L8.

Two

I like to Drink Rondine

I like to drink my coffee at dawn
As the dawning sunlight fills the room.
Lifting my nightmare feeling of doom
With Curtains Drawn.

Soon my nightmares will all be gone
Soon I must go back to the bedroom
I like to drink.

Drink too much coffee, migraine come-on
I must lie down in the darkroom.
I get up to use the bathroom.
Drinking my coffee the day goes on.

The Rondine is a little-seen shortened version of the Rondeau dating back to at least the 16th century. The elements of the Rondine are:

a poem in 12 lines made up of a quatrain, a tercet, and ending in a quintet.
syllabic 8 syllables per line accept L7 and L12 which are 4 syllables each. In English metered, most often iambic tetrameter except the refrain which is iambic dimeter. It is composed with a refrain repeated from the opening phrase of the poem, retirement. It is rhymed, using only 2 rhymes except for the refrain being unrhymed, rhyme scheme abba,abR, abbaR (R being the refrain)

I Like to Drink Coffee

I like to drink coffee in the morning
But at sunset, I like to drink red wine.
Drinking coffee makes a good morning.

I like to drink coffee in the morning
But I shift to hot tea midmorning
Drinking my red wine at night, all is fine.

I like to drink coffee in the morning.
But at sunset, I like to drink red wine.

The elements of the Triolet are:

an octa-stich, a poem in 8 lines.
in English, most often written with variable line length and meter at the discretion of the poet. Originally in French, the lines were octasyllabic which would create an 8 by 8 effect.
composed with a reinterment, L1 is repeated as L4 and L7. There is also repetition of L2 in L8. rhymed, with only 2 rhymes with the rhyme scheme ABaAabAB.
most often playful or satirical, appropriate for a light verse or occasional verse.

April 30—Multiple Choice(s)—create a poem that is somehow like a multiple-choice test, OR turn this into another “free day” for our last day of April and write any poem of your choice, OR write multiple, short, linked poems…like the sidewalk poems!

The Mantlepiece at 674 Santa Rosa Ave, Berkeley, California PSH

An old man Sam Adams
often recalled
The mantelpiece

In his childhood home
674 Santa Rosa
In Berkeley, California.

The mantelpiece
Was over a fireplace
That they seldom used.

On the mantelpiece
Was a painting
Of the Bay Bridge
View off the balcony.

The painting was the only painting
That his drug-crazed older half-brother
Ever completed.

Sam Adams loved that painting
Should have taken it
When his mother died.

Where it ended up
He never learned.

So many childhood memories
Now lost in time and distance.
Just like that painting

Sam Adams thought.
This poetry writing prompt submitted by Winston Plowes:

The Mantelpiece
A prompt for a cold dark winter’s night

Introduction

I love the idea of shutting out the night and cozying up around a roaring fire which is to be the center and heart of any home, especially at this time of the year. I would like us to consider the fireplace and especially the shelf or mantelpiece above it. Let’s look at it as a kind of changing archive, a display or exhibition, or even a ‘family museum’ as we prepare to write. I know that some modern homes do not have a mantlepiece, in which case all is not lost! You can imagine one that would suit you or use a shelf from elsewhere in the room or even a dressing table or bookshelf.

Exercise

Are you going to write a simple list poem of items on the mantlepiece (and there’s nothing wrong with that)? Maybe you have special family item(s) or useful things on there or photographs or a clock or a picture on the wall above that you will write about. Is your title going to be “My family museum”?

Moving On Writer’s Digest

Sam Adams
Was feeling old
Looking back at his life.

And realizing it was time
Time to move on
In the final stages
The end game of life
Approaching rapidly.

He still was in good health
He had a lot of wealth.

And he had his wife
The love of his life
Still in his life.

But he sensed
That soon he would be
Moving on to the final challenges

And he was afraid
Of the future.
Not ready yet
To embrace
What may come,

Afraid of moving on
But he looked at her
And realized,

As long as they moved on
Together with everything
Would turn out
The way it should.

He smiled
Filled with love
And contentment

Ready at last
To move on
To the next big challenge

His stomach growled
Enough of this
The next thing to do
Is to move on to dinner.

Wow! Here we are at the peak or finish line or what have you. Day 30! We did it (or are about to do it). Just remember that we continue poeming on Wednesdays throughout the year, daily again in November, and hit poetic forms on Fridays somewhat regularly. Here we go!

For today’s prompt, write a moving-on poem. Many people finish something (like a poetry challenge) and stop. But many April PAD Challengers keep moving on to the next prompt, next poem, next challenge. Let’s keep it moving on. Thanks for poeming along this month!