Weekly Prompts

A Cento on Living

We are dust and dreams;
we live in what kills us.
We are put on earth a little space
that we may learn to bear the beams of love,
to leave tracks.
Somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere,
each of us must help the other die—
golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust;
so teach us to number our days,
that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Line 1: A.E. Housman

Line 2:  John N. Morris

Lines 3- 4: William Blake

Line 5:  Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Lines 6-7:  Adrienne Rich

Line 8: William Shakespeare

Lines 9-10:  Psalm 90:12 KJV

Photo by Nataliya Melnychuk on Unsplash

Prompt: The Writer’s Digest defines a cento this way: At it’s most basic level, the cento is a poem comprised of lines and phrases from other previously written poems. Many centos… use the work of multiple poets. But there are some that focus on just one specific poet. 

Write your own cento using lines from other poets or writers or maybe concentrate on lines from one poet. Make sure to credit those poets, as I did in ” A Cento on Living,” first published by the Georgia Poets Society.

Truly we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.

Prompt: Mysteries and miracles are all around us. .In fact, Oliver admonishes  us to pay attention, to be astonished. What have you paid attention to lately that has astonished you, has awed you., has knocked your socks off?  Is it the monarch butterfly’s migrating pattern, the hummingbird’s pattern of flight? Maybe it’s the bottlenose dolphins, each with its own signature whistle. Write about one or more miracles/mysteries too marvelous to be understood.

Here is a work in progress, an “after” poem that originates from a prompt from Diane Seuss, chancellor at Academy of American Poets and also connects to a Kahlo painting. Get Seuss’s prompt dealing with a repeated word and advocating for lots of images—from the Academy’s  Summer Series.

Heartbreak

—after Frida Kahlo’s Memory (Mexico) 1937

Heartbreak moves with no wind, little light, and not much life.
Heartbreak is a stiff dress on the clothesline, suspended in silence.

At onset, heartbreak feels like one foot on land, one in the sea,
Or heartbreak is like a body with missing parts.

It is heartbreaking to see love in ruins, bleeding out upon the ground.
People die of heartbreak every day, a real physical phenomenon.

A mother’s heart breaks many times before it breaks, another marvel.
Do you think heartbreak is all about the apple? When was heartbreak born?

And if God knows heartbreak, why is He silent when our heart breaks?
In heartbreak, night rules, and dawn becomes the miracle of all miracles.

Memory is heartbreak’s reservoir, its source of infection, its habitat for pain.
White-winged dove and mountain-mist are the colors of heartbreak.

Heartbreak is a joy-stopper, a faith-tester, a filcher of life, a thief.
Where do we go after heartbreak, after the chest has been impaled?

Where do we go after the long wait for transplant, organs failing with every breath?
After the young father gives the nod to the medical team? After a sister’s kiss

goodbye? Where do we go after the nurse adjusts the drips and the beeping
stops? After she straightens the sheets?

Note: Written during Ekphrastic Review’s third annual writing marathon; also inspired by the Seuss prompt above.

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home. – Darl in As I Lay Dying

Prompt: What does home look like for you? Is it a country? A room? A particular house? Perhaps it is people. A relationship. Maybe it’s the hereafter. When you think of home, what images surface? You might want to begin  with the statement, “I’m thinking of home.” But before you start,  read my poem below and also check out Philip Larkin’s Home Is So Sad.

Suppertime
—after Horace Pippin’s Family Supper (USA), 1946
I remember our evenings around the table,
Daddy asking the Lord’s blessings upon the food,
heads bowed, not a single movement, even from
the littlest child. Not his typical blessing, just
a lean thank-you for these and all other blessings
that the meat not grow cold nor hunger swell
in his belly. Simplicity honored the table
with her chipped plates, her dingy, pot-liquor-
stained table covering, her fruit-painted Ball
jelly jars serving as iced tea glasses. Always
biscuits and sugarcane syrup, often red-eye ham
gravy or golden-crusted chicken, sometimes quail or
rabbit or turkey or squirrel. Occasionally, mounds
of fresh water mullet or river catfish graced the table,
accessorized with deep-fried, sweet onion-filled,
yellow-meal corn dodgers. Oh, to go back, to sit
around the supper table, my family of eleven,
raising a jelly-jar toast and sopping syrup with bread
made with strong and tender hands. To glean every morsel
of conversation, to suck the marrow from every joy and
sorrow, to stash away life for future famines.

–July Fourth, 2023

 Smack-dab in the middle of our neighborhood
the love of the town and his caregiver dancing
to the band’s rendition of Led Zeppelin’s
Communication Breakdown, their sweating  bodies
sparkling with every move; golf carts garbed in American
flags resting at the water fountain in the center of the block,
their occupants chattering with neighbors like brown
headed cowbirds, the Cavapoos and Labs pullling
on leashes, excited by banter and song. Nearby,
folks fire up the grill for burgers and freshly-shucked,
butter-slathered corn while others stretch
electrical cords to their several ice cream churns packed
in salt and ice and filled with cream and sugar and fresh
Georgia peaches. Finally, the night booms and strobes
patriotic, and oooohs and ahhhhhs reverberate around
every corner. How beautiful it is, this coming together,
this fellow feeling, this happiness shared. How simple,
like breathing.

Prompt:  Write your own Independence Day poem. What family and friends or others do you associate with the holiday? What customs and traditions do you hold fast to? Is there a barbecue? Fireworks? What special music? OR  maybe you will want to go a different route and think of what you might want independence from? A memory? A physical ailment? A situation you’re in right now? Whatever direction you take, write for ten minutes to gather your thoughts. Put the writing aside, and tomorrow  or next week or month, pick it up again. You might be surprised at what’s there or what else might come to you.

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    From “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Prompt:  With what have you measured your life? Prufrock says his life has been measured in coffee spoons. In Rent’s “Seasons of Love,” we hear of other kinds of measurement: sunsets, midnights, cups of coffee, bridges burned, times cried. You might listen to the song for inspiration and then write your poem. How about starting with Prufrock’s phrase, “I have measured out my life in ________________”? If you keep the phrase, give credit to Eliot in an “after” line.

I don’t ask for your pity, but just for your understanding – not even that – no. Just for your recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us all.                                                                                                                                                                                         Chance in Sweet Bird of Youth

Prompt: Write a poem about Time. Do you agree with Chance in Tennessee Williams’ play that Time is the enemy in us all?  Maybe you disagree, seeing Time in a positive light. After all, we hear that Time is a great healer, for example. On my 70th birthday, I wrote this poem, a haibun, about time, not my usual serious poem. Enjoy. (And if you’d like to know more about the haibun, here is a wonderful podcast at Rattle, Episode 72 on experimenting with this form.)

On Turning Seventy
—after Egon Schiele’s Standing Woman in Red (1913); with lines
from Sidonie Gabrielle Collete and William Shakespeare

In less than a week, one doctor recommended a statin drug, another ordered
a liver ultrasound, and still another wanted a follow-up mammogram. I began
pondering Polonius when Hamlet derided him with his apt and
not-so-funny description of old men—gray beard, wrinkled skin, weak legs,
a deteriorating brain, sap-filled eyes. I started wondering if the old man
might have been approaching his seventh decade, too.

And then there was a friend’s birthday card with its cautionary fashion rules
for those of us in our golden years—don’t sport both bifocals and a nose ring
at the same time; or dentures with a tongue piercing; or liver spots with a tube
top.  What are we septuagenarians to do with all these don’ts, the news
so disheartening?

Nothing to do but look to the wisdom of others. To be astonished
is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly. Yes! That’s it!
I am resolved. I am heading to the tattoo parlor, then on to Victoria’s Secret
for skin-tight fittings in fiery-red. If I don’t succeed in astonishing myself,
perhaps I will shock my world.

The Fountain of Youth
A chance to rid self
          Of this hideous winter

The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.

Prompt:  Write a poem about just allowing things to happen, particularly when you can do nothing about it. Maybe you have experienced such a time and in that period, you learned to let things be. Perhaps you will want to write about that experience.  As I am writing about allowing things to happen, allowing things to be, I remember Danusha Lameris’ poem called “Let Rain Be Rain.” Click on the title to read and be inspired.

—after Alix Klingenberg

 When the world is frenzied and cold and
seems ruled by hate, turn to things that warm
you—worn and faded animal-print sneakers,
vegetable soup with beans you snapped
last summer, simmering on the freshly-scrubbed
kitchen stove, eyes sparkling, innards burned
clean of yesterday’s dribbles and spills.
Cuddle up to the hearth with a warm cup
and browse your people’s recipes for soups
and gravies, their remedies for bitterness,
their cures for sore hearts. Finally, peruse
journals, handwritten, and works of fine art
to discover you are not alone, then with more
fanfare than the jubilant brass of Schumann’s first
symphony, announce the coming of spring.

Published:  Blue Heron Review, 2024; Photo by Jo Taylor

Prompt:  Alix’s poem, and my poem after her, is a list of what warms her when the world is uninviting and cold. What do you turn to when you want to be cuddled and warmed, when you feel the need to turn away from the world? The prompt (from a James Crews workshop) is an inviting one – just start with the list and see where it takes you.After that, play around with the order of the list and vary the lines to have long and short. Have fun!

From town, go down the paved road towards Johnson’s
Chapel for two miles until the road makes a sharp turn
to the right, a large, white farm house in the bend,
turn left on a dirt road through brambles and overgrown
bushes until the air grows cooler and then drive
a few hundred feet past overhanging limbs and branches
stinging with new life and there, when the road ends,
you’ll find Dixie Landing, a swimming hole with cool,
unemotional water and turtles on logs getting what little sun
they can find in the naked light, where the moon feels
challenged in its rendezvous with its mirrored friend during
the nighttime, where a verdant foliage invites kingfishers and
lacey, translucent-winged dragonflies and butterflies and twisted
primeval cypress entices teens to swing from its ropes far out
over the water.

Published: Blue Heron Review, 2023; Photo from Unsplash

Prompt:  Write about how to get to a place, perhaps a remote place, a hard-to-get-to-place, ending with description that captures the significance/beauty of the place.