Category Archives: Poetry

This Morning: A Poem of Decay and A Song of the Future

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Gradual Decay

My mornings often begin with a poem (usually from a one-word prompt off Mastodon) and a response to the DS106 Daily Create. The poem was from the word “gradual” and the video/song was from a prompt about the future via an image of Bryan Alexander giving a presentation about the future. The music I composed was themed in three movements: Curiosity, Concern, and Creativity.

Peace (Making It),
Kevin

PS – I’ve also been doing something related to further explorations of AI Thinking Partners with my NWP friend, Paul Allison, but I will share more about that another day.

Write Across America: Nebraska

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I’ve been circling around a few days late to the National Writing Project’s Write Across America visits, in which different sites host writing activities. The last virtual visit was to Nebraska, a state which I don’t know much about. Thus, the title of my poem, which I then made into a digital format. And I sure hope I got the basic facts right, too.

You can read the poem as text here.

Peace (Wandering The Terrain),
Kevin

Poems: Of Poets and Pianists

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Always Wandering Away

Two poems, from two one-word prompts. The first was this morning’s poem– with the word “precision” and my mind went first to “imprecise” and then to my daily poetry writing, which is admittedly a bit lazy, in that I don’t often return to revise or edit or do much to keep poems moving forward.

The second was from the other day, with the word “piano” and jazz pianist Keith Jarrett sprung to mind, particularly his vocalizations as he plays.

Silence In The Gaps

And of course, that almost requires a soundtrack:

Peace (Where Words Inspire),
Kevin

Poem: Nearly The End

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The Start and Finish Line of the
The Start and Finish Line of the “Inishowen 100” scenic Drive flickr photo by Andrew_D_Hurley shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

The one-word prompt for this morning’s poetry was “habitat” and immediately, the ideas of my students (whom I love, don’t get me wrong, but I am ready to be done with the year) as ‘invasive species’ in their temporarily adopted habitat of school sprung to mind and the poem unfolded.

Their adopted habitat
becomes their hallways
and classrooms,
lockers and lunchrooms,
playgrounds and fields

Wandering in search
of connection and friendship,
ideas and mischief,
and always, permission
to be who it is they are
becoming –

Invasive species, they are,
but always welcomed
as curiosities from the start,
taking seed like vines
inside the labyrinth
of our hearts,

only to arrive at the day
when they become un/uprooted
from the grounds
on which they have covered,
and then gone, disappeared –

Approaching summer
seems, then, like fallow fields,
but soon enough, another
crop of adolescent interlopers
suddenly, like clockwork,
reappears

Peace (and Endings),
Kevin

Poems: Of Flowers and Seeds

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Flowers Of The Valley

Two days of one-word prompts tugged in the direction of plants. The first prompt was “valley” and the second prompt was “scatter.”

Scattered Seeds

Peace (In The Rooted World),
Kevin

Poem: Leaving Footsteps

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This is a poem in response to a video that Terry did, as he was reading the book I sent him, part of a larger multi-months back/forth that he and I have been having with poems, letters, stickers and other forms of texts, remixing as we go along.

Peace (Stepping Lightly),
Kevin

 

Write Across America: Hawai’i Writing Project and the Concept of Mo’olelo

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Write Across America

The National Writing Project just kicked off its annual summer writing adventure called Write Across America, in which various NWP sites host online gatherings and share place-based prompts to spark writing. I missed the first session from the Hawai’i Writing Project, but the presentations are archived, so I went in to see what had been happening.

One of the prompts had to do with the native Hawaiian concept of Mo’olelo — a way to be spiritually connected to the native world — and it was described here. I liked this ending of that post: “Everything in the world was alive with a presence, vitality, and meaning that our worldview does not recognize.”

I am not suggesting that I completely understand the concept. I am not a native Hawaiian and my roots to my land seems less connected that I would like. But I used that idea of connection to the spirit of the land for a poem response.

Here’s what I wrote:

we
don’t listen
we
barely hear
we
forget noticing
we
lose ourselves

we
the stories
of the world
embedded in this place
remain undiscovered

we
wander this terrain
of rock and soil
and river

we
need to linger
longer in the quiet,
listening for

us

we
should listen
we
can hear
we
are noticing
we
find ourselves

here

Peace (and Roots),
Kevin

Poem: A Museum Of You/A Museum Of Me

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This poem comes via a one word prompt — Museum — and went longer than my usual morning small poem writing activities.

This museum of you
contains dust and
debris, and artifacts
worth remembering,

like: half-written
poems and unsung
songs and essays
you meant to throw
away, but never did,

scribbled etches
on paper from
an imaginative kid,
and notes you wrote
to someone you lost,

receipts of objects
where you circled
the cost, gewgaws
and baubles
you didn’t want
anyone else to see,

but still – I looked in
and wandered around,
for there, on the inside,
on the scattered grounds
of the museum of you,
I discovered a mirror:
the museum of me

Peace (Wandering Through),
Kevin