Over at A to Z Challenge we’re reminded that this is a challenge and to Never Give Up! The Janus word is nonplussed. It can mean so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react or not disconcerted, unperturbed.
A Skewed View
completely nonplussed this trip to Palouse is a bust everything covered in dust and the haunt cancelled, I trust curse this wanderlust but if I adjust my view just a touch to the rolling hills of lush green and rust swirling and diving in natural flux the sun piercing the clouds makes the dust in a gust sparkle like stardust
Every photo in this post is a micro-mystery that starts with “M”
I can’t believe we’re already at the halfway point. The days are flying.
There’s a free online writing conference this weekend starting tomorrow called WRITEHIVE. I signed up yesterday. There are free workshops and presentations all weekend. Did any of you attend last year? I hope you’ll join me. Let me know in the comments and I’ll look for you. Now to poetry!
Can you guess them all? Post in the comments.
Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to a small habit picked up from a parent. Pushing through while journaling really got me somewhere I hadn’t looked before.
Over at the A to Z Challenge they have a fun game of Magnifying Glass. I think I’ll get in on that as a fun photography challenge.
I present two Janus words today: mad and mean
mad can bean both in love with/crazy about, and very angry at
mean can mean a lot of things, but as a Janus it is both average and superior 😉
Our Projects’ Story
Dad had two private spaces the den and the garage I wanted in, to watch but wasn’t allowed I thought he was mean I was mad I was a girl
His spaces were messy his messy, our kind of messy everything had a plan, a purpose yet to be accomplished a spark of an idea that would be
What if he was protecting me he worried the moment that I might see there was a flaw an issue for him alone or he listened to voices on that raspy radio
that he didn’t want me to hear having adult, contrary thoughts I wasn’t ready for, or it’s very possible, that both of Dad’s places were experiments
full of his projects and work and ideas were his systems of controlled chaos competing experiments engineered to find order
A girl-child– a precocious, curious, tomboy with her own creative mess would be an added variable a deviation, produce an outlier muddle any useful findings
irreplicable results rendering any formulas useless The math, but a recording of a wish unfulfilled or rather an algorithm for lies forgotten
Berg in Immediate Surroundings – by Maria L. Berg 2021
The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem about the meaning of your first or last name.
The April PAD prompt is to write a poem inspired by your immediate surroundings.
My Janus word for the A to Z Challenge is left. As a past tense verb, it means “to have gone”; as an adjective, it means “remaining.”
Because I’ve often written about the mountain (Berg in Swedish means mountain), I thought adding a structure or form would help inspire something unique, so I took a look at the Poetics prompt from yesterday over at the dVerse Poets Pub.
I’m glad I did, because it got me thinking about all the fun adventures I’ve had on the mountain and the animals I’ve met there. Kim’s prompt was inspired by the poem The Print the Whales Make by Marjorie Saiser as was my poem.
Berg – by Maria L. Berg 2021
Black Bear’s Branch
I freeze. You haven’t seen it yet the thick, dark fur tucked among the fir trunks We are too close, my heart jackhammers with fear and fascination Is that how we are: a dangerous shape a few steps off the path? Too late. Can’t go back. But looking up at those sky-filling slopes with awe, I remember the deer and the fox prancing also encountered there and the way the bear licked at the grass, not bothered by the branch still attached to his bum, so peacefully grazing I didn’t notice him until I had left him behind on the return path he wasn’t interested in me and my fear of black bears in dark forests of fascination on the sky-filling slopes slanted sunlight on snow glinting promise of new bear sightings another day
Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem in the form of a news article you wish would come out tomorrow.
Today’s PAD Challenge is the second two for Tuesday:
Write a lucky poem and/or…
Write an unlucky poem.
Over at the A to Z Challenge they encourage a quick game of Klondike solitaire to let the mind wander a bit when you need a break. My Janus word for today is killer which can mean something or someone that takes life, or in its slang usage can mean something challenging to do or something excellent.
Today’s prompts inspired some arts and crafts. I began today’s poetry journey by pulling some old local papers from my fire-fuel pile and began hunting for inspiration. Since the local Courier-Herald is mostly full of stories about kids sports and I couldn’t even find the word “luck” in there, I quickly lost interest, so I tried a different source. When I was taking the Futures Thinking specialization courses on Coursera, I signed up for some Futurist newsletters. I found my inspiration from a link in the Science X Newsletter that led me to Phys.org. I found a few different articles that interested me, printed them and then got to work.
Today’s poem about tomorrow’s headline used the following sources:
Janus is represented with two faces, because he was acquainted with the past and the future; or, according to others, because he was taken for the sun who opens the day at his rising, and shuts it at his setting.
It really is fun when the prompts overlap so nicely.
In the Jumpspace of Janus
Just now, as Janus stares at both horizons with conviction, the great fall, and the next rise to be great in the eternal tail-biting race the circuitous circuit at play with each repeating season an echoing voice
Just now in spring, a call of sweet voice sings with reproductions conviction which is, Janus blushes, the impetus of the season building sharply until too great to continue to ignore as play panting and sweating before and after the race
Just now, still circuiting the race, Janus coughs, having lost his voice the tug of war is at barbarous play both sides pulling with such conviction to see them mud-splattered would be great but the ionic repulsion is strong this season
And just now, Janus has forgotten the season he has tripped and fallen during the race seeing his tail so close and so great he remembered the profound words he needed to voice all of the accumulated knowledge believed with conviction but then he wagged and forgot and wanted to play
Just now, Janus stares at daylight at play so many sparkles and shadows this season he has trouble focusing near or far with conviction and his thoughts and memories spin and race he longs to hear that one special voice from his future past of somedays great
Just now, Janus will circle again feeling great dizzy and heady from all this play enchanted by so many echoes of his own voice with similar words for each season at this horizon he chooses to skip the race and stretch his vision with conviction
To sing a great season Janus will play, bringing hearts to race just now, his voice is future and past’s conviction.
Dear Sandman, This is to extend an open invitation to come by tonight and bring me a dream I haven’t seen you in such a long time I am exhausted please come
I’m afraid I will have to pass with the days getting longer and the sand shortage I have found myself stretched thin please accept this missive as a call to non-action with my permission to nap
Over at the A to Z Challenge they linked to a bunch of random generators in hopes to inspire. My Janus word for today is incorporate (adjective) 1) having a body, having been incorporated; 2) having no body; incorporeal
Get Out of that Confined Mind
The drawer forms the junk incorporate like that yellow-shagged square that contained my pre-teen change-up a lone D battery as solo as a wall-flower hoping to show her power some day under that battery, a collection of inkblots half-hiding the instruction manual for the Air Hawk Pro as if they are the gateway to the subconscious–
where hips, hips and boobs I don’t yet have, shaved armpits, a whisper of stubble she’s on the empty dance floor the club on the first, small, odd cruise ship, a trip flush with firsts. She had it, the seductive movement I didn’t the easy knowledge of her body, knowing everyone was watching her and breathing it in through her arms and hands lifted above her head, lifted toward the short ceiling
–I’ve been wondering where to look for that manual because I need to check my tire pressure, there’s an unopened box of two, unused, multi-eraser cleaning pads, I leave it there, unused as if still choosing to keep the stains like all the sit-ups in front of the antique mirror behind the closed bedroom door or the lit floor tiles on the busy dance floor when I became incorporate and understood the unhidden meaning my mother feared–
my breath so close, the rhythmic touching not exactly accidental, though still innocent One and two, three, four and two three pause clap clap clap
–so much shoved in this drawer: two long screws, one short, and a dime all those unused padded envelopes meant to hold CDs, my CDs and the blue, plastic, kidney-shaped Mayor for my pocket, a yelling voice of Katrina survival whose batteries have not yet gone dead That man needs to yell “I am pissed.” And I, obviously, don’t hear it enough, or it creates its own power
I love that I push those buttons now and he yells out to the future me in another state, because contained doesn’t work for a dancer who needs to prove her groove
The NaPoWriMo prompt for today is to write an unusual character’s to-do list.
The PAD challenge is to write a persona poem for an inanimate object.
Over at A to Z the word is “hustle.” I’m feeling that. My Janus phrase for today is hold up which can mean to support or aid, or to hinder or impede.
Such a busy day
I’ll need to make a list a to-do list to keep everything straight to keep me on track I need to be sturdy never wobble stay grounded to hold her dishes while she stares out the window at the mountain and waves to hold up her elbows as she holds her head I need to be vast never completely covered to have space for her projects her work, and her whims constantly rotating around my head one side of the runner to the other I need to avoid banging into her knees or feet as she tends to bounce and bruise easily and I don’t feel a thing I need to avoid spills as today is too busy for mopping up or changing my cloth but the most important thing I need to do today is be supportive she needs me to be here for her standing straight in quiet patience and not hold her up in any way because today is a very busy day
Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is a bit odd (but timely since I found out last night that a friend died). We are to write a monologue poem delivered by someone who is dead.
A to Z Challenge is Game. My Janus word is garnish: With food, the verb means “to add to”; with wages, it means “to take from”.
Because my friend and I got to know each other through a show I put together with Ernie K-Doe, I thought I would ruminate on some K-Doe lyrics while working on this.
Someday I’ll Wake Up and Say
You stoop in the leaves garnishing the base of this tree a long, long time I rock and roll down below are the branches dancing?
The roots are bass strings I strum all night and day I can’t tell you I can’t explain wake up and say you should have been there
wherever, wherever you are while you’re waiting, waiting a solution susurrus advice or contribution
You stoop so low one more time I rock and roll down below to me they’re about the same
The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to choose a short line from a beloved book as the title of the poem, then once the poem is written, completely change the title. At first I had trouble deciding which book to draw from, but then my eyes rested on my beautiful copy of A Compendium of Collective Nouns from Woop Studios.
The A to Z Challenge is to write a sentence without the letter E. My Janus word is execute: to execute a person is to end their life; to execute a program is to start it.
Experience Writing 