Porcupine

I feel prickly today
Like a porcupine
Don’t worry I won’t bite
I’m not really mean
I’m just drawn that way

Written for the Living Poetry Monday Prompt

Meet Teddy Bear the “Talking” Porcupine.

He lives in Zooniversity, a wildlife-rescue and animal-education center in Dallas, He’s known for his squeaky mumblings that sometimes sound a bit like words. In the wild, porcupines aren’t so talkative. Porcupines are solitary creatures, so there’s not really anyone for them to chat with. A mother and her young is considered a family group called a prickle. Baby porcupines are called porcupettes.

Free Online Poetry Workshops

How do you learn how to write poetry? In addition to reading it and, books and articles about it, I have learned the bones of poetry through attending workshops. If you are looking for a place to get started with poetry or you want to tune up your skills, consider taking this FREE, ONLINE two-part workshop.

The workshops are sponsored by the Orange County Public Library. You do not have to live in Orange County, OR North Carolina. You don’t even have to live in the United States! You don’t even have to be a poet! What? Sure. Anyone can get stuck in a writing rut. Boost your writing game by dabbling in another genre, .

Part One: Titles and Beginning Lines
Sunday, January 29th, 1:30-3:30 pm

Part Two: Turns and Endings
Sunday, February 26th, 1:30-3:30 pm

Go here for more info on the workshop and register (by the Thursday prior to each class):
https://orangecountync.librarycalendar.com/event/online-poetry-workshop-pam-baggett-part-1.

A note from the facilitator, Pam Bagette:
Please have several of your poems-in-progress available to work on during the workshops. If you can’t attend the first workshop, you’re still welcome to attend the second. Writers working at all levels and in other genres are welcome.

A note about Pam Baggett:
I met Pam at a poetry reading at a local bookstore. Naturally! North Carolina has a large and thriving poetry community and she is one of our stars. I own a copy of her poetry chapbook, Wild Horses, and I’ve been in her workshops. She’s a Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2017 recipient of the Ella Pratt Fountain Emerging Artists Grant.

Day One

New Year Dreaming 2023

more play, less perfection
more gratitude, fewer grudges
more mediation, less litigation
less binary, more spectrum
not More, just Enough

It’s that time of year

It’s December again, and time to gather my submissions for the North Carolina Poetry Society annual poetry contest. I’m sifting through my poetry to find the right poems to submit. Inevitably I find myself editing work previously considered finished and in one case, revising a poem to fit the line length requirement. As usual I like the edited versions better. Of the six or seven categories I am targeting, I only have a poem ready for three of them. But I’ll get there.

I don’t think I mentioned that for the 2022 contest I won First Place in the Poetry for Children category. I never got around to posting it on my blog after the Pinesong book came out with all the winners. This year I discovered the whole book is available online! I hope you’ll check out my poem The Frog Prince (page 18) Pinesong 2022 Contest.

Pinesong2022_Cvr&Inside

Happy Holidays everyone! No matter what you’re celebrating, I hope it’s a good one. If I could I would throw a party and invite all of you to come. Instead I’ll share this one with you.

The Holiday Party
Mother Goose is having a party
It has to be a potluck because last year
the Dish ran away with the Spoon

The Christmas tree is decorated
The yule log and the Hanukkah Menorah
are lit as well as half the guests.

The farmer’s wife ran out of eggs for the pudding
but then Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
The funeral was held in the pantry.

Last year Peter brought pumpkin pie
but Georgie Porgie ate it all
then went to the bathroom to purge and cry.

Jack Sprat brought a tossed green salad
His wife brought home-made 
Apple Streusel Bread Pudding.

Jack B Nimble, put that candlestick down.
Mary, get that lamb out of here.
Wake up Little Boy Blue and valet park the cars.

Secret Santa gifts will be given
Some have been given before
It’s the thought that counts. Enjoy!

A few things

One of the best things about Facebook are the memes, jokes, and funny tweets. Well those and the cat videos. One classic meme that I still find funny: You know you’re an adult when you get mad because the grocery store rearranges the shelves. Truth. But I can one up that one. You know you’re old when you get mad because a phone or computer “upgrade” changes the look of your icons.

The last update to my android phone changed my messenger icon and screwed up the settings. I can no longer send or receive pictures or gifs. (Confirmed it was the upgrade when I heard the same complaint from another android phone user.) The pain of this development is exacerbated by the fact that I can’t fix it. Or not yet. I will need more help. I’m getting old. I’m no longer interested in technology for the novelty of what I can do with it. I don’t need New. I just need Functional.

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Further proof that I am getting old was the birthday I had a couple of weeks ago. It was not a milestone year (ending in zero) and it wasn’t a half decade year either. A woman of my advanced years doesn’t need a lot of fanfare. Some friends came over for a low-key pizza party and it was lovely. I did not serve cake. I went with some nice cookies instead. Besides, if the Covid pandemic taught us anything, it’s that we should not blow (and/or spit) on food other people are going to eat. Still, there are rituals to this thing.

I had some potting soil in a small container. I stuck a few candles in the dirt; my friend lit the candles and they sung to me! And There were two children there, ages 8 and 3 and they blew out the candles. It was kind of adorable and a lot of fun.

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Two questions: How do you improve your writing craft? Are you currently seeking publication and need help?

I highly recommend signing up for the Author’s Publish free email newsletter. It is a great resource for finding current calls for submission for poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. There are no ads and I’ve never experienced an uptick of spam as a result.

In addition to calls for submission they offer online craft workshops in various aspects of writing and publishing. Some cost money but many do not. I signed up for their 2021 webinar series. Each month was a different topic with a variety of writers presenting. Next week they are offering a free lecture “Shaping your Poetry Manuscript.” presented by Kim Addonizio. She is the real deal. Check out her poem First Kiss on the Poetry Foundation website.

FOMO

This poem was first published in The Fears of Us All: a collection of poems & short stories, Cherry House Press, 2018.

FOMO
I don’t need a pseudo-science charlatan
to tell me that my Fear of Missing Out
and thumbs-up connection obsession is unhealthy.
I always knew other people had more fun than me.

FOMO The Next Big Thing
Chasing the cool I never had, never will.
All of the all ̶ of everything ̶
fiction and non-fiction, Hollywood, D.C., music and sports ̶
It’s more than any one person can know or track.

FOMO Technology
Streaming digital data and entertainment,
endless updates, advances and improvements
have me on a short bus to rage town.
I’m becoming irrelevant.

FOMO Fun
I’ve peered over the edge
of the YouTube rabbit hole
and Googled myself into a Wiki Wonderland.
It wobbles my brain like a roller coaster.
The swirly whirly kaleidoscope makes me dizzy.

The riders on the outside lane of the carousel
reach for the brass ring from the back of a leaping horse.
I used to do that before I was sidelined
by an invisible age line, and motion sickness.

Watching other people have fun
my Fear of Missing Out is manifest.

Technology Tanka

My response to the Monday poetry prompt.

The machine age brought
ease, comfort, new ways to war
and a race to space.

What will be our epigraph 
when at last we destroy ourselves?

---

Author’s Note: Don’t mistake me for a luddite. Some of my favorite things are electricity, WiFi, my devices…. You get the picture. But I worry sometimes about the ethical implications brought about by the leading edge of science. As to what the epigraph will be, that’s up to some alien archeologists to figure out.

---

My Sins are on Whispers and Echoes!

I am pleased as punch to see my poem Seven Deadly Sins published on Whispers and Echoes.

I submitted this poem for the submission call for Sorta Sonnets, And what exactly are those? Well, here in his own words, W&E guest editor Bartholomew Barker

“I’ve been taking poetry seriously for more than a decade and I’ve been posting poetry to my website for nearly as long. I’ve noticed that in many cases, poems naturally to resolve themselves in about fourteen lines which is why I assume our predecessors, Petrarch and Shakespeare, developed and perfected the sonnet. But getting things laid out in iambic pentameter with the appropriate rhyme scheme is a lot of work. So, that’s why I tend to write “Sorta-Sonnets,” brief poems of fourteen unrhymed lines. If there’s a rhyme it’s only the final couplet. Of course one good Turn is well deserved.

High on Helium

Image curtesy of the Monday Poetry Prompt.

Brightly colored orbs
against a clear blue sky
Smiles for young and old

Guilt for deadly consequences
for marine life eating them.

Did you know, helium is not just for balloons and squeaky voices? MRI machines and super computer use helium. A few years ago there was a shortage of helium in the craft stores and talk of running out of helium. It turns out private companies that extract and sell helium are just running down the stockpile

Free to be squeaky
Just do it responsibly 
From tanks, not balloons

There will be blood

Accident Type: Unspecified Motorized Vehicle Incident

I was in a hurry and hit the throttle too hard.
The impact was so hard
I felt my body vibrate like a struck bell.

I was focused on the destination
and didn’t notice the pool of blood
I stood in until I was ready to sit.

Eww. This bathroom is disgusting.
Oh.
That’s mine.

I didn’t panic.
Left that for my cool, authoritative
In Case of Emergency contact person.

So. Much. Blood.
I stumped the pharmacist and paramedics.
Are you sure you’re not on blood thinners?

It wasn’t deep but I had been flayed
by a bathroom stall door
while driving my mobility scooter.

The thin sutures slipped out
of my leg like like topsoil blowing away
in the Dust Bowl.

The TEN heavier sutures poked into the air
from my shin like eyelashes
on a child’s monster drawing.

Changing the dressing stung
causing the thin skin between stitches
to roll up like wet tissue.

Hospital discharge notes indicated risk
of “poor cosmetic result.”
Please send thoughts, prayers and chocolate.