Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 56 #SmallHandsPoetry

Today we’re adding yet another element to the #100Days100Poems wheelhouse. Hoping to get some good protests out of some short forms new to/unused by this writer, Day 56 finds us christening #SmallHandsPoetry, because with hands that small, one can’t really write that much, n’est-ce pas?

Here we present to you two versions of a cinquain, a five-line poem broken based on syllable counts, or a five-line poem revolving around an image presented in the opening line, and circling back around to it.

These are, at the moment, untitled poems from #SmallHandPoetry:

***

Wire-tapped
microwave! Cam-
era-ready toaster!
Can you smell what the con man is
cooking?

*

microwave
wire-tapped & camera-ready
“What’d you say?”
Must remain vigilant! Thus:
smart microwaves.

© David Siller – 2017

.

*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

*****

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 50

Well, here we are at the halfway point! Here’s something a little light-hearted to brighten your day.

Keep your heads up!

 

Dating Post-11/8, or Really Post-1/20

 

About me:

— I’ve traveled on pages & planes, instead of cars, prefer buses and trains, don’t mind beaches, but breathe in the mountains
— City mouse (or rat, if you find those turtles i trained)
— Haunt museum galleries like Gaugin’s girlfriend’s ghost
— Speak a French so fluent you’ll be flummoxed, an Italian so rusty you might want a tetanus shot
— Beast in the kitchen, but not like the destructive type, just cook like a self-taught monster (no cuisine is too intimidating, no high-skill-needin’ recipe is gonna scare me!)
— Read so voraciously trees live in fear
— Geek out so much you’ll want to stay in
— Such a talent for being goofy Disney filed a lawsuit
— So patient I could never be a doctor; so laid back, in college they’d called me The Recliner
— Wanna try something new? Let’s try it twice because the first time we’ll just be figuring it out.
— I use my lightsaber umbrella to protect my Captain America sweatshirt & Harry Potter house pants from getting wet; when it snows, my Arsenal scarf keeps my neck warm and my Avengers beanie beats back frostbite on my earlobes, which I use in all conditions because I’m a good listener.
— With fanboy boxers like mine, our sex life could only be lots of fun

I’m looking for:

the Lily to my Marshall, Mara to my Luke, the Beckett to my Castle. Let’s be goofy, travel, drink lots of wine & talk until pinks & oranges fill the sky from the east. Let’s have arguments that we both win & lose, & have fun making up. Let’s compromise! Let’s share little moments & stumble upon milestones! Let’s do new stuff, & share old faves. Let’s go to midnight premieres & comic cons & wine tastings & Shakesbeer pub crawls & free shows in the park & MoMA (lots of MoMa) & The Met & Paris & London & Dakar & Tokyo & Sydney & Casablanca…

Rest assured I did not vote for the cheeto-in-chief, the so-called un-president, the off-key Trumpet.

You should message me if:

You want to #Resist together.

.
© David Siller – 2017

.

*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

*****

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 49 #TantrumTanka

Some days I can’t keep up with the stupid coming out of this mis-administration. Or better yet, there’s so much fodder for protest, I often find my mind racing in a million different directions, too overwhelmed by the inanity to focus.

 

So you wanna spend
more money on wars, like, say
54 billion?
It’s a pity you’ve always
dodged ’em, never fought in one.

 


© David Siller – 2017

.

 

*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

*****

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 48 Sort of a #PhotoHaiku

By which we really mean: this is a #PhotoPoem, not a #PhotoHaiku. More like #PhotoFreeVerse ! It’s got more pics! Relevant text! Clever sub-textual commentary! Whisky! And a wink and a nod to the Star Wars Universe!

20170308_11350820170308_11422620170308_11355220170308_114147.jpg20170308_11374120170308_11410120170308_11401020170308_11402120170308_11375320170308_114046

 

© David Siller – 2017

.

*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

*****

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 47

Today’s submission, from Jessica Lantos, shows us just how deeply the effects of the Trumpet (mis)administration’s attitudes towards immigration permeate every level of society. They are never abstract, and it’s always about people.

 

 Long Division

The table in this always crowded school basement
needed a matchbook
to prop up the leg.
The folding chairs were cold and metal
and we heaped our coats and bags on a chair
while we sat in our regular seats
together at the corner
as if on a date
so we could hear each other
in the room that was filled with 
more tables that wobbled
and people
speaking languages I didn’t know.
 
She brought her workbook out of her bag
along with a pencil, the kind given out 
to elementary students for good behavior
or as favors at birthday parties
all silver and pink.

Long Division.

I thought we were going to work on English,
I told her and she said yes, we could, but she 
didn’t know how to do her homework and just wrote in
the answers her teacher wrote on the board
but didn’t know how 
to divide.

She was quiet and grateful,
not realizing my comprehension of math
was maybe a lesson ahead of hers.
She showed me the way she worked through the problem,
drawing boxes and filling in with numbers and 
I watched her,
her head tilted,
her quiet counting,
her dark fingers holding her pencil,
writing her twos with fancy curls.

I thought of her new home here
in cold and snow,
her in her long flowing colorful skirt
and her black headscarf
and the smile I could see up close
where she would share it.

She’d told me she’d come here 
a year ago to visit her brother 
and had been chased down the street
by a man yelling at her.
Go home!
He had a gun.
She hid.
She had no phone.
She didn’t remember where her brother lived.
She spoke no English.

I held her eyes.
I grasped her arm.
I apologized.

We are all people, she said.

How to protect this strong solemn smart woman
who has learned my language 
and become a citizen of the country I call home
all within a year
and now spends time with me
learning math
and the superlative
in this school basement,
sharing stories of her father
she left behind
in Djibouti
who has lost his memory
and doesn’t know who she is when she calls him every day?

Here 
with her
I am not a week ahead of understanding.

© Jessica Lantos – 2017

.

Her blog is located at notjustforspecialoccasions.blogspot.com.

*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems!

*****

 

 

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 46

Not just over the air, but on your screens, on your streets, in your town halls, over phone calls, throughout the first 100 days, throughout the that’s-all-you-get four years.

You Say You Want a Revolution?
For the tired, the poor, the huddled masses.

Despite the wishes of those in power,
This revolution will be televised.
The poor; sick; starving masses who cowered,
Will no longer accept a genocide
Of economic strangulation, while
Beings who possess so much continue
Demanding more – even as they revile
Souls suffering in need. Flesh and sinew
Will awaken; spirits rise ‘bove contempt;
The angry will be heard; the hungry fed,
And homeless housed when we find redemption
In helping others ‘long a path all tread.
 This world will emerge, better than it was,
 When every man’s fate becomes our cause.

 

© Bud Koenemund – The Mad Sonneteer – 2015

.

You can find The Mad Sonneteer on Twitter at @TheMadSonneteer.

His blog is located at  MadSonneteer.blogspot.com

*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

*****

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 43 #TantrumTanka

Sometimes I think it’s more fun to write a #TantrumTanka than it is to find one among the inanities popular in the discourse of our so-called trumpet-in-chief.

***

What good is a trump
card when the game is something
else? What good is a
trump presidency when it’s
all already falling down?

***

© David Siller – 2017

.

 

*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

*****

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 42 #TantrumTanka

So technically we should probably call this a #HeadlineTanka, for tantrum it is not. And I really wanted to start a whole #HeadlineHaiku, but haiku it is not. Regardless, it’s a found poem, nicked from headlines in today’s NY Times.

***

“Presidents Tests A
Fresh Tactic: Toning It Down
A Softer Touch But
Not a Pivot On Positions
Unity is Elusive”

20170302_134022

***

© David Siller – 2017

.

 

*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

*****

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 41 #TantrumTanka

This #TantrumTanka isn’t found, but boy it sure sounds like him.

***

Ranting & raving
about not doing any
ranting & raving
is really neither. And that’s
complicated. Well, who knew?!

© David Siller – 2017

.

*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

*****

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems Day 40

It seems a lifetime ago that we discussed how even the nation’s most important cultural institutions are in the struggle against the cacophony of crazy from Trumpet and his minions. The Museum of Modern Art installed several works to add voice to the chorus of those of us protesting and fighting. With each plaque accompanying the pieces you read

“This work is by an artist from a nation whose citizens are being denied entry into the United States, according to a presidential executive order issued on January 27, 2017. This is one of several such artworks from the Museum’s collection installed throughout the fifth-floor galleries to affirm the ideals of welcome and freedom as vital to this Museum, as they are to the United States.”

Inspired by this, today’s poem joins the other ekphrastic pieces responding to some of the works in the MoMA’s collection. The poem, untitled at the moment, simply bears the name of the artist and painting. Photos of the piece are the author’s own.

***

The Mosque 1964
Ibrahim El-Salahi, Sudanese, born 1930
Oil on canvas

somewhere just off-canvas

        or so it seems

                the muezzin begins the adhan

        and it calls out from the minaret

        stretching far beyond frame

                and gallery, far

        beyond wall and window

and from the west

        a figurey shadow looms

                menaces in manic paranoia

        the mosque suddenly marked & monitored

                        no longer sanctuary

to the east, a figure

        masked,

                perhaps Munchian in style, no

        El-Salahian

                        perhaps he the muezzin

                is it a look of dread

                        eyes wide mouth agape

                is it a look of reverence

                        the call pouring from outspoken lips

                is it a look of caution

                        a warning warbled of the wicked

                wizard of

                                the west

the shadow rising from

        & the call continues

        and the mask reveals nothing

                as if frozen in oil on canvas

        & the call continues

        through soundless swirls and silhouettes

& the call continues

        the muezzin is muzzled/is the muezzin muzzled

the perilous penumbra poised in the west

        poisonous in its prevarications

        dangerous in its discharge of belligerent jingoism

the western aggression

        threatening bans & walls & wars & blitzes

another call starts

is it to line up for prayers

        or deportation

        or encampment

                        for petitions

        or capitulation

        or opposition

somewhere just off-canvas

another call starts

***

salahi-close-left
salahi-close-right
salahi-full

 

© David Siller – Text and Images – 2017

.*****

For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author.

VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

*****