Word Garden Word List--Ric Masten

Hello friends, and welcome to another Word Garden Word List poetry prompt. Last week I featured an old favorite, Dave Kelly, but was dismayed at how difficult it was for people to find his work on line if they wished to. I've been mulling that. This week, our featured poet is "The Poet Laureate of Carmel" Ric Masten. When I returned stateside from overseas in 1977, I passed through Carmel and picked up a copy of "Who Wavin'? (a thin body of work)" which is indeed a thin body of work because the book is much taller than it is wide! However, the words inside are anything but thin.

The late Ric Masten, who passed in 2008, was not only a unique and prolific--23 books--poet, but was also a singer/songwriter, an artist, and a few other things as well. About his art, he had this to say: "I learned from Leger that I wasn't a cubist, He spoke to me in French and I answered in English. I didn't understand what he said, and I doubt he understood what I said. We got along fine." This is a typical remark. Of his habit of writing in all lower case without punctuation, Masten said it was "because I never knew how." 

I said earlier that I'd been mulling last week's prompt. Up until now, I have avoided including our featured poets' actual poems because the aim here is to use the words on the list to write something of our own, not to imitate the featured poet. However, like Dave Kelly, Ric Masten may be difficult to find, so I am including a link to three excellent poems of his HERE and am also going to include one in this post. Here it is:

the comedian

for william

he was a funny 

funny man

but

taking me

to the airport

he paused

in his routine

and the silence

was like a hole

in the ground

deep and dark

like his eyes

see those

gray wyoming hills

lying off

to the west there

well

my lilly

went off

into them

five years ago

and killed

herself

i tell you this

so you'll know

i understood

when you spoke

of your

loneliness

and then

he was joking

and

i

was

laughing

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words on the list below in a new poem of your own. Then link up, link back, and twist the night away. 

It has been a pleasure to share with you two poets who have been lifelong favorites of mine who I first discovered back in the '70's. In that vein, I offer Neil Young singing "Journey Through The Past." And now, your list:

breakdown

cafe

Chicago

costumes

dwarf

ferry

filigree

jars

kidding

nut

quietly

riddle

scaffolding

semaphore

shatterproof

stingers

trinity

trinkets

unimportant

veranda (Masten misspells it "varanda")