Word Garden Word List--Help! A Bear Is Eating Me!

 

Good morning class! (bored nasal response) "Good morning Ms. Fireblossom." It's time for this week's Word List poetry prompt! Our source this week is a rather insane and howlingly funny novella by Mykle Hansen entitled Help! A Bear Is Eating Me!  

From the back cover:

JERK WARNING!

Marv Pushkin is pinned under his SUV somewhere in Alaska. He hates Alaska, nature, people, and especially his wife. He loves his SUV, his clothes, his money, his drugs, and himself. Marv Pushkin is such an asshole.

When I read this book, I was in stitches. It's hilarious. Marv Pushkin is a character you'll love to hate. Yes, he's being eaten by a bear from the first line to the last, and what he mostly does is complain and be as disagreeable as possible. You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll root for the bear!

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. Subject, mood, and style are up to you; there need be no bears or Marv Pushkins at all, unless you want for there to be. But ask yourselves this: if you were alone in the woods, would you rather be confronted by a bear, or by someone wanting you to read their unpublished five-volume set of topical haiku? Either way, just write, link up, visit others and then leave a picnic basket unattended in Jellystone Park. This prompt stays active through Sunday. 

And now, your List:

bear

blubbery

Camero

children

costing

cute

dumpy-looking

evolved

freeway

furry

Godzilla

hospital

luxuriously

meds

Mexico

mints

pills

puddle

retarded

starry-eyed

Only Every Bloody Thing

 

Only every bloody thing

volunteered for offering

against their will, against the grain

against their soul and flesh and name.

Our Mother of the Not Enough

whose kiss is made of chaff and stuff

to starve the cow whose bell is broke

and tell the flame it's only smoke.

Only every bloody thing

whose throat was cut but still could sing

will curse your words and curse your hand

in every tongue and every land.

Our Mother of the Frozen Pond

the awful ice where darkness spawned

a lonely child who had one too

whose scorn is mixed with pity, too.

________

For those, like me, for whom Mother's Day is hard. We are sisters, we are fierce, and we are worthy.

Two roads diverged in a wood...

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

Music: Sly & the Family Stone Stand

Mi Loca Amada

 

The full moon scares me,

and always has.

I become a dropped plate 

shattering along its reflected lines. 

Bless the rainy night,

the wet leaf drip of solace.

Thick clouds hide me

burrow-minded from the mad moon.

My fear of what it might do,

or cause me to do, leaves me w(e)ary.

For tonight I am safe,

there is no moon, but mi  loca amada, no stars either. 

______________

for What's Going On? "The Night Sky"

Music: Snow Get You To The Moon

 

The Water Dove

 

I kissed the dove

who made her nest

in the lonely pool at the bottom of my heart.

Little water-dove

sweet creature, feathered mother,

when I breathe, you flutter, shift, and sigh.

I kissed the foxes

whose meal was lately

in the henhouse where all rain is born.

Little hidden ones

with your silent black feet,

when I cry, you peer out from moonlit memory.

I kissed the gamesman

in the old pink cottage

because he was there, and silent, like God.

I was the little nanny

in the graveyard singing

to the doves, and foxes, and gamesman

peering back at me from the lonely pool 

of moonlit memory.

________

for Word Garden Word List--Life After Life. 

Music: Rodrigo Adagio 

Word Garden Word List---Life After Life

 

Hello my little repeat offenders! Welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! This time our List is taken from Kate Atkinson's novel Life After Life, in which a woman is born and reborn again and again, in different situations but with recurring threads. 

The main question of the novel is, will she grow up (she frequently dies in childhood) and assassinate Adolph Hitler before he comes to power in Germany? It's a fascinating read. One thing I especially liked was that she experiences life on both sides of the second world war. 

Will she kill Hitler and save the world from global catastrophe? Read it and find out. Meanwhile, what we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. (It need have nothing to do with the source material unless you want it to.) Then just link, visit others, and then sit back to contemplate your mission in life. This prompt is current through Sunday, so don't forget to come back to visit the late-bloomers; they've been looking a little droopy for lack of comments. 😔

And now, your List!

announced

creature

doll

doves

drivel

extravagant

foxes

gusto

henhouse

jam

kissed

laundry

makeshift

nanny

narrow

pillows

rugs

skeleton

token

train

A Vagabond Hour

 

It was just an afternoon in a blur of afternoons

scattered in a line like a row of troll dolls.

Where is the screen porch where we played

when an hour was long and a year eternity?

Where are the mud pies we put in tins?

Where are those houses, those girls, that summer?

I found a box, and in that box, a vagabond hour returned. 

On a steel rack at the foot of the basement stairs

was a parade of winter coats in plastic sheaths

crowned brightly by hat boxes across the top.

One yellow box had a silhouetted carriage on the lid

and we swooned at the idea of suitors arriving 

as we stood tip-toe on a fold-out stool, snooping.

I found a box, and in that box, a vagabond hour returned.

Best friends, families, afternoons, troll dolls

all scatter, our solid center become fragile 

bric-a-brac. Today a package came, and in it

a yellow hat box, and in the hat box, the scent

of my late aunt's house, my childhood, and an afternoon

in summer 1966, perfectly preserved and vivid.

I found a box, and in that box, a vagabond hour returned.

________

for Dverse MTB: Boxing Clever to The Bop.

One day I received a package containing a book (which I changed to a hat box in the poem). The book was inside a plastic sleeve, and when I took it out and opened it, I was instantly back in my aunt's house as a child. I think the book had been kept at some time on a shelf where someone had used the same furniture polish as my aunt used. In any event, I buried my smiling face in the pages and breathed in that long-forgotten scent.  As for the troll dolls, mudpies, screen porches and coat rack with the yellow hat box on top, that was all stuff that I remember from childhood.

Image at top found on Pinterest. 

Music: The Grateful Dead Box of Rain

A Divorce, 2001

 

I don't miss the arguments

or the madness,

the steady harsh hum of discord.

I don't miss hearing the dogs' toenails 

digging against the wood floor

as their sheltered world turned ugly.

I don't miss the eerie sound of

empty accusations

demanding confession of phantom sins.

I don't miss the sound of our son

begging you to stop smashing dishes

when I tried to escape to the bath.

I don't miss the slick drone of lawyers

or the jangle of keys to

homes changing hands. 

But when I sat down to eat

at the same table in a different kitchen

with the windows December-dark,

the silence wool-thick

and the opposite chair mute and empty,

I almost couldn't bear it--

almost couldn't face

the long wait for spring.

______

for What's Going On? -- "Silence"

Note: my divorce set me free, but at the time it was awful. I don't think I've ever written about it quite so baldly before. 

Don't forget, the Word Garden Word List is still active through Sunday!

Music: Gordon Lightfoot if There's a Reason