NPM 2016 - FPR Prompts - April 6th

A response to Noah Eli Gordon's Prompt #5 at Found Poetry Review:

Write a sonnet in the modern key: 

Line 1: narrate action, include at least two nouns
Line 2: ask a question without using “I”
Line 3: make a statement without saying “I”
Line 4: now say “I” in another statement
Line 5: use a fragment
Line 6: narrate another action, include one of the nouns from line 1
Line 7: ask a question using “I”
Line 8: use a fragment that
Line 9: spills into the next line
Line 10: now say “I” and include the other noun from line 1
Line 11: answer your first question
Line 12: make a statement that is in total opposition to line 3
Line 13: combine phrases from lines 5 and 8 here
Line 14: answer your second question

This poem could be improved upon but as a first quick attempt, possibly to be reworked on later, here's a start.

--

"His flirtation with disgrace was only that, not a ruinous infacuation." - Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel, by John Updike

Licks of Love

by Sanjeev Naik

I wake up from dreams, the taste of memories on my tongue

Have you been remembering me?

I left before you woke up

but I never really left.

For now,

I slip into our memories, languidly amorous.

Will I always forget love this way?

Fragments of

our dreams recur each night

I grasp for words, which slip from my tongue

- you must remember me at least once a year.

You left before I woke from my dreams

For now, fragments of

my loves linger, all the ones I never forget.

Reworking it little bit - i.e. treating the instructions in the prompt as a starting point but then reworking it to free it off the line constraints that a strict following of the rules traps the poem into.

Licks of Love

by Sanjeev Naik

I wake up from dreams, the taste of memories
on my tongue; have you been remembering me?

I left before you woke up

but I never really left.

For now, I slip in and out of

our memories, languidly amorous.

Will I always forget love this way?

Fragments of our dreams recur
each night I grasp for words, each night
they slip from my tongue - you must

remember me at least once each night.

You left before I woke from my dreams

For now, fragments of my loves linger,

All the ones I never forget.

NPM 2016 - FPR Prompts - April 7th

I haven't been able to keep up with the Found Review page's prompts to write a poem every day but here is my attempt at writing something based on Simone Muench's prompt on April 7th to write a cento.

The prompt: Write a cento that is a self-portrait, or anthology of your life, utilizing lines and fragments from your own work.

I had never heard of a cento before but seems like a simple idea and Muench provides "basic stipulations" for writing a traditional cento.

A cento is a poem made entirely of lines from other poems. The name comes from the Latin word meaning a cloak made out of patches. The cento differs from found poetry in that every line is taken from another poem, instead of just any borrowed material.

I dont write too often but took 10 lines from 10 (half-baked) poems written in the 2010-2016 period and randomly chose a line I liked while reading the poem -- with no thought or relation or theme in mind i.e. no influence of history or memory in picking the lines) -- and once I had the ten lines in 1 place, I've paired them together as I see fit.

I only  changed a few minor things (guiding to guided, advising to advise , *him to a me, changed one line break,)... that's all

__

Lucian Freud - Reflection (Self-Portrait)
Source

Self-portrait

by Sanjeev Naik

I took a wrong turn and came here

our failures guided me further

The weight of words

advise me to go seek my calm in Brazil

Colors blend into white

a continuum of listless reassurances.

No ink stains my fingers, I now only know

an unknown darkness

If it is the trees that have gone languid

a darkness envelopes me. I wake up...

NPM 2016 - FPR Prompts - April 3rd

FPR's prompt for April 3rd stumped me initially but then I thought of playing with a long word that rather amuses me. :-)

Not sure what Nico Vassilakis who came up with the prompt had in mind but this is my contribution; took just a few minutes to come up with once I thought of the word and what to do with it; so didn't stare at it too long in trying to "discorporate" the word!

NPM 2016 - FPR Prompts - April 2nd

Found Poetry Review Prompt for April 2nd: To use bureaucrat/found language and rework with language from another poem or one of your own abandoned projects.

Not sure I did this right - have to take some liberties because a pure noun-for-noun replacement isn't perfect. So, adding a few  words (very few) here and there and omitting a few parts of the sentence was fine, I thought. Also took the title and last line from Whitman's poem instead of the source text.

Source text:

 

And after re-working with nouns from Whitman's Song of Myself, Section 45. (I love Whitman's open-hearted spirit and wish there was more of it in the US today; especially in today's ugly rhetoric from Trump, Cruz, and others.)

Stamp featuring Walt Whitman - USA 1950s

Anyways, here's the poem:

“My rendezvous is appointed”
by Sanjeev Naik

Now was seen the maddest span of youth
explaining this imaginary manhood
- instead of saying, 'Oh, you foolish and benighted lovers’,
you mistake the lips; there are no colored skin
 like yourselves in these black streets and public halls.

*

A widely different and subordinate night;
natures and wants so different
that you can never amalgamate
or mix your rivers. 

*

Design them for a different moment of my life,
to change which, or to attempt to change which, must,
in the handfuls out of their hearts, ruin us all.

Age and dying days have assented to this
condition of the dark hush in the abstract, forsooth!

*

A thousandth scuttle of the night, expended by the cipher
edge to propagate their sun, rendering wheels impossible;
but Alas!

The ablest partners, soundest circuit,
and the greatest specks the world ever saw.

*

Worlds seem to have but little surfaces,
of the leagues  of limitless space which governs
and must govern in our limitless times.

"My rendezvous is appointed."

~*~
Note: the poem has erased any evidence of the racism in the source text. That was my point. Collier Nogues talked about the poetry of erasure. I liked that idea. I've erased all tones of racist vile stuff in the source text by Whitmanizing the poem. (Again, there isn't too much obviously from Whitman either - so it doesnt remind the reader obviously of his work or ethos but the nouns I introduced did come from his Song of Myself, Section 45.

NPM 2016 - FPR Prompts - April 1st

 I'll share some posts this month in response to Found Poetry Review's prompts every day.
Here's the first attempt on April 1st - in response to Patrick Williams' prompt.  

Disclaimer: It was late on Friday evening - after work and dinner - when I hurriedly tried it and so am sure if I gave it enough time, I could do better.... but I gave up half-way through trying something meaningful with the first prompt. I was a bit mentally tired but also piqued by the rather unseemly title it was forcing on me. In fact, I've gone ahead today (April 2nd). when I revised the half-baked attempt from yesterday, and changed the title from the suggested one since it ruins the poem. 

Anyways, it isn't like this is for publication or a serious attempt - all just an attempt to have some discipline to write something (anything!) every day (which is something - given that I rarely have the discipline to write) and an experiment to have some fun. So, while I should keep it to myself, I'm going to start sharing my half-baked attempts at Found Poetry at this blog.

___

Rewrite a sentence or phrase from these two pages to make it about Security guards and use it to begin a poem entitled "Colorado--Social life and customs--19th century."

[1] Proceedings of the annual meeting of the International Association

of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions v. 6 (1919) | from the HathiTrust Digital Library

I chose this sentence: "While there have been increases both in the percentage of wages paid as compensation and in the maximum amount that can be paid as compensation, the increased cost of living and the general rise in wages during the past few years leave the workman to-day in no better, if as good, a position as he was in under the apparently smaller compensation of the earlier acts."

~*~

Work-Man

by Sanjeev Naik

Recompense me this cost of living;

Standing guard here, my cost of living

rises

In position

all day, in no better shape

than the past few years,

and leaving me with a lower wage
and the goodness of my
earlier acts.

~*~

P.S. I did try a 2nd prompt (because it is just a click on his prompt-engine)... and it told me to start a poem titled Boxing.. making use of twenty-two words from these two pages [1]. I think could have made something of this and I've downloaded the 2-pages it offered to do this but haven't given it a try.

[1] The Stamp herald; a monthly journal published in ... v. 4-6 (Sept. 1918-Aug. 1921).

~*~

Image above: Street Art by Banksy. Given his ethos, I don't think he'd mind me using it here as I don't intend to use this for any commercial gains.