If Life Were A Blue Bird

By michael

If life were a blue bird I'd ask it to fly
To soar and to sing up there in the sky
If life were a blue bird I'd build it a nest
Because I like blue birds, I think they're the best
If life were a blue bird I'd watch it for hours
'Cause sometimes I think they have magical powers
If life were a blue bird I'd teach it to dance
On candle-lit beaches with trust and romance
If life were a blue bird I'd sit in a tree
So that it could watch and then wonder like me
If life were a blue bird I'd let it know why
And how sometimes blue birds can just pass us by
If life were a blue bird I'd know it was true
Because only this life can sing while it's blue


No comments

Clouds

By mcwhittemore

Clouds
Thin like an old wool blanket
Drift across the daytime moon
I've been watching
The last few hours
The rivers current pulling me
And our canoe

Clouds
Thin like our wedding sheets
Thin like the nightgown I last saw you in
Thin
Like you hair as it fell though my fingers
Or the night before the dawn I gave you to
Thin like your fair but aging skin
That Magical beauty
And Horrifying frailness

Clouds
Drift slowly
Across
A daytime moon
And I'm alone
Drifting too
Lost in thoughts of you wrapped
In hospital sheets

Clouds
Intangible wisps of steam
Clinging to a particle of dust
The spilt ash the wind
Carried away

-Chase


one comment

In an Old Loft, Above My Garage

By don

In An Old Loft, Above My Garage

It is made of old, wrinkled wood,
which keeps interrupting me
with those creaks and groans,
like an old man sitting in a rocking chair
while he mutters childhood stories
and old proverbs to the child
leaning against his legs.
I put my pen down, lean
against the dusty, cracked wall,
and listen.


one comment

The Weekly Poetry Challenge

By mcwhittemore

Each week HPP will be hosting a poetry challenge open to everyone. The rules are that you write a poem based on the prompt for that week. The prompts will be posted a month before the due date for submission.

To submit simply email your poem by the date listed beside the prompt to halfpoundpoetry@gmail.com. Include your name and the prompt you are responding too.

Prompts (will have own page at next site update)

Old Lady with Flowers: 5/16

Write a poem from the perspective of a lady who is older than 60 as she looks at her flowers.

Man Walking at Night: 5/23

Write a poem from the perspective of a man (about 23) who has recently secured a good job. He is walking around his home town late at night.

The Coach: 5/30

Write a poem from the perspective of a high school couch watching one of his old players play professionally.

Travel: 6/06

Write a poem about a group of friends taking a trip.


No comments

The Secret of Life

By scott

"What is the secret of life?" the poet Donald Hall once asked the eighty-year-old sculptor Henry Moore. "With anyone else," Hall commented, "the answer would have begun with an ironic laugh," but Henry Moore answered the question in straight-forward, pragmatic terms:

The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is-it must be something you cannot possibly do!"


one comment

MO Quote 3: Read More Poetry

By mcwhittemore

“[T]o write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers. Perhaps they are the only teachers. I would go so far as to say that, if one must make a choice between reading or taking part in a workshop, one should read.”

-Marry Oliver

[p. 10 of A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide To Understanding And Writing Poetry, New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1994]
Two of the poets here are currently reading through "A Poetry Handbook" by Marry Oliver. So over the next while HPP will be posting quotes that inspire or force one to think. Please tell us how each quote makes you feel.


No comments

MO Quote 2: The Conversation

By mcwhittemore

“Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world’s willingness to receive it—indeed the world’s need of it—these never pass.”

-Marry Oliver

[p. 9 of A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide To Understanding And Writing Poetry, New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1994]

Two of the poets here are currently reading through "A Poetry Handbook" by Marry Oliver. So over the next while HPP will be posting quotes that inspire or force one to think. Please tell us how each quote makes you feel.


No comments
Copyright 2009 M. Chase Whittemore