Prompt: Write a poem about an object (or objects).
Prompt: Take the phrase “So we decided to (blank)” and fill in the blank. Make that your title and write a poem.
ODE TO FRIDAY
Friday used to be a relief,
a moment to exhale after
a week on the grindstone,
something to look forward to
spending money on, time
with, toasts in honor of
— the start of something
better.
Nowadays, it’s nothing more
than the name of a tacky chain
chain restaurant, a momentary
distraction, barely enough time
to catch your breath, and the start
of the countdown
to Monday.
I’m probably one of Amazon.com’s favorite types of customers, living and working in spitting distance of a Barnes & Noble, Borders and several good independent booksellers, browsing their shelves but doing most of my book buying via Amazon. Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of dollars with them, on books (and other products) for myself and others, including the Kindle I bought for my wife last Fall as a birthday gift.
I’ve contributed 113 reviews to their database to-date, and currently have a reviewer rank of 3,064 on the basis of 864 helpful votes. I was a charter reviewer in their Amazon Vine initiative, and have used their Amazon Associates program for years on this blog and with Spindle.
I think they have helped level the playing field in the publishing world and opened the door for savvy independent authors and publishers to distribute their work without going through the traditional gatekeepers.
Suffice to say, I’m a big fan, so it pisses me off to be writing a post like this in response to their screwing up royally with their Amazon Rank fiasco that’s burning up Twitter at the moment and is spilling over into the longer-lasting blogiverse/Google memory bank.
I have very mixed emotions about the Bronx, where I grew up for the first 12 years of my life (1969-1980), and which remains the closest thing I have to a place I consider home, in a cultural sense. Being able to live there again while my kids were still young was very important to me, even though I knew we’d have to move at some point soon after they started school, and the five years we did were a great experience, positive and negative, allowing me simultaneously reconnect and disconnect before taking the inevitable next step of homeownership.
When my son, Isaac, came home with the assignment to put together a family cultural project — Where Are You From? — I wasn’t sure how to approach it from my side of the family, especially in contrast to my wife’s much more specific and rich Cuban heritage. I’m a mutt without a home, the epitome of a melting pot kid (or is that salad bowl?), with connections to many cultures but no firm roots in any.
Focusing on the Bronx was an interesting and enlightening challenge, especially when trying to boil it all down to a 3rd grade level, and by the end, I was left with the same mixed emotions, a combination of pride and disappointment, hope and disdain. I emphasized the positive, of course, but I’d be lying if I denied the bitter taste of the negative wasn’t still on my tongue, things like the new Yankee Stadium, the miserable public school system and the general feeling of it being a second-class citizen in New York City, on par with or sometimes behind Staten Island.
Prompt: “Two for Tuesday”: Write a “clean” poem or write a “dirty” poem.
URBAN PLAYGROUND
On my block
trees were few and far
between, caged for
their own good,
roots straining against
concrete manacles for
freedom.
Dirt was plentiful, manmade
— soda cans, candy wrappers,
cigarette butts, lottery tickets
— nothing that could nurture
a seedling or spark the
imagination.
An abandoned, brick-strewn lot
was our playground, perfect
for freeze tag, cops & robbers,
manhunt… escape for some,
practice for others.
We played stickball in the street
dodging between parked and
moving cars, playing the bounce
off a windshield or fire escape,
sliding into the manhole cover
that doubled as home plate
in an exuberant cloud of
blissful ignorance.
