Trees - a poem by Emma

A little over a year ago, my friend asked me to write for her advent calendar. I didn't know what I wanted to write for her, so I had to do some brain storming. Well, my husband's goddaughter/cousin decided to help me out by writing a poem. I ended up writing a story with my sister for the advent calendar, but I want to share the poem that Emma wrote for Christmas last year.

Trees

Mom and Dad say get in the car

We aren't going very far

Where are we going, you will see

We drive down the street and see

a bunch of Christmas trees they say

this year you get to pick the special one

you tell me what tree is the one

Tanka Poetry

I joined a writing swap on swap-bot to try my hand at Tanka poetry. Tanka is similar to the Haiku, but in this poetry you write five lines instead of three. Whereas in the Haiku you have the syllable form of 5, 7, 5, in the Tanka you have the syllable form of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. Here are two of my attempts at Tanka.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

An airplane flies through
the soft blue skies and fluffy
white clouds as we drive
to the hospital with the
wind blowing through my brown hair.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oh tiger lily,
open your soft petals and
reach for the warm sun.
Embrace the tears of heaven,
sweet flower, blossom and grow.

Grandpa's Notebooks

The following short story was inspired by a swap at swap-bot.com. I had to incorporate the words "grandpa," "airplane," and "notebook" into a microfiction piece.

Grandpa's Notebooks

By Candace Shultz

My grandpa carries a notebook with him everywhere: to the store, to the doctor's office, even to the bathroom. He goes through one every few months, but he always gets the same exact kind: a red Mead five-star spiral notebook with 100 pages. And he never lets me see what he writes! If I peek over his shoulder, he quickly closes the notebook and won't open it again until I leave the room.

Today I am determined to see why he's so secretive about his notebook. Grandpa and I are flying from New York where we visited Uncle John and Aunt Tracy and their first baby, Leighanne, to our home in Denver. As the airplane takes off from New York, I watch the city get smaller from the window seat. Grandpa sits in the aisle seat with his red notebook open, though he has it angled away from my sight.

An hour into our flight, Grandpa swirls his pen on the paper with flourish and closes the notebook with a happy sigh. He places the book in the mesh covering on the back of the seat in front of him, leans his head back against his seat, and closes his eyes. I wait another half hour before I hear him snoring. I reach for the notebook. My pulse jumps quickly as I open the front cover to the first page; then my heart stops. I look at a picture of my smiling parents holding a newborn baby: me. My eyes water as I gaze at my mom and dad who died when I was four. I feel a hand on my shoulder, so I turn to my grandpa as he looks at me with love and concern in his eyes.

“It's time I share my notebooks with you,” he says. For the rest of the flight, we look at the book together, one of dozens of notebooks he had written in over the years. I gaze at pictures and drawings of my parents and read about my parents past, what they were like, how they met, how much they loved me, and everything my grandpa could think to write about them. As the airplane touches down in Denver, I try to give the notebook back to my grandpa, but he presses his hands to mine and says, “I wrote these for you so you can remember them the way I do.”

Blackout Poetry - The Truth is Coming

Since I had so much fun with my blackout poem "Unsung Songs," I decided to try another one. I used  the same page (250) of the same book Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice that I used for "Unsong Songs." I wanted to see if I could get a completely different poem using the same material. However, I didn't realize I'd have a more difficult time creating my poem "The Truth is Coming." Also, since I couldn't get punctuation where I needed it, the poem may not read well based off just the page of blackout, so I again will rewrite the poem after the picture to show how I saw it in my mind.

The Truth is Coming

By Candace Shultz

The Devil can blind or dazzle,

So never get far from the light of Heaven

And God will appear to you and fill you with virtue.

The truth is coming.

To the devoted,

As you rise to Heaven, fall silent,

For when you're dead you'll hear the song.

Blackout Poetry - Unsung Songs

Inspired by a swap at swap-bot.com, I decided to try blackout poetry for the first time. In this type of poetry, you black out words in a newspaper article (or more than one article on a page) or on the page of a book (best to photocopy the page so the book doesn't get ruined), leaving behind only the words you chose to form a poem. I selected the book Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice (the fifth novel in her Vampire Chronicles series) for my first blackout poem. I opened the book to page 250, scanned it into my computer, and began my journey into a new realm of poetry (at least for myself).

As a quick side note before I share my poem, I found it best to black out the words on the computer using an image editor (since it scanned as a jpeg) rather than print the page out and black out words with a permanent marker or pen. My headache can attest to the mistake of using marker.

Unsung Songs

By Candace Shultz

When I am angry, I will say nothing.

They do not ask my point of view.

These men are not so clever.

I see much.

I understand.

But they rise continuously.

My songs fall silent

For my kind are dead.