031.365 - quatrain 31.2017 center

horses and rifles and hand guns and beer
I shouldn't combine them, someone will sneer
but I was thinking of things that bring me joy
and those lie at the heart of what makes this boy

030.365 - quatrain 30.2017 do wheels grant mercy?

what happens when the wheels of time
drive mad the country superior
I fear we are finding out and I'm
ready to ask for mercy inferior

029.365 - quatrain 29.2017 existential despair

it wasn't just the loneliness
the boy against the wall said
it was the feeling that my gun
pointed always at my own head

028.365 - quatrain 28.2017 rising sun

there once was a crooked old house
downtown in the gambling quarter
every time it got sold its stories retold
explained why the new owners bought her

027.365 - quatrain 27.2017 Peter

the rabbit looked over McGregor's field
can rabbits smile?
can he push a wheelbarrow in and strip the field?
can doing that be the source of his smile?

026.365 - quatrain 26.2017 prepare

jungles, gyms, and birthday cakes
Mother of Mary and constrictor snakes
hullabaloo and I've got the shakes
but this time it's serious, prepare my wake

025.365 - quatrain 25.2017 rhyme

oh, life, you flit around our playing
especially when we go a-maying
and now I've forgotten what I was saying
rhyming sometimes comes out a lot like neighing

024.365 - quatrain 24.2017 talkin'

"oh, I have so much more to say
stop trying to kiss me and listen!"
and then she fought to keep her clothes on
and nine months later had something to christen

023.365 - quatrain 23.2017 follow the leaders

the music starts and after a while, a girl steps onto the dance floor
a boy follows her on, and after they dance one whole dance
when the band starts again, three couples join them
and, off to the side, a teacher who hides writes their names down in a journal

022.365 - quatrain 22.2017 celebrating

higgledy-piggledy, dance thee a jig
today is leftover Sunday
people are trying to get home anypig
so they can start work on Monday

021.365 - quatrain 21.2017 concerns

the little cowboy shoots the bad guys out of the air
out from behind trees rocks and houses
he little worries how he offends ladies everywhere
his job is to retrieve and protect the cowses

020.366 - quatrain 20.2017 enough

they went out in the rain, the cold, the chill
and paid the rent and what seemed like a hundred bills
and hurried home to cough, shiver, and hack
but glad, despite that, they hadn't had to lack

019.365 - quatrain 19.2017 hybrid

his mother was a lioness, the pride of the pride
his father was an eagle, rider of storms
so he was a gryphon, his halves made from each
and lightning flew with him, his kills to adorn

018.365 - quatrain 18.2017 Lady Liberty

oh, that steely bright object out in the harbor?
the copper-green sheen was all washed away
and replaced by anodized aluminum
you can see her now on overcast days

017.365 - quatrain 17.2017 waiting

four lines waiting for a heart
four lines waiting for a start
four lines waiting for a reason to be
four lines waiting for you and me

016.365 - quatrain 16.2017 justice

the woman with the blindfold on
offered the boy her sword and scales
"I won't be needing these a while"
she said, "all parts do when one part fails"

015.365 - quatrain 15.2017 Carroll

"uh-oh" he said, "I have just read Lewis Carroll
and if I now write a verse
it will come out quite terse
and we almost certainly shall quarrel"

014.366 - quatrain 14.2017 critics

the lion, the cheetah, the orangutan, and the yak
watched the end of a battle, with corpses and near-corpses everywhere
"that was them fighting like animals," the lion said, "do we care?"
that's when the yak peed so long and so loud that they all got their humor back

013.365 - quatrain 13.2017 Keith

Keith walked the land his father knew
but knew it like his father couldn't
Keith listened to people who lived there
whose skin made it so his father wouldn't

012.365 - quatrain 12.2017 lost love

"Mother, he was so sweet!
I gave him my buttons and laces both
til the night he laughed as I lay at his feet
now his body rots in his used-to-be boat."

011.365 - quatrain 11.2017 defeat

foreigners have entered the city and killed the queen
the oldest princess, and the priestess who killed the bull
we sacrificed to the gods to keep us safe from them
they show us, they claim, how ineffectual our gods are

010.365 - quatrain 10.2017 Richard and Sicily

a rose, a lily, and a peregrine hawk
met in a field so they could talk
the hawk stood tall and lorded over them
but the flowers left him poisoned and he never flew again

009.365 - quatrain 9.2017 contemplation

imagine!  imagine, if you will,
a rabid pack of rich men on a hill
contemplating as many ways as they can
of getting even for not being a working man

008.365 - quatrain 8.2017 Simon

Simon Bolivar
taught people the same ideas
that inspired Thomas Jefferson
and freed half of South America

007.365 - quatrain 7.2017 suspicion

the more that man displays his worth
the more I shiver for our furs
I think he'll come for them as tax
before to our freedoms he takes an axe

006.365 - quatrain 6.2017 a place

the lady with faraway eyes
walked on the lawn last night
walked across the neighbor's yard
to find a place to hang

005.365 - quatrain 5.2017 inauguration

after the vows were said and blessed
the cameras pulled back and showed
the weeping bride and leering groom
another country wed to her doom

004.365 - quatrain 4.2017 prejudice

the lion and the leopard
decided to get a beer
but ran into "no mingling" laws
and couldn't do it here.

003.365 - quatrain 3.2017 evidence

where, she said, where is this love you pledge me?
what shall I show my father to convince him?
sweet lady, he said, see that moon?  that stream of stars?
show them to your father, tell him I gave them to you

002.365 - quatrain 2.2017

what I'm trying to say, the preacher said
is you could go ahead, paint the town red
but deep in your heart, you know instead
you might as well have just stayed in bed

001.365 - quatrain 1.2017

I promised you a quatrain
I promised you four lines
I never promised they wouldn't be
'bout beer, good food, carbines.

Wyatt Underwood © 2017

announcement of 2017 project

FWIW, my project for 2017 shall be to write a quatrain a day. I know there are eight formal forms of quatrains, and I may try all of them, but AFAICT a quatrain only means four lines. Still, it is a formidable task to squeeze a poem into four lines. Damn!

<g> Trust me, I will also be writing my more usual troubled verses that are like ballad fragments or shards of songs.

completing 366 appreciations

what do I appreciate about completing these appreciations?  that I did it.  that for a year, a leap year in fact! every day I came up with something I appreciated, looked up what I needed to, wrote my appreciation, edited and polished it, and posted it before midnight.  (I think there was one exception, one day when midnight arrived before I thought to do all that.)  I'm glad I did this exercise, because I had come to a failure to appreciate that had gone on too long.  I hadn't appreciated, and certainly not "out loud", for too long.  I basically had to retrain myself, and I did it publicly.  and I did appreciate, many many things and ideas, like toy trains, and shooting a gun.  has it made a difference in my life?  yes.  Lindy says I'm calmer, and that I accept her corrections more readily.  or more nearly readily.  I can't say - it isn't true - that I spontaneously appreciate now, and I haven't seen any evidence of my appreciating in my poems.  I haven't seen them grow happier or more joyful.  I'm not sure I'd want that.  I don't trust happy poets, or joyful ones.  I know there's a possibility that they've really gotten what the Buddha wanted for us, but I wonder if they are really that insensitive to all the suffering, and all the evil around us.  but that's another story.  or maybe not.  an idea just amused me:  I may not trust those poets, but I appreciate them.  they do a task I cannot.  I'm a serious poet.  boy, am I a serious poet!  so I appreciate them bringing to poetry what I cannot or will not.  <bow>  now isn't that funny?  that in my appreciation of completing 366 appreciations, I learned that I appreciated some people that I hadn't yet learned I did?