The Bucket List

This is a challenge.

Save your groans. It's been proven you all like my challenges

Anyway. I just wrote about a bucket list inclusion on a different thread and I thought it could be a good writing exercise for us to try. However, I'm going to make it challenge. A Bucket List for a challenge would be interesting if the list were written as a poem of what you'd like to do/see before we kick the bucket, with a couple of rules. Of course. Without rules, there is no challenge (and Neo likes to make rules).

The rules:
GOOD LUCK!

This space reserved. (cuz I messed up) I'll be back.

i'll be baaccccccckkkkk. for now, my working title:

there's a hole in my bucket list

Coming back to this as well since it's quite a lot to think about.

Playing My Bucket List

The beautiful black lacquer shines
white in some light; a true mirror
to the sun. Music waits inside
my hands and now, perhaps,
ready to be heard. The true
piano girl has found different
instruments to play and it is up
to me to learn the art of creating
sounds and turn them into song.

The Thief's Bucket list

The year the future Lord Balfour
signed three paragraphs
sealing the fate of millions
A thief crept in darkness
upon Um Walid
sleeping innocently in her garden
and cut off the braids she into which she had woven her gold dowry

Years after the Nakba
he kept a long list of names
of those robbed
When he would encounter
one by chance
he would declare:
Abu Hani! - I stole a chicken from you in 1917
Allow me to repay you now and atone!

Times were hard. Most accepted.

But in 1967 when Um Walid arrived
she spit on his feet
and damned him to hell
Thus foiling his chances of redemption.

there's a hole in my bucket list

where things that jigged and jostled,
sought most gaily for attention,
must have tossed and tumbled out
to land all which-ways on the path
where heels trod hard
and toes scuffed dust
to bake and blind the shiny stuff -
inconsequential pebbles

not so very long ago
my bucket to the brim was filled
with bright and daring 'things to do'
their rainbowed hues a thing of wonder,
splendid ways to spend the days,
a tallying of moments...

but now i've come to this conclusion:
time steals too quick into the rough
without the ticking off of lists
without the press of unspent wi-
shes crowdingin andon andup
urging me Get Off Your Butt and
DO SOME THING and DO IT NOW!
before you die, be fore you croak
before you'll get no more bespoke and
natty dreams to nag ... enough!

my bucket list is free, is pending...
feather-light just as i like it
sure, could change my mind and plug it
or plant it in the garden, fuck it!
















.........................................

apologising now before rereading this in the morning.

chipbutty said:

where things that jigged and jostled
sought most gaily for attention
must have tossed and tumbled out
to land all which-ways on the path
where heels trod hard
and toes scuffed dust
to bake and blind the shiny stuff -
inconsequential pebbles

not so very long ago
my bucket to the brim was filled
with bright and daring 'things to do'
their rainbowed hues a thing of wonder
splendid ways to spend the days
a tallying of moments...

but now i've come to this conclusion:
time steals away flies quick enough
without the ticking off of lists
without the press of unspent wi-
shes crowdingin andon andup
urging me Get Off Your Butt' and
DO SOME THING and DO IT NOW!
before you die, be fore you croak
before you'll get no more bespoke and
natty dreams to nag ... enough!

my bucket list is free, is pending...
feather-light just as i like it
sure, could change my mind and plug it
or plant it in my garden, fuck it!
















.........................................

apologising now before rereading this in the morning.

Click to expand...

Don't apologize! I really like this poem. It has a lyricism that ebbs and flows and the sentiment is similar to my own--my first thought on seeing the thread title being "my bucket done spilled."

I didn't look at this with an editor's eye, just read it for a gut reaction, and mine is that you've written a poem that expresses something essential and expresses it well.

(Hope you don't mind the feedback. I was in the nighborhood and did a drive-by read!)

Angeline said:

Don't apologize! I really like this poem. It has a lyricism that ebbs and flows and the sentiment is similar to my own--my first thought on seeing the thread title being "my bucket done spilled."

I didn't look at this with an editor's eye, just read it for a gut reaction, and mine is that you've written a poem that expresses something essential and expresses it well.

(Hope you don't mind the feedback. I was in the nighborhood and did a drive-by read!)

Click to expand...

hiya Angelina dreamer, and din't yo' mamma tell you not to crit and drive? a drive-by reaction's good enough for me. thanks for taking the time!

wrote it late last night and was too tired (lazy) to self-edit it much. glad it gets its point across though.

Ethan Kicks the Bucket

"The old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be,
ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be,"
he used to sing collecting sap
before there was electricity
"many long years ago."

"What the hell's a wiffletree, Pa?"
he asked his Daddy who taught him to boil,
how to curse, and what a wiffletree was
the old gray mare she used to kick,
"many long years ago."

but now there are tubes that loop dee loop
from tree to tree sucked by a pump.
"Christ! There's even a pellet stove
bought at the local hardware store
and Boss gets his hardwood pellets there!"

Ethan kicks a rusted bucket,
"Goddammit! Won't see these no more."

Alphabetical order and apathy
made the A's most popular on the list
for even the amorous reader
never made it as far as R, let
alone T so the commonest article
suffered her three letters in a curl
(T and e) around the sympathetic h.
Thus, the poet tried 17 different titles,
tried for an E or maybe an H, tried icing
sexy invitations on top, some sprinkled
with letter/symbol combinations to nudge
forward her little plate of goodies,
hope sloshing from the bucket of hope
wetting the galoshes under her gown.

OK OK, Pandora submitted her bucket list poem...and I just reworked and submitted mine. Everyone else - submission time!

Desejo said:

OK OK, Pandora submitted her bucket list poem...and I just reworked and submitted mine. Everyone else - submission time!

Click to expand...

k, thanks for the reminder