The Poetry Haul Challenge
Week Ten - #artstackpoets #artstack ARTSTACK
Poets, it’s time for another round of The Poetry Haul! Welcome to Week 10, where we challenge you to craft a poem using some or all of the ten words below.
This week’s words are:
pool, chore, lumber, forest, curfew, fly, genes, eight, smoke, today
How will you piece these words together? Will they guide you into a misty forest where the smoke lingers from an old fire? Or perhaps they’ll weave a story of rebellion, a curfew ignored as someone sneaks out under the moonlight?
How to participate:
Write a poem using some or all of the words.
Share it with us by [posting directly on Substack with #artstackpoets] and tag us ARTSTACK please remember to type @ with our name and click our account. From there our account should be highlighted.
Share your poem in the comments or in our online art center (tag #ThePoetryHaul so we can find it!).
Engage with other poets—this is about community, connection, and expression.
Need inspiration? Try crafting a poem based on a theme—mystery, dreams, or even a journey through time. There are no rules, only exploration.
The Last Stitch—for Connie
It is the fifth Memorial Day, Connie.
The day folds over itself like a well-worn page,
a chapter I have read and re-read,
its ink bleeding into me, even now.
🪡
You were the love of my life—
for twenty-two years, a story told in stolen hours,
a life together, apart.
A love not caged, yet never quite free.
🪢
I tried.
Tried to mend what was broken,
tried to stitch together the frayed edges of you, of me—
a needle slipping through time,
pulling but never quite binding.
🦛
Please—
I whisper to the silence you left behind—
let this be the turning.
Let this be the place where the ink dries,
where I do not beg the past for one more line.
👕
All I have now is your sweater,
the last stitch of you against my skin.
It holds neither warmth nor weight,
just the ghost of a touch that once made me feel alive.
🦁
And I am alive.
Not as Judith, not as the name you knew,
but as Jay—unfolded, untethered, vulnerable.
No longer trying to repair what was never mine to fix.
📚
This chapter is closing, Connie.
And for the first time, I am not just turning the page—
I am writing a new book altogether.
📖
Maybe, just maybe, love will ink itself in again.
Maybe, just maybe, this time, it will stay.
❤️
Try by
I’ve got to try
When so much feels broken
Got to try
When this chapter feels hopeless
Try
When the night feels endless
Try and keep
My spark alive
Remember the love
That’s in my heart
Always
People and animals
So special to me
That beautiful light
That’s always with me
Even when
My spirit’s so vulnerable
That beautiful light
Is always there
But what a time to be alive,
When your no longer disciplined,
Looking longing and searching for the right things in all the wrong places!
Places you knew never served you any good, piled high with broken glass and red flags.
But somehow you stayed in your endless delusions of what you saw as okay.
Life has a crazy way of playing mind games.
Vulnerable, overwhelmed, over stimulated, over stressed,
and underappreciated. playing a losing game, of cat and mouse.
But yet again you still want to try love.
Living for love and trying to survive love.
Operating out of survival mode is a hell of a thing,
Hell trying to survive love is a hell of a thing
at any moment you can completely lose your mind.
Amazed and astonished at how at how you even survived love!
Looking back to find date when you thought this love was okay?
The broken love, hopeless love, the never ending feeling of finding everlasting love.
Untitled
Please try to love me
Show me I’m not broken
Answer my prayers,
I cry- when’s it going to be my turn ?
Hurt before, I can not endure the thought of another ended chapter
A growing collection in my closet I can not add another sweater
You tell me I am loved and I do not need to beg-
“Don’t say please, I don’t even have to try,
Being near you makes me so alive”
Naked and Vulnerable
My heart an open wound, your love a balm
Time passes
things change
My prayer is different, I cry-
Please, see that I love me
Know that I am not broken
Pick a calendar date,
I know what I want
Seal the deal- when’s it going to be our turn ?
March, the Eighth
Maybe sure it’s
over
lover
I’m too broken
you’re too sober
Chapter eight,
just please
remember
Turn the page
and try for better?
I’m alive inside
our
sorrow
Please remember
me tomorrow
March,
the eighth
inside a sweater
All but warm in
sweater
weather
I’ll be still, be
vulnerable
I know you think I
stand too tall
But this, the eighth
is still our date
Just
please
believe
It’s not too late
I want this broken,
sober,
chapter
Dead and gone.
𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴
𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳
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I dive into the deep end of the pool
Because loving is the opposite of a chore.
Like cutting wood and piles of lumber,
I carry my secrets barefoot through the forest,
And place them on the living room floor
To burn the wood of conspiracy, legacy, and revelation.
With anarchy comes a curfew,
So we do not fly too close to the moon.
I count back from eight,
To seven,
To six,
To five. . .
Until at four the smoke fills the room,
And I begin to swoon
Til two,
Til one,
Until the daybreak. . .until today.
I pray at sunrise
Where there is no time or definitions of delay.
I’m honored that The Last Stitch was chosen for this installment of the Poetry Haul. This poem is a tribute to Connie, my wife of twenty-two years, and a reflection on the complicated process of healing and letting go. Every moment we shared has become part of who I am, and as this chapter closes, I find myself stepping into a new one—one where her memory continues to guide me. While I am no longer trying to repair what was never mine to fix, I am learning to honor the love we shared, as I begin to write a new story.