NaPoWriMo 19 – How to walk on Broken Glass.

Hello there,Day 19 of

Day 19 of NaPoWriMo here – welcome back. only 11 days to go, and I am packing a lot of raw unedited poems away for later reworking. This one came quite quickly.

Here is the prompt; Today, I’d like to challenge you to write the latter kind of “how to” poem – a didactic poem that focuses on a practical skill. Hopefully, you’ll be able to weave the concrete details of the action into a compelling verse.

I teach firewalking and glasswalking, so here is a poem based on one woman’s memorable experience at a workshop ….

A crisp bed
Of glass shards
Laid out on a
Sharp white sheet,
Inviting and
Imagining
Your blood-soaked feet.

Allied with trust,
Knowing FEAR persists
As Friendly Energy
Announces Risk.
Truly, it’s effortless.
The first step
Is the deepest.

Look ahead, visualise
Getting to the other side.
It’s easy once you recognise,
You’ve walked on glass
Your whole damn life.

NaPoWriMo 12 -Formulae

Possibly the strangest poem I have written – prompted by the Napowrimo challenge for today – Today, I challenge you to write your own index poem. You could start with found language from an actual index, or you could invent an index. Happy writing! Well I pulled a randm book from the bookshelf and it was Keywords for the Crowley’s tarot … probably why it sounds like an invocation of sorts.

Formulae

Aeons of Alchemy, dissolve
Beasts of blue, evolve
Central to chaos, revolve

Death’s dominion regained
Eye of the empress remained
Failure of fortune attained

Grail of greatness resplendent
Hermit’s heart attendant
Indolence impedes independence

Joker of justice busted
Kundalini’s King flustered
Lust for Lilith mustered

Magus of Mercury insurgent
Noted numbers convergent
Oppression of order emergence

Path to power, appealing
Quintessence quickening, sealing
Rider reversed revealing

Scarab’s secret subsiding
Tower of temperance providing
Universal union residing

Virginal valour victorious
Whore of worry laborious
Yod yearns for Zain, vainglorious

NaPoWriMo 10

We are a dance of dragons,
Brand new ancients
Dreaming up revolution
On a midsummer’s nightmare.

I am Prometheus rising
Dancing with the fire
Through the gates of death
To the end of your world.
Napowrimo 10 – write a “book spine” poem. This involves taking a look at your bookshelves, and writing down titles in order (or rearranging the titles) to create a poem. Some fun images of book spine poems can be found here. If you want to take things a step further, Lillian suggests gathering a list of titles from your shelves (every third or fifth book, perhaps, if you have a lot) and using the titles, as close to the originals as possible, to create a poem that is seeded throughout with your own lines, interjections, and thoughts. Happy writing!

NaPoWriMo – 9 – Where pens draw Blood

A poem that includes a line that you’re afraid to write.

I wasn’t born
Where pens draw blood.
Words won’t turn
me into a terrorist;
Freedom of expression
Is a First world privilege.
So if you want a confession,
From a white western rhymer,
A break-down of fear and obsession,
You’re wasting your time.
There is nothing
Too fearful to write.
There’s nothing too taboo,
I’m not a Palestinian poet
Or a Paris cartoonist,
I wasn’t born
Where pens draw blood.

NaPoWriMo day 8 – Today I will buy Roses

Day 8 – A gentle prompt of Flowers led to this remembrance of a friend.

Today I Will Buy Roses.

I loved the lily,
You hated the scent,
Said it smelled like a death bed,
You asked me, am I dying?

You gave me the red dress,
The one that draped like rose petals.
I should be more extravagant,
You said, wild and graceful.

You didn’t like the flowers,
They wilted downstairs.
I couldn’t answer,
Yet, I spoke the truth.

You examined your hands,
Life’s line cutting a path on your palm.
We agreed it was all nonsense.
I remember your wildness, your grace.

Today I will buy roses.

NaPoWriMo day 7 – Tritina

Day 7 of Napowrimo … write a tritina. The tritina is a shorter cousin to the sestina, involving three, three-line stanzas, and a final concluding line. Three “end words” are used to conclude the lines of each stanza, in a set pattern of ABC, CAB, BCA, and all three end words appear together in the final line.
Sometimes it’s tricky, I swear!
Every time I fail solemnly,
And it’s really no good,

But wicked can be good
Or bad, so fuck it, I’ll swear,
Then repent solemnly.

Do I have to act solemnly?
Try so hard to be good,
Speak nice, not swear,

When I solemnly swear I am up to no good.

NaPoWriMo 6 -Just One Bite

Today’s prompt is about food – Today, I challenge you to write a poem about food. This could be a poem about a particular food, or about your relationship to food in general. So here is my effort.

Just One Bite

Somewhere between mythology
and my version of reality
I take a bite of succulent
delightful sin.
Breaking red skin,
revealing white flesh within.
I sink to my knees
as genesis 3
verse 16
spills it’s juice
while I chew
on my labours
before taking another
bite of dominance.

NaPoWriMo 5 – What seeds to sow?

I wasn’t inspired by the NaPoWriMo prompt today (it is optional) – then something happened so I wrote it down – it is a bit silly, but inspiration takes many turns and OI quite like it xx

Today, I challenge you to spend some time looking at the names of heirloom plants, and write a poem that takes its inspiration from, or incorporates the name of, one or more of these garden rarities.

What seeds to sow?

When contemplating garden folly,
I must say I am rather sorry
To plough through catalogues of remains
To find heirloom seeds with funny names.
So I have decided to invent my own
Descriptions of the seeds I’ve sown.

Like cauliflower, My Nan’s Beard
Or cucumber for Gastric Fear,
Grand-dad’s Fart, the brussel sprout,
And red pepper, Peter’s Pickled Pout.
I hope you don’t think I’m being silly,
To stuff and roast a Green Man’s Willy.

The Tasteless, Floppy, Frondy Fetish,
My very own variety of lettuce
Is lovely with Red Bulging Balls,
Stinging Tears, and Mother’s Gall,
Pauper’s Gold, cooked on the cob,
And pumpkin Jack, Fat Orange Slob.

But of all the seeds I try to sow,
It seems the only ones that grow
Are Finest Threads of Slugs Delight,
When seedlings vanish overnight.

NaPoWriMo Day 4 – A Cruel Month Mr Elliot?

Napowrimo 4 –In his poem “The Wasteland,” T.S. Eliot famously declared that “April is the cruelest month.” But is it? I’d have thought February. Today I challenge you to write a poem in which you explore what you think is the cruelest month, and why.

A cruel month Mr Elliot?

Does brutal solstice heat
Signal empathy’s retreat
In the vibrant thrills of summer?

Is entropy of fallen leaf
Sensitive to nature’s grief
In the flashy colour of autumn?

Do hoarfrost tears of ice,
At death dissolve and cry
For the soundless joys of winter?

Do weeping showers exclaim
What cruelty can be contained
And boxed up in a calendar,
Clipped in dusty lilac remains
Of memory and desire,
By an imposing poet in spring?

Dear God – Napowrimo day 3.

Napowrimo challenge – day 3 ….. ‘let’s turn our vision outward, and write fan letters. I challenge you to write a poem in the form of a fan letter to a celebrity.’

Well, I couldn’t think of a celebrity that I wanted to write a fan letter to, so I took a different slant and wrote a letter to God instead – Enjoy!

3rd April 2016

Dear God
Hey there God, how are you doing?
I know, it’s been a while since you last heard from me.
So I thought I would drop you a line to let you know,
That I’ve been thinking about you lately.

I hope you are doing okay over there. I have been a bit concerned
That maybe you had an accident, but I’m sure I would have heard.
See you haven’t been in touch for a while, I guess you’ve been staying at home,
And I’m writing just to check that you’re not sad or feeling lonely.
Things must have been pretty awful since what happened to your son,
And mankind’s confines of confusion of which God or Goddess is the One.

Maybe, just like many of us, you’ve been struggling with mental health,
And in the interests of self-preservation you left us sitting on the shelf.
Perhaps you haven’t seen the news though I’m sure you’re omnipresent,
I imagine you might be muddled by the anti-psychotics and depressants,
And I know it’s a lot for me to ask of you, to look into our affairs,
Like me, you must be overwhelmed with filling forms, accounts and prayers.

But I do need to ask a favour of you, and I hope that you can help,
Because the privileged hold the devil’s hand while leading us all to hell.
Perhaps you haven’t seen the news or maybe you think it’s only gossip.
Have you heard about all the fighting? And what of those corporate temples of profit?
Have you seen what’s happening to the people we call the refugees?
No home or hope for them; twixt government and the deep blue sea!

Now, I’m not being funny, but even you have to admit,
That a lot of time has passed us by and you are getting on a bit.
Now really, I’m not trying to imply you’ve been dishonest,
But you have had your eye off the ball, so I think you might have missed
The inheritance that we were promised.
Well, I’m writing to tell you, it hasn’t come to pass!
The gentle and meek are far from blessed,
They are falling on their arses.

Yours sincerely,
Lisa Goodwin