NaPoWriMo Day 30

Today's quote:"If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone." ~Thomas Hard

Today's prompt: A free day

Today's poem:

Singularity

You have the power to pull me close,
My undivided attention focused only on you,
In a moment that seems to last forever,
In the smallest space between us.

You are my singularity,
Your gravity well holding me fast to you.
The closer we get
The more of myself I lose, in you,
Until there is no more you or I,
Only us.

NaPoWriMo Day 15

Today's quote: "Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them." ~Dennis Gabor

Today's prompt: In a nice private place, pick out a stanza, or a few lines, that you like from a poem that you don’t otherwise feel was very successful. Say them over to yourself.

Now hum them. See if you can find the tune.

And now sing them aloud. (Who cares if you can sing? You’re in private. And this is poetry!)

Throwing away the rest of the poem, write two more stanzas (stand-alone or connected) that go to the same tune.

Today's poem:

Burning Daylight

Solstice – night creeps in slow,
Holding back in honor of the sun,
Burning hot and large directly above us,
As we head for high ground
Bathing ourselves in the midsummer.

The light fades gently
Into orange, purple, red.
We breath in the evening air,
Breath out poetry
On this most magical of nights,
Releasing our words into the world.

NaPoWriMo Day 23

Today's quote: "Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry." ~W.B. Yeats

Today's prompt: Write a poem in which you combine a speaker and an event that normally don’t go together (such as sports broadcasters and poetry writing)

August 28th 1963

Today's poem:

I like this fellow,
He is very forceful,
Has the crowd dancing to his tune.

I too have a dream;
I too could stand in front of my followers,
Have them cheering me onwards.

He talks now of destiny, and freedom,
Of equality and colour.
I know of only one colour,
Of one side,
But I too know of destiny.

I have worked hard for my powers,
Have kept fighting all these years,
Much as King has,
Rising up against my teachers and leaders,
Showing them the truth in what we can do.

He talks of children,
And I think of my own,
Hidden from me at an early age.
All that I would show them,
Share my empire with them.

One day his dream may come true,
And one day I know mine shall,
The empire will know no equal,
The Death Star is nearly complete.

NaPoWriMo Day 29

Today's quote: "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." Dead Poet's Society

Today's prompt: choose your favourite newspaper or online news provider. Jot down five to ten headlines that jump out at you and without reading the articles, select elements from each headline to create a new event about which your poem reports.

Today's poem:

Life Spectator

It is who you know,
Not what you know,
When television fans win court cases,
And murder charges are bought
In a case regarding a Playstation.

Take some time out,
Get some fresh air,
Watch for space rocks, stars,
Or even play some football,
Rather than be purely
A life spectator.

Some have money to burn,
Spending £100,000 on a dead man's words,
While other live in poverty and homelessness,
As house prices soar and technology prices fall.
But the sky and the sea
Are free to all.
Watch the best entertainment,
As the tide roars and the sun shines;
Dare not to be just a life spectator.

Notes: While this might not be a news story poem specifically, I was drawn to various headlines and stories on the BBC website today, resulting in a poem about the news of living, or not really living, in general.

NaPoWriMo Day 24

Today's quote: "A poet can survive everything but a misprint." ~Oscar Wilde

Today's prompt: Travel a while on The Phrase Finder website until you find the phrase or phrase origin that most interests you. Take some notes, do a free-write or three, and see where a little word exploration takes you.

Today's poem:

Mercury

They say he has mercury in his mind,
Affecting his judgement,
Changing him every day.
The hats started some time ago,
At first they were a welcome distraction
From his rambling ideas,
Something to focus on.
A black trilby, a grey fedora,
A brown bowler soon followed.
Smart, classic choices
But then they changed.
A blue velvet top hat appeared,
Next, a red fez with a feather on top,
Worn at a jaunty angle.
Their distractions were no longer welcome.
The pretty pink straw boater
Was the last straw, they say,
And now his hats are said,
To be mad as his mind.

NaPoWriMo Day 7

Had to go back and finish this one!

Today's quote: "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." ~Leonard Cohen

Today's prompt: Write and capture humorous incidents related to love in a 5-line love poem called a tanka. (You may even decide to create your own tanka journal for love poems!)

Here’s how to write one:
Describe in concrete terms one or two simple images (two or three lines) from your humorous love encounter, not just what you saw but also what you tasted, touched, smelled or heard.

What were you were thinking at the time this love encounter happened? Write that down, too, as two or three lines, so you have five lines in total for the poem.
Think about making the third line of your poem into a pivot line, so that it links to both the previous two lines and to the final two lines.

Test the tanka by dividing it into two parts so the third line acts both as the last line of the first part and as the first line of the second part. Does each section make sense separately, and then together?

Think about reducing — and even avoiding — capitalization and punctuation because a tanka needn’t be like a sentence or merely a flat statement.

Today's poem:

Early Love

In a London pub, we got to know each other -
Drinking, eating, singing along to the juke-box,
Deciding to play a joke, I knew we were meant to be,
Realising we shared a sense of humour, a geeky edge,
Thinking alike as we shared a laugh.

NaPoWriMo Day 28

Today's quote: "Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out.... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure." ~A.E. Housman

Today's prompt: Take a moment to remember a breakthrough moment in your life or a “freeze-frame” moment from long, long ago. An “a-ha” or an “epiphany” moment or a moment that has a story yet to tell.

Let’s prepare to write a poem using our intuition intentionally today. Write this prompt on your page: “When I remember my “a-ha moment” from my past, I understand the place I am meant to go with my words and poetry today is … ”

Restate the prompt as you free-write and don’t write a poem yet. Instead, go about your business of the day purposefully not writing a poem.

Notice surprising turns of phrases you hear. Listen to people who say things to you that seem especially surprising, lyrics to songs. Eavesdrop intentionally. Wait for at least 2 hours and then write your poem from the words your intuition and your free-writing gave you.

Today's poem:

Intuition

It's hard to just live your life;
I sit on the bus
In the middle of unmoving traffic,
As my mind wanders,
Travelling faster than I am.

A wedding on a frozen lake,
And an invite to an artist's house:
The fragments of a life,
Reflected through the beige slants
Of the office blinds.

“The food van is here”,
A voice announces,
A break in the morning routine,
As we scramble for sustenance.

I strive for inspiration,
Opening myself to feeling,
Intuition, observation, poetry
In the everyday, waiting to be found.


Notes: This feels very much like a 'found poem' to me. I don't know if that is the most effective response to the prompt, but that is where the prompt took me, in the same way that the prompt itself to be open and intuitive, so was my initial response on how to go about this. I enjoyed being more observant and playing around with and incorporating things I had heard and seen throughout the day. It is fascinating what words, phrases, concepts and images are just laying around waiting to be used in this way.