Day Four: Poem as a prompt

I’m so grateful for our April and NaPoWriMo and everybody who writes and reads poems, and especially for Maureen’s prompts.

Not only does she provide daily examples of great poetry (I love today’s “Gentle Leader” by Lucy Schiller so much), but there hasn’t been a repeat of a prompt in the last four years, I believe. And today she will get new ideas from our poems since the challenge is…

Prompt 4: “I’d like to challenge you to write a poem . . . in the form of a poetry prompt.” 

I love the finish of the last example poem by Mathias Svalina: “The camera clicks. And whatever the camera fails to see is the poem.” My life as a poetry prompt. Ah, look, got my title already.

My life as a poetry prompt

Today, I’d like to challenge you 
to write a poem as an answer 
to one of these, or all:

Why is it that she leads a writer’s life 
but then only writes 
that month of year?

Who would vow to write a novel
about a dog walk
on which nothing happens?

Will the poetic
win over
the factual?

Will she learn
how to invent
so that it doesn't feel like lying?

Will she be able to choose
one thing without
losing all the rest?

Who told her
that writing poetry
is really asking life’s big questions?

And why does she expect
others will write poems 
to answer them for her? 

The last day in my NaPoWriMo history

2018: Boulevard of Broken Bathrooms

How hard is it
to see life as a shaft
full of crocodiles
with their mouths wide open?

“The bathroom is broken again,”
amid cussing.
Choosing anger over sadness
because it gives you tools to work with. 
(Read on.)

2019: Sad sonnet (click for doors)

Sad Thursday. Great. Exactly what is needed.
As if the stormy winds that threaten wildly
to thwart our careful plans, to put it mildly,
weren’t enough. Sad sonnet? I say: Bring it!

The one to order sadness from me blindly
has not been born yet, or with joy defeated.
There is too much that’s wrong, sad, bad, mistreated,
so take your gloom away and bug off kindly.

It’s not denial. It’s anger. Thought pollution.  
I feel I’ve landed in a tear-jerk story.  
To be sad to a prompt is no solution.  

I’ll keep my colours, doors, hope, fun times, glory.  
Yes, optimism is new revolution.
So let me hear you loudly say: We’re sorry.

2020: Running it

See how it runs:
the story runs,
the action runs,
it’s full of aha moments,
it’s poignant,
it’s daring and it dares,
it’s ripe and ready to reap awards,
it’s world-changing,
it’s life-turning
(or is it the other way around?).
(Read on.)

2021: Sub 
(click for more liminal spaces in photos)

No. No. No… (Browsing Liminal Spaces.) 
This one. 
A suburban scene, empty of everything 
but time. 
Substandard in use, super nova 
in renovation. 
There were times when it lived 
but not now. 
Now it is closed, opening nothing 
but eyes. 
Suburban, substandard, 
subliminal.

This day in my blogging history

• 

  2014: I Have a Horse, by Slovenian greatest Tomaž Šalamun

• 

  2014: $$$$$$, my favourite poem by Charles Bukowski

• 

  2014: How Fonzie found Bukowski (on the badge that I’d lost)

• 

  2015

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