NaPoWriMo – Day Nine – ‘To Do: Tomorrow’

Today, on day nine of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was to write a To Do poem. My life is full of to do lists, but I wanted to keep it simple.

‘To do: Tomorrow’

Sleep in
Pick up creamer
Pay rent

Catch up on favorite shows
Finish reading book
Catch up with friends

Organize my desk
Do the laudry
Get a bite

Learn to flip a butterfly knife
Play the kalimba
Practice how to swordfight

Wake up early
Eat Breakfast
Meditate

Bake a cake
Clean the house up
Exercise

Find something to wear Saturday night
Find something to live for
Find all the time to live a life

NaPoWriMo – Day Eight – ‘All the Vagrants”

So sorry this is a day late, day eight’s prompt was in the image of the Spoon River Anthology, which is a lovely collection on monologues from the dead, by Edgar Lee Masters.

‘All the Vagrants’

Do not cry if you wouldn’t have cried before –
I am just another face forgotten, another life forgotten,
Another life lost, another person walking along the street
Who you only think once of, you never noticed twice.
It was me walking with my backpack on that mid morning
Too close to the thin road, day too hot to think,
All those cars too close, too fast, too late to be remorseful, now,
Maybe I was a friend, maybe I was a stranger,
Most likely I was a stranger, even to family.

But my soul keeps on walking, keeps on writing,
Keeps on talking – I’m only leaves in the fall.
Fresh grass in the Spring, stray cats on the streets,
A shadow under your foot fall, and only this, and nothing more.
Do not cry for where I go-
For you did not cry before.

NaPoWriMo – Day Five – ‘Poltergeist’

Today’s prompt was extremely fun to write. We were tasked with writing a poem by picking out a short line from a favorite book, write a poem that uses said line as a title, and when finished change the title. My book was “Mr.B. Gone” by Clive Barker, and the moment I opened it I found the sentence “It’s not human.” And thus this piece was written while watching my cat before work, though I could not type it until getting off work… 13hours later. It’s been a day.

I hope you all enjoy!

‘Poltergeist’

What do you think you are,
Not human, you little inhuman human,
Knocking things all day onto the floor,
Pushing open cabinets, closing my doors,

Crying at night, terrorizing me in my sleep –
I hear you lurking under my bed, I saw you creep
I saw you climb, creak, screech, and scramble
Down the hallway twice within the last week.

There you go again, peering between the cracks
In every door, all these little bad habits of yours-
Watching everyday as leave, I see you behind the blinds.
Chattering on and on, smacking the broom over,

You’re a tiny ghost, look how you’ve begun
Leaving little bites all down my arms and legs-
They weren’t there when I went to sleep!
(Anyway, you’re too loud to have such little teeth)

You’re not human, you little inhuman being-,
I have seen how you try to reach as far up the walls
Fighting other too quick, too little to see tiny things!
And there! You go again, down the hall like a strong wind.

Yet, when you wake me too early and exhausted,
Another day, full of dull aches and insignificant pains,
Too bright your eyes for all those things, but soft
Is your pawing, soft your reminder that we must live to play.

NaPoWriMo – Day Five – ‘Errand Day’

Today’s prompt was a little more complicated to do and as I had a busy day I couldn’t get to it until now. The prompt is called “The Shapes a Bright Container Can Contain,” after this poem by Theodore Roethke, and requires you to pick a poem and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original as well as starting with the same letter as in the original.

I picked Karle Wilson Blaker’s “I Shall Be Loved As Quiet Things” which also has an ABCB rhyme scheme.

‘Errand Day’

I wish you could feel as I feel:
A full belly and hot from bath,
Comfortable in my own skin
Despite the aftermath –

Touched by a full and busy day
That was ten years long and full of rain,
Awash with errands to do, and places
To drive insane.

Could you only be here now,
Thinking with me about how forever
That all took, we will say never again
Belittling the endeavor.

Today was a day ten years long
Under heavy clouds and quiet songs,
Any other day it would have been too much,
Too many wrongs.

Focusing on the now, and how warm
Coming home was, wet roads no more,
Only sitting in brief astonishment and wonder,
What more could I ask for?

NaPoWriMo – Day Four – ‘Road of Ghosts’

Today’s prompt was to pick a picture of a liminal space and write about it. I gotta say, I love liminal spaces. I can wander them any day and all day. The picture for the prompt today is thanks to  @SpaceLiminalBot on twitter.

Road of Ghosts

Do you know the feeling
Of being too hot and too cold,
Radio both blasting and too low,
The road is just straight enough to fall
Back asleep, its not yet tomorrow, but
Still not quite last week.

Slow down then speed up, nothing here
Anyway, yet shadows of some sort of poor
Chap works on with lights blazing:
Up and down every road, south, or north
Do we exit or detour, did you see those
Cat’s eyes on cones gleaming in that odd sort of way,
We are always building further into another day.

Let’s now go 85 in a 65 zone,
Brain fog and fog on the road.
Where are we going now, does it
Ever really change? I have been on this road
In Charlotte, Fort Smith, and Portland
I have been here every day.

NaPoWriMo – Day Three – ‘Get Up, Wake Up’

Today for NaPoWriMo we were asked to write a poem using a universal word deck. Oddly enough, I already have a similar system in place that I could easily use. Over the years I’ve collected magnet word banks and when I’m feeling stuck I grab a handful and play around.

The words I drew today: listen, time, wake, red, liquid, chocolate, melt, hear, moist, make, complete, and meaning.

We only needed to draw two, but, eh, the magnets like to stick together and it feels more structured. Naming this piece was the hard part. I’m very bad at names.

‘Get Up, Wake Up”

Listen-
It is time to wake up
From those red and black liquid dreams.
Numb body, dizzy eyed, stone cold –
It was all just some bad sleep.

Get up and drink your coffee, rich,
Like chocolate melting into your soul,
Forgive yourself for the past sleep brings back
To today, it will be okay, I understand (completely)
Why moist eyed, you cannot cry out
Silently tossing and turning, tearing the sheets.

You must wake up now,
Now is no longer then, wake up,
Make yesterday’s yesterdays go away.
Hearing your shallow breathing, I know
The meaning behind such sleeping.

NaPoWriMo – Day Two – ‘The Apology’

Today’s prompt was based off Robert Frost’s infamous poem ‘The Road Less Taken’. We were asked to write our own poem about taking a path that has made all the difference.

I wanted to write something funny or uplifting, but, as usual, failed. The truth is I do not have a good relationship with my family, too many things have happened. Although I forgive them, I stand by the fact that I do not have to live with them.

‘The Apology’

The same moon rises and the same sun sets
But the flowers outside our doors are not the same
I wake when you wake, and sleep when you sleep
But 10am for me is night and you morning.

What can I say, I’m sure you would’ve been a good father
Had I been there to be called your daughter.
Had I stayed still enough to not think anymore
About when exactly does a hot night become a cool morning,
How in our family it is said with absolute reverence
We are all born to be disciplined by God,
But as children are wanting in a parents hard hand.

Did you know what is said about little girls
Who become women never having fathers
When you left? What about the whiskey bottles
On the coffee table, empty cabinets, empty mouths?
She hated you as much as I never knew you.

Would you walk back home, knowing me now,
With your face, with your heart, I know you regretted it,
As some point, now that I have met, loved, missed, and left
You – I could’ve been a good daughter, as much as you
My father, and I’m sorry, but the past that hurts more
Than any late apology that is said looking at me looking at you.

NaPoWriMo – Day One – ‘Spit out your Soul’

I’m back again this year! Still kicking somehow!

Today’s prompt for NaPoWriMo was to make the world strange and see it as a stranger might. There was a very interesting video, “Seductive Fantasty” by Sun Ra and his Arkestra, to use as an inspiration and jumping point. A lot of the imagery I borrowed from said music video.

‘Spit out your Soul’

Welcome to this half baked apocalypse
Pink moon smiling while you half-hazardly
Spit out your soul with that face full of stars,
Life is strange on this world called Mars-

Are you alone, are you sure, terribly sure?
Busting in and out of life, do you know
The color green? Full blue skies, clouds grey,
Sun whitened buildings blinding your summer
Sprayed brains, these things were once beautiful,
Where’s your soul kept now, in what cherished things?

Were you surprised at what the future would bring?
Remembering what it was like to breathe real air,
Clean and raw, dirt on you tongue, sand between teeth,
When did we begin to miss such terrible things?

How many moons do you now see,
What stories can tell me about such things?
Life is nothing to a rock but an old story we sing-
Push and pull him into the shape of your god,
Witness your indefinite soul splitting into everything.

NaPoWriMo – Day Twenty – ‘Lunch Break Feast’

Almost caught up! Now I just have to get today’s done.. today. Day twenty of NaPoWriMo was to write a poem about a handmade or homemade gift that you have received. I rather small and I’m known to eat anything at least once, so people bring me a lot of food at work. I also work a 12+ hour night-shift.

 

‘Lunch Break Feast’

Fried plantains in honey, steamed buns, sticky rice in bamboo,
Cuban coffee, black beans and rice, egg rolls with peanuts:
We eat it all together, because we cannot sleep.

They pinch my sides and tell me I need to eat more
More, more, more: turning around I am
Already across the floor, they didn’t know you could walk
So fast without running until they met me.
They began to feed me because they got tired
Of the sandwich crackers and redbull, handful of peanuts,
Handful of nothing much, and not enough.
They do not like my bones.

I bring them pumpkin bread and fried wings:
I am learning to cook everything
My mother never taught me how to cook.
Now, I am trying to wake up before we clock in,
We each bring a feast made with our pantry things.
I learned how to make pork with mint, black rice, sour bread,
We give, and we give, and we give what work does not give.
They pinch my sides and I learned how to pinch back,
To rest and not run away, up and down the floor,
Back and forth, back and forth twelve hours or more.
We eat because we cannot sleep: there are still hours
Left of today.

NaPoWriMo – Day Nineteen – ‘My Home’

Day nineteen of NaPoWriMo was to write a walking archive poem. Stuck at home or stuck at work, so had to make do, lol.
Hope you all enjoy!

‘My Home’

My home is a room
Where I dance between bed and kitchen:
Two steps, three steps, I am at the only window,
Back two and I am on my bed and I am touching
A Bookshelf, my library, my life collection
In five sections, with boxes of tea stacked throughout
Patiently at the ready for the kettle to sing
An arms reach away on top of the mini fridge.
My desk is a short scoot forward – work is easily
Forgotten with a bed that close, and with an army of empty
Soda cans and cups missing tea, it is a busy, cramped,
Little place: I cannot pace, I do not walk so much as hop,
But it is wholly my place: incense on the window-seal,
Notebooks full of scribble.