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 Eight – A Poem Beginning with a Line from Browning

Seems I am on the habit of doing everything a day late, but that’s better than nothing.

Today’s prompt was to use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem that was acquired from a poet bot. I couldn’t decide on the bot or line, so I picked an old classic that I like.

 

A Poem Beginning with a Line from Browning

And thus we sit together now
And all night long we have not stirred-
And the sun has broken through the clouds
With early morning birds, blackbirds and warblers,
Flickering all about. And we sit, and we sit and we watch
The news – together and silent, everything is blue-gray
Hazy from the beating of the storm, yet what is
A tornado or two to a month or three of this larger uncertainty?
It’s name written on every and surface and slipped out of
Every mouth, and yet I can not say it out-loud, instead it’s
All these little nicknames for this thing floating around.
What was it my windmills told me as the huddled
At the edge of the lawn last week?
They could not sleep – it was never cold enough.
And I can not sleep, this early spring too warm and alive.
And something is wrong. We are sitting together now,
And without a word. When will we hear the word,
And will will we finally speak what is wrong.