#napowrimo2023 #day8 #humannamedcats

#napowrimo2023
#day8
#humannamedcats
#20littleprojects
#publicaccesspoetry

 

Human named cats

Words cut deeper than a knife.

Fair words butter no parsnips.

Dropped like a hot potato, I said it was not to be sniffed at,

he claimed the butter was rancid,

but our complaints fell on deaf ears.

We didn't see through you.

It left a sour taste in my mouth.

I felt indigo blue so it must be Wednesday.

Jessica, formerly of Folkestone claimed, the taste in my mouth

was caramel macchiato. (that was when we patronised coffee shops, for hours and days, not eating the lotus biscuits if we were dieting finding them crushed in the bottom of handbags months later, crumbs covering fairy hammocks).

Black cats are unlucky unless given people names, like Dave or Betsy, then they can eulogise that,

“We’re a Jock Tamson’s bairns”.

The adorable fungi of deceit

Love is an emergency room.

Jessica sighs then spray paints kittens.

Is Queenie here? She’s not brought the music stand.

It portended the distance between them,

when they overlooked

the presence of an interloping raven,

enchantingly brow beaten.

There was always Sugar Loaf Hill,

but it developed a saccharine tang. 

“Nu komt de aap uit de mouw”. 

The bottle egged them demanding, drink me.

The human named cats grinned and purred on with delight.

The prompt is called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. And here are the twenty little projects themselves — the challenge is to use them all in one poem.

                                                                         

#napowrimo2023
#day7
#justonethingjenny
#nonlistpoem
#poemoftheday

 Just one thing Jenny

I like a to-do list,

crafted with carefully considered goals,

it helps me think creatively,

it reminds me to carve out time,

creates order and accountability,

out of chaos,

However, I am reminded,

control is an illusion,

chaos knows this too and comes

bowling down and knocking

over plans like pins.

Leaving one goal standing.

Healing.

#napowrimo2023 #day6 #fakerthatflees

#napowrimo2023
#day6
#fakerthatflees 
#unkownlanguage
#poetryinternational 

 

Faker that flees

I’ve always been cute,
seedier, badly formed man, mansplaining, fluid
coalesced tendrils, faker that flees.
It’s in our nature, that zygote, mars lives, no he’s struck,
open handed twitch, midday all is dark, begin night.

I’ve been my own gestalt,
we die galvanised, die verses, molested
green bucks die, high on gas, minds broken.
Always they break, its under done.
Damn let minds hoof, this verbiage, never venereal and order the gin.

Today’s prompt involved choosing a poem from Poetry International in a language you don’t know then reading the poem to yourself, thinking about the sound and shape of the words, and the degree to which they remind you of words in your own language. Use those correspondences as the basis for a new poem. I chose "Only I have a cunt" by Sasja Janssen.

Ik alleen heb een kutje

als zeewier in bad of om een man gespannen huid

koele tegels, vaker dat vlees

er is dat nauwe, dat zoete, maar liever niet het stuwen

op een harde tl-middag als ik daar ben en jij niet. 

Ik ben mijn geslacht

weg die kalverpoten die verleiden moesten

geen buik die hijgen gaat, mijn borsten

als ja mijn borsten iets anders doen

dan legt mijn hoofd zich erbij neer van een heel andere orde te zijn.

Here is the English translation by Michele Hutchison.

Only I have a cunt

like seaweed in a bath or skin stretched around a man

cold tiles, more often, that meat

there’s that tight one, that sweet one but not pushing towards

a hard strip-lit afternoon if I am there and you are not. 

I am my sex

away with those calf’s legs meant to seduce

no belly that will heave, my breasts

if yes my breasts do something else

then my mind will settle on being something of quite a different category.

"Only I have a cunt" - Sasja Janssen - The Netherlands - Poetry International

#napowrimo2023 #day5 #putsomeofthatshitdown

#napowrimo2023

#day5

#putsomeofthatshitdown

#inappropriatelaughter

#versedaily

Put some of that shit down.

Close those tabs

Let some of the plates fall,

you can buy more plates,

more resilient tableware,

perhaps made of bamboo, so you won’t have the

guilt of plastic, but hey if you

need some paper plates too, that’s okay.

Rest, read books, listen to podcasts,

shock listen to nature,

find serenity, be serenity,

be vulnerable, show your soft,

underbelly and keyhole scars.

Be cared for not carer

Others can be responsible for themselves.

A gift for them to grow,

step up to the bamboo plate

Make space and time to transition

with ease, what is 6, 8, 12 weeks

In the ledger of your life.

Be gentle with yourself.

Accept this is what it is.

Today's prompt for the day. Begin by reading Charles Simic’s poem “The Melon.” It would be easy to call the poem dark, but as they say, if you didn’t have darkness, you wouldn’t know what light is. Or vice versa. The poem illuminates the juxtaposition between grief and joy, sorrow and reprieve. For today’s challenge, write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment – or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.

#napowrim2023 #day04 #dastardlyvile

 

#napowrim2023
#day04
#dastardlyvile
#triolet
#dodgepoetryprogram

Dastardly, vile

Fearfully repeating itself

This dastardly, vile triolet.

Wish it was left upon the shelf,

Fearfully repeating itself

Like automatic pilot,

a melancholic Christmas elf

Fearfully repeating itself

This dastardly, vile triolet.

Today’s challenge the dastardly triolet, an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetramenter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) — ABaAabAB.

#napowrim2023 #day03 #theapple

#napowrim2023
#day03
#theapple
#wendycope
#uslibraryofcongressarchives

The Apple

At teatime I sold a small apple –
The size of it made us all cry.
I wrapped it and hoarded it from Robert and Dave
The got no quarters and I had no whole.

And that apple, it made me so miserable,
As exceptional things rarely do not
In the past. The selling. A drive in the city.
This is war and discontent. It is old.

The rest of the day was quite challenging.
I did all of my slacking by rote
I despised them and had no time under
I hate you. I’m sorry I disappeared.

The prompt Find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite. I chose Wendy Cope's The Orange.

#notconfusedwithketchup #napowrimo2023 #day02

 

 

#napowrimo2023

#day02

#paulcelan

#notconfusedwithketchup

Not confused with ketchup

Progeny, source not to confused with ketchup.

Offer protection from pestilence, now stabbed with jelly babies.

Their quicksilver tails can dazzle victims then drown them.

Too many times, but the cycle always repeated when I felt most vulnerable.

Sadness and lies but we keep choking it down,

hoping it doesn’t taste like feet.

Blind to abundance and chasing dishonesty,

magical thinking craving different outcomes.

Today’s prompt was inspired by Romanian-born poet Paul Celan who wrote a series of surrealist questions and answers. 

We were asked to pick 5 – 10 words from a prepopulated list.  Then to write a question for each word.  After writing the questions and answers, we were invited to remove the questions to create a beautifully surreal poem.