NaPoWriMo

Soundtrack -NaPoWriMo Day 13

Soundtrack

Windows down,
Sun warms her face.
The
Scenery
Blurs
By.
The fingers of wind

Twirl the tendrils of her hair
And she tosses her head
Side to Side
As the radio just happens to play
her favorite song.

ATM – 4/13/2022

Authors Note:
Today’s prompt was  “Today, in honor of the potential luckiness of the number 13, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like the example poem here, joyfully states that “Everything is Going to Be Amazing.” Sometimes, good fortune can seem impossibly distant, but even if you can’t drum up the enthusiasm to write yourself a riotous pep-talk, perhaps you can muse on the possibility of good things coming down the track. As they say, “the sun will come up tomorrow,” and if nothing else, this world offers us the persistent possibility of surprise.”

Although I feel like this poem feels not quite on prompt, the suggestion made me think of this type of moment, when one is happy in the moment…. in motion… in transit towards somewhere exciting. A moment where the Journey IS the destination, and one is living fully in it.

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-9/
https://www.napowrimo.net/day-thirteen-8/

Day 9 – NaPoWrimo

Groggy

Spiraling through early morning dreams
Waking Discombobulated
Consciousness asserts itself
Desperate for caffeine
That can dissipate
Lingering haze
Residue
from the
Dream

4/8/2022 ATM

Dandelion

Dandelion reaches for the wind
She makes herself tall and expands,
Adorned in her springtime best
Petticoat of white fluff.
Birdsong fills the air
She waits to dance
Releasing
Childhood
Hope.

ATM 4/9/2022

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-9/
https://www.napowrimo.net/day-nine-8/

Feline Confidence – NaPoWriMo Day 8

Feline Confidence

My daily minutes unwind,
Frenetic, unstopping, I
Never stop moving, I
Fill the silences with bumbling words I
Stumble through the room, my
Tasks, my sentences. I
Misstep ever step, I
Crash into every gesture. My
Maladroit affect set my teeth
(And Others)
On edge.
My antipode sees, judges:

She slinks on silent paws
Graceful and lithe, a tiny dancer
Glides down the hall, arabesques.
She is fearless, commanding
And owns every room.
She sinks into stillness like a second skin
Mediating in a sunbeam
(she ALWAYS finds her light)
Leaving a preponderance of fur
To let those know that come behind they walked in her wake.
Her attention is yearned for, and her presence,
Her purr,
Her voice,
Provides comfort and peace
When she uses it,
Judiciously-
Which will NOT be
Today.

ATM – 4/8/2022

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-9/

Elegy for Us – NaPoWriMo Day 6

Elegy for Us

Come down from your cross and
Live in the real world, dear. Deal
With your choices, your words, with
Me
And
Be quiet, be still, hear
My breaking heart that leaks, that bleeds out
Love, but is draining fast.
And stop spinning tales, pushing memories of when
we were young, passionate and every ounce of
Will was used to restrain the ardency of
All of our passion. Could we have only known that
The fervency of our
Pleasures was finite, fragile. Now, these million pieces of us
Prove we are broken beyond measure.

ATM – 4/6/2022

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-9/
ww.napowrimo.net

Author’s Note:

Today’s prompt suggested to write a poem in which the first words of each line, read together, reproduce a treasured line of poetry. Inadvertently, after pondering on it all day at work, I came home to realize that a madrigal was stuck in my head, and that it was The Passionate Shepard To His Love by Christopher Marlowe. I considered it happenstance, and used it as my prompt.

Hive – NapoWriMo Day 4

Hive

Find an outside open space,
and let the sun warm your face.
Or, feel your skin embibe the rain
that whispers through trees and must explain
Arcane knowledge, secrets of old.
Be filled up by the stories told as
Fingers of wind run through your hair,
Combing doubts that linger there
Releasing knots of tangled cares.
Now racing pulse and rushing blood,
Let the distant, dormant memories flood
And the deeper thoughts linger, flutter, hum
Swirling, dancing to the drum.
Wings aflutter, they buzz inside –
Exhale the bees, expel the hive
They swarm and swirl, they land, collide
Their sting – it is the poem.

ATM 4/4/2022

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-9/
http://www.napowrimo.net

The Last Moments of Hospice -NaPoWriMo Day 3

The Last Moments of Hospice

Deep in the night
I sleep erect, but awake when
Inches from my face, a stranger tells me
He is gone.
And he is, the father that existed
No longer resides in the bed
Only a hollow human carapace
That once held a soul.
Over him, they drape a flag
Pulled all the way up
And what is left
Is barely there
Since day after day,
breath by breath, he has dissipated
Into the ether
Solid becoming gas
And however slight his form
The weight of it
Crushes me.

ATM – 4/3/2022

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-9/

Author’s Note:

I did not follow the prompt today, folks. I took a walk on a quite beautiful (if not pollen filled) day and listened to last week’s This American Life, which featured a piece on Hospice nurses. It’s quite powerful, but took me back to my father’s passing, and ignited grief and pain. I used NaPoWriMo to try to help alleviate some of it.


Birkenshaw – NapoWriMo Day 2

Birkenshaw

Towering above
Grey and green
Surrounding on all sides
Spaced as if to consider each other.
My palm to cool, papery bark
I gaze up in to the sparse canopy
And feel small.

4/3/2022 – ATM

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-9/

Author’s Note:

A day late, but I celebrated too hard Friday night and could not get adequate brain function yesterday. (Yes, I am too old for that. 🙂 ) With Haggard Hawks twitter account as a prompt, I feel in love with the idea that a Birch tree grove had a name…I fell in love with Birches through Gustav Klimt, and then got to hike through a birkenshaw during a trip to Colorado. It was majestic. My words do not do justice.

Colorless – NapoWriMo Day 1

Unrecognizable, she lies upon the bathroom floor. Blue pale, she blends into the pallor, the coolness of the tile. Dark hair is her shroud, it obscures her face and spills: An ink puddle spilled over a white page.
She is drawn in, diminished. Small. Withered. I kneel, try to gather her up, gather her in. She crumples and folds into herself like a discarded tissue. “No.” She says. I try harder, but she is neither small or light. “I’m sorry.” I tell her. As if words healed as quickly as they wounded. “I need you to leave.” she tells me.
“Leave – So I can go.” Her voice is slight, fading. Resolute. Her black eyes, fixed on a distant memory. Heavy lidded, they blink, then close. Over the screaming silence: Her labored breath, My racing heart.

ATM
4/1/2022

https://www.napowrimo.net/

Author’s Note:

Prey -NaPoWriMoDay 27

Today’s Prompt was ot come from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. What a collection of melancoly!!! I chose nighthawk.

Prey

The night has a rhythm:
The steady, neverending ticking of the clock
(because time never stops.)
The leaky faucet that plinks plinks plinks
On the inside of my eyelids.
The beating wings of the nighthawk;
It glides, soars through the the infinity of night
between consciousness and sleep.

The night has a buzz:
The overhead fan slowly spinning.
The old refrigerator motor struggles.
The distant, slow moving train stops and starts, stops and starts
The thoughts inside my brain
The nighthawk circles, loops,
Swoops to prey upon my insomnolence.

There is no escape.

4/28/2021

https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/54040771701/nighthawk
https://www.napowrimo.net/