What Will the Future Bring?

Photo Credit: an untrained eye via Compfight cc

Clouded,
the ability to stand back
and
not control it.
Because we live in a revolutionary time,
they provide a cornucopia of tools,
massive paradigm shifts,
unknown excitement, pleasures, and dangers,
a world of constant and unrelenting
abundance
that
must be filtered through the past and present
in a primitive wilderness.
Take a trail map
and
harness
those who lag behind.

Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney via Compfight cc

It is Day 10 in NaPoWriMo. Today I have used the April PAD prompt, which is to write the future poem. I wrote a found poem. I used this text on the future of education (which I warmly recommend, by the way) and copy-pasted random words and phrases. The punctuation and the capitalisation is mine.

Ostinato

Ghost woman blues

Flowers in December
Solitude
Now I know
The beast in me.

The NaPoWriMo prompt for Day 9 was to "take any random song play list (from your iPod, CD player, favorite radio station, Pandora or Spotify , etc.) and use the next five song titles on that randomized list in a poem." The song titles come from a playlist I have on my iPod. 

The Fairy Tale

Photo Credit: AlicePopkorn via Compfight cc

We all know the story.

She turns
back to find her mother
devoured by dinner guests.
The bones, the
tree branches.



It is Day 8 in the NaPoWriMo blogging marathon. Today's NaPoWriMo prompt  was to rewrite a famous poem, giving it our own spin. The poem I used is Rae Armantrout's Generation, which has this beautiful fairy-tale quality. Except that I changed the fairy tale and used the Serbian variation of Cinderella, which you can read here under the name of "Papalluga, or the Golden Slipper". When I was a child, I found this story very sinister and, in fact, I still do. In a nutshell, Papalluga is careless and drops her spindle down a cliff, which brings upon her a terrible curse. Her mother turns into a cow. Her father remarries and, of course, he and his new family eat the cow. Papalluga buries her mother's bones and a tree grows from them. It is this magical tree that gives her the new dress for the ball and everything else she requires. The rest is not so different from the story you already know.

This story fits nicely with today's PAD prompt, which was to write a violent poem.

Alterations

Photo Credit: Markus Grossalber via Compfight cc

So you
don’t think I can make it fit,
turn it into
something  new, then pretend it has always belonged to me?
You say you don’t like
this thing I created with a
pair of scissors, or this hook
I used to button it up? This cocktail dress altered into
a skin graft creation, best worn as an
undergarment? Let me tell you something -  the eye
of this needle has seen a
lot of action. And my fish
bone and latch hook
stitching is impeccable. Yet you say an
overall result is that of an open
wound sutured with a button eye?

It is Day 7 in NaNoWriMo, yet I went back to one of the older challenges - the golden shovel.  This was quite a difficult challenge and I have been working on the poem for the past three days. It is still work in progress and it will probably take me months, or even years, to fix this "cocktail dress". Every tailor will tell you that alterations are often more difficult than making a new piece of clothing. 

Still, the poem has reached the stage when it can be blogged. Isn't NaPoWriMo all about lowering your inhibitions and teaching you to share even the poems you are not completely happy with?

Photo Credit: Melly Kay via Compfight cc

And the original I used for this golden shovel is the following poem by Margaret Atwood:

You Fit Into Me

you fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

Insomnia

Running water
a treadmill
(do these people ever sleep)
that electric guitar again
(though rock is all right)
washing machines
(electricity is cheaper after midnight)
creaking floorboards
fridges
a single bird
then, the dogs
the elevator
running water, again
muffled conversations
is that the hour already
this night is ridiculously short
doors banging
car engines
a single vacuum cleaner
and the sounds of hatred
right above my head.

It's NaPoWriMo Day 6. Instead of following the prompt and writing what I can see, I focused on what I can hear during a sleepless night. The Day 6 PAD prompt was to write a night poem, so I combined the two. 

The Expedition

Midway across the field
I turn and look back.
Our footprints are gone.
No one is holding my hand
and I have forgotten my backpack.
The field is not a field.
The walls are closing around me.
You were never there
and my burden is my own. 

It is Day 5 in NaPoWriMo. Today I used the April PAD prompt, which was to write a discovery poem. 

Why I Do This

Photo Credit: `James Wheeler via Compfight cc


Since you insist
On a plausible explanation why
I do this:

Not for fame,
Or money. Just trying to
Survive the night.

It's NaPoWriMo Day 4 and the challenge today was to write a lune, or a string of lunes. My first version of this poem consisted of just one stanza (the second one), then I decided to add the PAD prompt into the mix, so I ended up with two stanzas. I am not sure whether the poem would work better without the first stanza. What do you think?

#NaPoWriMo2014