Two Poems for Day 14

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If I were a word

If I were a word,
I would be a spell.
You would forget all other words but me.
If I were a word,
I would be a piece of art.
My shape elegant,
My sound music to your ears.
If I were a word,
I would be a riddle.
A lifetime wouldn't be enough
To decode my meaning.

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20 questions

What do people see when they close their eyes?
How could I ask for more?
Is the world really flat?
Where can I find Chuck Norris?
Who can I sue?
Why do I always see the same time on the clock?
Can money make me happy? 
Who in the world am I?
Is my boss reading my email?
How do I heal a broken heart?
Is my doctor useless?
What is the smallest unit of life?
Where is the hardest part of your head?
How do I cheat at poker?
How can I sell my soul?
Who is the most powerful Jedi?
What will heaven be like?
Can I pray with my eyes open?
Why do people hear voices in their head?
I don't understand how Lost ended.


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We are halfway through in NaPoWriMo (day 14 already!). Most days I choose between the NaPoWriMo prompt and the April PAD prompt. Sometimes I combine them. Every now and then, I like both prompts so much that I write two poems, the way I did today. So, today's April PAD prompt was to write a poem starting with "If I were". The NaPoWriMo prompt for today was to write a "20 questions" poem. I used this website to write a found poem - all questions have been copied from there.

Salvation

We are all gone from this planet,
except for me.
And I only exist
In your dreams.
Every night
I come to you.
I lie by your bed
and let you stroke my horn.
In your dreams
I give you my horn
willingly,
because it’s the only thing
that can still save her.
I watch you
as you grind it into fine powder
and mix it with
raspberry juice.
Always her favourite.
She drinks it, then removes
the tubes they placed inside her.
The machines scream in panic.
In your dreams, she gets up,
her old self again,
then strokes my head,
which is now missing its horn.
In your dreams, I return
To the savanna,
to my brothers and sisters,
and everything is fine
once again.



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It is Day 13 in NaPoWriMo. For today's poem I used the Day 13 April PAD prompt, which was to write an animal poem. To find out more about the, now extinct, West African rhino and about the reasons that led to its extinction, I read this Wikipedia article. 

Hope Infused Dream Bottles

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Beautifully designed,
eco-friendly,
available in four different sizes,
our bottles are
courageous.
Your options are endless.
There are limitless combinations of
luxurious hopes,
aspirations,
and ambitions.
Give up the bad habit
of sensible planning,
remove the temptation
of sugary illusions.
This is a healthy alternative.
From now on
you define
what's in your dream bottle.
Take it with you
wherever you go.
It fits into your pocket. 
Order today 
and we will also send you
our dream-works
recipe book.

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It is Day 12 in NaPoWriMo and today's prompt was to do the following:

"Pick a common noun for a physical thing, for example, “desk” or “hat” or “bear,” and then pick one for something intangible, like “love” or “memories” or “aspiration.” Then Google your tangible noun, and find some sentences using it. Now, replace that tangible noun in those sentences with your intangible noun, and use those sentences to create (or inspire) a poem."

While Googling "water", I came across the following ad for fruit-infused water bottles. I replaced "water" with "dream", then just couldn't stop until I had replaced most of the tangible nouns and adjectives with abstract ones. After my intervention, the article read like this:

"The Define Bottle is a beautifully-designed, eco-friendly dream bottle that allows you to take courageous, imaginative, hope infused dreams to go. Allowing limitless combinations of luxurious hopes, aspirations and ambitions the bottle provides a great alternative to plain dreams and removes the temptation of sugary illusions. Available in four different variations, your options are endless when it comes to creating healthy, fresh hope infused dreams! Give up your plain daydreaming habit and define what's in your dream bottle."

I started from there and then just improvised.

Two Poems for Day Eleven

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The Wine Barrel

The wood will not reveal its secrets.
Inside,
A terrible change is happening.
Inside,
A revolution is in progress.
You would never guess.
Everything is so quiet.
The prisoner never cries for help.
But beware:
Once you open the barrel
There will be blood all over.

“Your thoughts become things!”

           Rhonda Byrne, The Secret

Tonight
Your thoughts will rise.
Tonight
Your thoughts will walk the earth.
Wherever you go,
They will follow.
They have no choice.



It is Day 11 in our April poetry marathon. Today I have written two poems. I wrote the first one using the NaPoWriMo prompt for today, which was to write a wine poem. Then I couldn't resist today's PAD prompt, which was to "make a statement the title of your poem and either respond to or expand upon the title". I just had to fool around with that one a little bit. Cheers!

What Will the Future Bring?

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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.

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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

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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.