The enemy within
strikes one
a homerun
I take a mirror
to strike back
The enemy within
hits home
I smash the mirror
and paint a self portrait
of my brain
bleeding
The prompt at napowrimo.net was to write a poem that engages with one of the other arts. I’m away all day, but found this one. Not in my notebook this time, but in my wallet, written on a receipt.
The streets at dawn
spawn their progeny
a cacophony of doors
spreading spores of disgust
the nights trust destroyed
by light deployed to domesticate
the mind that wandered licentiously
Poem and drawing by Angela van Son
I blushed
when I read
the tattoo on his face
It said
If you’re reading this
you’re not reading me
get outta my f
Day 20. The prompt at napowrimo.net was to use spoken language.
I was late in posting yesterday, because I was working on something special: a collaboration with Shuku, a fellow participant. I’d love for you to check it out!
She always wore long sleeves
On the hottest of days.
Nothing to see here, she always said
Don’t worry. I’m fine.
Soundproof sleeves
woven by her mother
with threads of silence
no whisper leaked through
The X-rays tell a different tale:
Of old fractures, of injuries
Hidden beneath layers of flesh and fear.
The loom
an heirloom
it made no sound
only the wood was dented
Stripped of skin, defleshed to mere skeleton
Her life lays bare on a cold slab
Exposed like dead-white maggots
Fat, wriggling, reluctantly pulled out
From hollow eye sockets full of hell.
The warp thread tension
was nonadjustable
the weft thread
often broke
A chip here. A groove there.
Violence records itself in bone.
We can be read by those
Who decipher death
Who study the language of cruelty.
We do not give up our secrets easily.
Sshhh
a chip here
a groove there
random pattern
clink, clatter
clack, clank
hush
Nothing to see here, she always said
But
We know
We know
The bones always know.
Rattle, click
hem stitch
Yay, a collaboration between Shuku and me, based on her poem for day 17. It’s off prompt for today, but it has influences of a number of the other prompts. It’s a very busy day today, so I can’t look up which ones.
The preparations are finished I think
There’s a sofa on the left
where the coffee goes
(there’s room for cappuccinos, espressos, lattes and americanos)
A sofa on the right
where the sugar goes
(cake, cookies, chocolate, candy – we call it the C-section)
A sofa in the middle
with a ‘grease’ tag
(that’s where the crisps sit, the fried food, the melted butter)
There’s more:
a recliner for alcohol
a stool for nuts
on the sides you’ll find
a closet for compliments
and drawers for connections
The hunger lounge has everything
– everything but guests;
no matter what I ingest
it remains empty
I’m aching for a party
but there’s no one there
Today’s prompt at napowrimo.net was introduced with this sentence: “Our optional prompt for the day takes its cue from how poetry can help us to make concrete the wild abstraction of a feeling like grief.”
They think buildings can’t read, but I read the signs of the times better than they do
I watched his hungry eyes read my letters and the reply, written on his face
It said “I want you”, and he wanted it all: my power, my people, my standing, my history
Somehow he knew I could change the future
He rejoiced when I burnt down but I didn’t mind – I knew he was doomed
I could read the signs even before his hidden hand started shaking
Did you know I had babies ? I didn’t deliver them but they were mine for a while
I knew I’d be theirs in the future, just as they were mine now
They think buildings can’t read, but I read the signs of the times better than they do
When my mother was torn apart, I didn’t worry, I knew she would heal
When I lay in ruins I didn’t worry, I knew she’d help me recover
They think buildings can’t read, but I read the signs of the times better than they did
Now here I stand, unwrapped, offering a 360-degree view to those who register
I can still change the future, but you don’t read the signs
Today’s prompt at napowrimo.net was “to write a poem that similarly presents a scene from an unusual point of view”. As a former historian, I wondered if there was something historic I wanted to write about. Human history provided slightly too muc choice… I narrowed it down by chosing a topic I’ve used before, but from a different perspective.
First we take Berlin describes the fire in the German Reichstag building from the perspective of the arsonist – but I didn’t choose the Dutch communist who was accused of doing it. Today I decided to use the perspective of the building as a starting point.
I’m late in posting today. I happily blame the fact my day 16 poem was the featured poem today at my favourite #NaPoWriMo website! I celebrated by reading and commenting a lot – one of the great things about poetry month for me is always the connections we form by sharing our words with each other. Thank you all for reading, and thank you all for writing!
1) To be abducted by aliens
2) To invent a wireless power bank for people
3) To spill all the bitterness I’ve bottled up from past lives
4) To kick in a double glazed window
5) To pretend I don’t think
6) To double kick in a glazed window
7) To spill all the bottles of bitter I have from past lives
8) To invent a powerless wire bank for people
9) To abduct an alien
10) To make plans for tonight
The prompt at napowrimo.net: Today, I challenge you to write a poem that uses the form of a list to defamiliarize the mundane.
I set my words free
even when my thoughts
stay bound
No panty liners needed
for saturated vowels
no tweezers to pluck
unwanted words
from my tongue
No moisturiser needed
for my vocabulary
to keep its elasticity
my spelling needs no serum
to keep from crows feet
I set my words free
while my thoughts
unwind
I will not shave
my choice of words
for elegance’s sake
or try to hide them
with concealer
I’ll never exfoliate archaic language
nor use make up
on made up
words
I set my words free
my thoughts
relax
I don’t know what’s up with me and split up poems at the moment. They just happen. This was the prompt at napowrimo.net: “the idea of a poem as a sort of tiny play, which can be performed dramatically.”
I guess many of my poems work like that already, so at first I wasn’t inspired by the prompt. Only when Shuku and I talked about writing a poem together, the energy started to flow. I’ve never done a collaboration before so I won’t promise we’ll get it done today. I’d love for us to enjoy our writing together, and we might need some time and space for that.
We might have a suitable illustration already, even before it’s written. Shuku owns one of my drawings. I think that’s really special.
You broke my funny bone
and drew a smiley on the cast
a ductile material
will continue to deform
until it ruptures
You broke my funny bone
its sharp edges piercing bodily structure
severing a piece of sympathetic trunk
bodies with cracks
suffer plain problems of elasticity
a boundary value problem
with no non-trivial solutions
You broke my funny bone
the x-rays lured a doctors’ crowd
a complicated fracture, they diagnosed
then chuckled, snickered, laughed out loud
Functionally stable fixation – they made a cast
You drew your smiley on it even before it set
: Fracture strength
the stress at which a specimen fails
via fracture
You broke my funny bone
it healed
but it hurts
each time I laugh
This poem was born out of the prompt at napowrimo.net, though you might not be able to tell. This was our challenge: “Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates homophones, homographs, and homonyms, or otherwise makes productive use of English’s ridiculously complex spelling rules and opportunities for mis-hearings and mis-readings.
My first thought was that I felt unable to write something funny – which brought me the opening line. From there I wanted to play with the double meaning of fracture, being both a physical thing that happens to a bone, and a mathematical thing that happens to a number – Or that’s what I thought. I’ve learned it can happen to a plane, which brought me one homophone for the poem.
My #NaPoWriMo day 14 was written with the help of http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org and Wikipedia. I’ve also learned what a homograph attack is and how I can prevent falling for one: https://inspiredelearning.com/blog/avoid-falling-homograph-attack/.
Poem and drawing by Angela van Son
They’re hard to resist
these puppy-eyed
black dogs
of all breeds
who look at me
imploringly
I can see they’d like to live with me
all of them
the sad one, the surly one
the grim one, the morose one
I tell them I’ve got a black dog already
but they don’t understand
They just look at me
and whimper
imploringly
It’s not that I don’t like dogs
I do
It’s not that I don’t like black
I do
It’s just that
a nest of angry little puppies
got there
before you
The prompt for today at napowrimo.net: Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about something mysterious and spooky!” I wrote this poem in anticipation of #NaPoWriMo. I was so eager to get started that I couldn’t wait. Then I did something I never do: I made a voice recording of it. I didn’t feel comfortable recording myself, so I started with a whisper, like a test recording. When I heard the result, I realised it fit the poem perfectly. I’ve tried to make a better recording afterwards, but all of them missed the unease of that first attempt. So I decided to keep that one.
Poem and drawing by Angela van Son
Unassorted stories 