I would like to get out of my skin skin yours out of mine It’s so tight tight so it is You see the narrow edges edges narrow, they see yoU-
Printed on my soul

: soulprinted I have no shortage, I do not have dreams

dreams I have not yours

Your shortage no have I
It’s just that – that just it

’S
My skin is too tight

tighttooisskinmy

I would like to get out of my skin

skin my of out get to like would I
slowly

slowly
like a bucket that overflows

overflows that bucket a like

small rays

rays small
space space

more air

air more

informed informed

Really, I will not miss anything anything miss not will you, reallY

Really, I do not have dreams dreams have not you I reallY I would like to do it – it do to – like would you

for an instant -instant an for
I want to burst through my skin skin through your burst

Today brought the most annoying prompt EVER! It was called breaking the rules, and that a lot harder than it sounds. Every mathematician knows that true randomness is really hard to provide.  Before you know it, there’s a pattern. Breaking the rules was a discovery rich exercise.

I’ve been breaking a number of rules ever since I wrote my first poem – in English. I’m Dutch you see, and if there’s one thing I didn’t believe in it was writing poetry in a foreign language you don’t master completely.

NaPoWriMo has invited much breaking of my rules, in different was, just by providing prompts and inviting me to step out of my comfort zone. So I thought breaking the rules might be ‘too easy’.  Turned out it wasn’t at all.

You don’t even know what rules you have, until you try to break them – which is probably why the inspirator for the prompt, Alice Notley, started doing it. Or at least one of her reasons.

Some of my rules I discovered

1. The poem has to make sense to me, one way or another. Silly, scary, serious, sexy… there’s much that’s okay. But total nonsense? Nooooo…….
2. No different lay-out for the sake of being different, it has to serve a purpose. There’s a part of me that believes that playing too much with the lay-out is either a burden on the reader, or a way to veil a lack of writing skills, or both.
3. The reader has to be able to understand what I’ve created, one way or another. Otherwise: what’s the use?
4. I may not be boring. Chuckle, that closed a lot of roads down.
5. I have to like what I put online, one way or another. I’ve tried to break this one, but I admit working on this poem until I liked it enough. Ironically, the criteria to decide on that were that I broke The Rules enough (the prompt), I broke My Own Rules enough (otherwise I’d still have felt off prompt), and I dislike this one enough to have broken rule #5 (which in the end means I’m sticking to a rule -> the prompt. Arghhh!!!! I’ve broken my brain enough now, I’ll stop here..

One thing I realised straight away is that these are MY hangups, and other people will have their own individual sets of rules and taboos. I would love to get more insights in those (yours). We each create or own barriers. All of us get stuck on writing in our own ways. I think that’s fascinating 🙂