NaPoWriMo 2020
I took part in the NaPoWriMo 2020 challenge to vent about Corona. Here are my responses to the prompts. The NaPoWriMo site has many interesting resources to fire your poetic imagination – from paintings to how to write a poem videos, etc.
My Life, Metaphorically
A pogo stick
Jumping from
task to task
Mask to mask.

My Childhood Home
Number 17
Theatre Road
Or Shakespeare Sarani
Spelt Sexspear sometimes on post.
We were thespians
My father ran away
To drama school.
A bungalow
We thumped
Up and down
A long black staircase
Everyday
A giant painting
In the lobby
A chandelier above
A sprawling house
I only valued
When we
Had to leave
A master bedroom
The size of a flat
We peeped through
Window slats
At the driveway
A wall to wall
Bookcase
I burrowed deep in
Termites followed.
A laidback sofa chair
In the hall
Comfier than my Lazy Boy
Today.
Four rooms carved from a balcony
An attic became a kitchen
The original kitchen
Birthed a bedroom
A tree nuzzled another bedroom
A winding staircase
Led to the slum
Outside
Now I’d probably
Drown
In that space
If I could
Go back.
Words Play
Double Bubble Hubble
Laughter after drafter
Play bay clay
Feet beat cheat
Freedom be dumb need ‘em
Breath death meth
Help whelp yelp
Food brood mood
Exercise cries tries
Work shirk quirk
Yes, you’re seeing double
Sorry to burst your bubble
Even if you see through the Hubble
Space Telescope, they’re trouble.
The laughter came after
Nature, the drafter
Blew in them breath
Death of our meth.
Their little four feet
Tapped a heartbeat
I couldn’t cheat
Of food
Whatever be the mood
Of my brood.
They’d rather play
Listen to down by the bay
Feet? Their everything is clay.
Now they crave freedom
Though they be dumb
I want that too, but I need ‘em
Like they need me. Help!
Without words they yelp
Whelp 1 and Whelp 2
Joining their cries
Are my tries at exercise
Work also I shirk
Pursue moonshine,
That’s my quirk.
This was a fun NaPoWriMo 2020 prompt – think of ten words, possible rhymes and go!
A Dream in the Time of Corona
I dreamt I fought
With my maid
The household
Was scolding me
I woke up in sweat
Realized
I don’t have that maid right now
Courtesy COVID
I’m the maid.
Vocal Local
Life’s a house that
Needs to be lived in
Cleaned everyday
Or not, if you’re Mrs. Havisham.
You can turn a blind eye to the dust
Stuff your nose to the stink of unthrown trash
Taste burnt toast
Turn a deaf ear to children crying
Trace your name in the dirt
Eat it too, since that doesn’t need a dish.
Earth to COVID-19 (sounds like R2D2’s love child)
I’m clean
Discombobulated though
Where are all those pesky humans?
Scratch that- I don’t want to know
That’ll keep me clean
Lahol vila quwat
Said the good ministry of happiness
Nutty, she says
Good times will roll on
Cleaned of humans,
Earth’s gonna stay clean
Green, mean earth.
Chose to follow 20 constraints suggested by this NaPoWriMo 2020 prompt – use a local word, etc. Phew.
The Owl in the Garden of Earthly Delights
How are you a wise owl? You ask
I eat humans whole
Pooping them out
Not that wise you see
Hoping to get wisdom
From the witless.
Why do I do it then, you ask?
I’m sure you know
How good a big poop feels
I’m addicted to this I fear
The bigger the human
The better my poop.
Aah.
My favorite NaPoWriMo 2020 prompt – write from the point of view of a character in the wonderful Garden of Earthly Delights painting. Thanks for introducing me to this marvel.
Pablo’s Cocaine Hippos
Hippo
Hip hop
He pop
He poop
Pablo was hip
Considered a curse
As were the sons of his hippos
Like the drugs he peddled
They caused havoc wherever they meddled
But like his drugs took us to new heights
His hippos’ poop was fishes’ spinach diet.
This NaPoWriMo 2020 prompt asked us to take off from a news item. What could be more surreal than this – about Pablo Escobar’s Cocaine Hippos?
A Woman Twitter Bot
Putting a door on a woman’s mouth
My foot was already in my mouth
Its usual place
You can’t slam the door now
Papa Patriarchy.
This NaPoWriMo 2020 prompt asked us to take off from a Twitterbot’s tweets for our first line, so I chose this Anne Carson bot, which tweets bits of her poems.
Visually
Boredom
Not easy to kill
Formatting
Helps time fill.
Haynaku
Home
Besieged castle
Dying of boredom
Flowers Lose Power
Roses are red
To me, feel dead.
What I want is a fresher
Stand-in for you, lover.
A Triolet
Scrolling through my Facebook feed
Takes my mind off Corona
It’s just something I need
Scrolling though my Facebook feed
My social fix is what I greed
Of mental illness it’s the seed
Scrolling though my Facebook feed
Takes my mind off, Corona.
Shop, lifting
Lifted cupcakes on a school trip
From a shop in Kathmandu
Just to see if we could.
We could.
I wouldn’t today
Knowing they’d suffer
Thanks to Covid.
Ulysses by Alfreda Tennyson
It little profits that an idle queen
Match’d with an aged hubby, I meet and dole
Unequal laws to savage twins,
That hoard pacifiers
Eat not or sleep
And know not me. I cannot rest from travel
I will drink life to the lees
Follow knowledge like a sinking star
Strive, seek, find and not yield.
Uncomfortably Numb
As we adjust
To the new normal
Some pushing
Some giving way
All online though
Weee
Have become
Uncomfortably numb
We dare not think
What will happen
If our old normal
Disappears.
Survival of the mentally most fit
The comfortably numb
Children growing up
In the new normal
For them it’s the only normal
Comfortably numb
At home
Comfortably numb
Hyper bole
You rock
Also avalanche
Crush me with niceness
Make me want to better
You. Impossible.
I like being flattened
With your love. I’m all
Warmed up.
Floppy Disks Flop
My floppy disks
Held all I held dear
My writing, recipe for beer
I can’t read them anymore
I don’t remember either what’s on them
Makes me wonder
Should we hold on to possessions?
The journey’s the thing.
Here’s one of the poems I wrote in an earlier NaPoWriMo.