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.