This month each day’s study of contradictory abstract nouns has been synonyms of my personal Big Five contradictory abstract nouns. These last five days are the Big Five. Today I’m out to capture the determination in reluctance and the reluctance in determination. I reviewed its synonyms on the second: perseverance and indolence; the seventh: resolve and hesitation; the twelfth: dauntlessness and timidity; the seventeenth: resoluteness and disinclination; and the twenty-second: stubbornness and irresolution.
I’m excited to look at some of these filters again. I really like the bricks cut, and the combined shapes for inclination and timidity.
2023 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 27
Today’s prompt is to write a remix poem. For today’s poem I printed out each of the five poems from the days that were synonyms for Reluctance and Determination. I cut up those poems and put the short phrases in a bowl. Then I pulled out the phrases and put together one long poem. This poem is a selection from the longer poem.
Reluctant Determination
I’ll never know
a request for flesh
it’s become a cliché
more when seen less
This sketch reveals
if there was a big change
and it spins and spins
and it springs back
and you push
And it is dauntless—
interpreted as blame
and we were all saved
watching from a town
with nowhere to go
Who attests to blinders
given the biggest chance:
a subconscious lingering memory
like a watery soup most unwanted
or the deer in headlights?
You fetch and balance
as much as the corkscrewed metal
The turning begins
its exact arrival
as he dissolves
and it whirs into a tone
to change one small thing:
the volcano’s shadow
in its circle
And you push, and push
fireworks on changing pallor
making the idea
controlling a body
and now you’ve had enough
Experience Writing 