The prompt for NaPoWriMo is a form prompt called “The Shapes a Bright Container Can Contain.” We are to emulate a poems shape/line lengths and use the same first letter of each line.
Over at the A to Z challenge there is a dice game of challenges and rewards. I’m enjoying their theme this year. I rolled two sixes, so my challenge is to visit 6 new blogs, and my reward it to take a nap! Looking forward to that.
Today’s Janus word is downhill. When referring to difficulty, it means “progressively easier”; but when referring to status or condition, it means “progressively worse.”
The April Poem-a-Day prompt is to title the poem “First (blank).” So talking about firsts today.
Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt includes some arts and crafts. We are challenged to create a “Personal Universal Deck” of words, then use some in a poem. I also listened to an audio recording of Michael McClure giving a lecture explaining the deck. Sadly, it ends right before he’s going to discuss things that can be done with the deck. Some aspects of creating the deck that I found interesting are the words are to represent both your good and bad side in concrete basic grammatical units, and come from a meditative state. He describes the deck as creating an arranged derangement which echoes day one’s prompt.
Over at Blogging from A to Z C is for Card trick. After I create my Personal Universal Deck, I’ll have to teach it some tricks. My Janus word for today is critical which can mean vital to success (a critical component), or disparaging (a critical comment).
The April Poem-a-Day prompt is to write a communication poem. So I guess my card trick will be opening a dialogue with myself through the Personal Universal Deck without being too critical, or perhaps I will find the Deck a critical component of personal communication.
My Personal Universal Deck in Progress
Not trusting myself to truly choose the words from the list at random for the cards, I typed them up, printed them, cut them out and put them in a vase. I selected two out of the vase without looking, then pasted them to a card, one right-side-up at the top, and one upside-down near the bottom.
This aspect of the deck–having a word upside down–made me think of tarot cards in reverse direction. I thought about the “reverse position” of the words and what that might mean.
I’ve previously talked about Plotting with Tarot. Since there weren’t really instructions for how to use this new deck once I made it, I thought I would try applying some similar ideas. I was inspired by Michael McClure’s instructions to meditate on the past, present, and future to find the words, to use Arwen Lynch’s card draw in Mapping the Hero’s Journey With Tarot: 33 Days To Finish Your Book. The first card represents the present, the second card drawn represents what happened directly before the first, and the third is what happens directly after.
A Familiar Laugh
Her laugh, cut off when you entered the room, continued to ring in your ears. You would know that critical cackle anywhere. So many tears shed because that laugh was infectious when at your expense.
Moments before you entered the room, you had stared at your rain-soaked self in the odd, corroding mirror in the hall, and recognized not a dampened mess, but a sparkling creation.
She is but a grain of sand in your boot as you climb.
Over at A to Z they’re challenging writers to make bets with ourselves. I bet I can read and leave comments on five A to Z blogs today.
Today’s Janus word is buckle (1) To secure, tighten, hold (by fastening with a buckle); (2) to collapse after being acted upon by an external force, as in “to buckle under the strain.”
The Future Holds a Multitude of Choices
Choice swung a bat at mailboxes full of parasites during the full worm moon of Regret
While Regret visited the ghost zoo to stare through the glass of Free Will’s enclosure
While Free Will stalked the boundary, Destiny twisted in an office chair at an enormous oak desk, waiting for Will to buckle
While Destiny swiveled, Choice dropped the bat and snatched a ruler from Education to measure the distance to Yes.
The NaPoWriMo prompt inspired me to grab my “tracks” bokeh filter that I created during OctPoWriMo last year and head outside. Since it is a cloudy morning, I took a selection of light strings and some extension cords along. Yesterday was the first time I strung my lights from the curtain rod to hang in front of the window and today is the first time I’ve taken them to shoot outside. I don’t know why it took me so long to try these things, but it looks like this NaPoWriMo is expanding my world of bokeh photography. Woohoo!
A Future Golden Trail – by Maria L. Berg 2021
I love how this path looks like it’s inside a crystal ball.
As I mentioned in another post from OctPoWriMo, Change of Perspectives, my camera has a cool built-in art feature that lets me filter for a primary color, leaving everything else grey scale. I mentioned playing with it yesterday, but it didn’t work with those pictures, so I gave it a try today and had some great results.
A Perilous Path – Maria L. Berg 2021
And this photograph made me think of the Lil Nas X vs. Nike controversy–Who the heck wants human blood in their shoes?
This could tie in nicely with the April PAD Challenge prompt: write an introduction poem. As part of my poem, I could introduce a stranger: create a persona and see the world through his or her eyes.
Over on the A to Z Challenge blog they came up with a Scavenger Hunt for the month. What a fun idea. For the A to Z challenge my Janus word is adumbrate which can mean both to disclose and to obscure.
This prompt may call for some new bokeh filters.
Reflection from the Outside In – Maria L. Berg 2021
Breeding Fruit Flies with Two Different Eyes
An impression arrests the fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen in mid-irritation, fleeting yet multiplying before your eyes what indelible marks will topple to the tongue and adumbrate the growing clutch
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry the constant irritation and insatiable hunger –of those fruit flies, feeding in the sinks– sketch an impression of furious flight
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude having vacated the house with the ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding
Today’s poetics prompt at the dVerse Poets Pub is to write a laundry poem. De Jackson, today’s host, wrote a great example called Spin Cycle. The prompt brought up tons of memories: The cramped laundry room in my childhood home, sorting socks with Mom, the drying closet in Sweden, hand scrubbing in a basin in the Ivory Coast, late nights at the laundromat in New Orleans, stringing a line in the backyard, and so much more. It’s going to be tough to narrow this one down. I decided to stay in the now.
Sew–Mow–Wash–Sew
After I mowed, I didn’t jump in the shower I was hungry and thirsty and had emails to read It didn’t take long before my smell distracted I reeked, such a stench of grass, dirt, gas, and sweat So I ran to the laundry room and those clothes I wrenched off and threw in the washer then ran to the shower to scrub
While breathing the sweet gardenia suds of my soap in the steaming hot water, I thought of my shirt that burnt-orange, long sleeve U-neck with a front pocket just perfect for the shed keys and my small mp3 player, so I can listen to audio books and forget that I’m pushing and pulling large rotating blades
When I pulled my mowing shirt from the cupboard this morning it had more holes than fabric but I wanted to wear it so I zigzagged those pieces until there were sleeves and the pocket would work and slipped that perfectly worn almost sheer fabric over my sports bra and t-shirt I comfortably mowed for an hour and a half then tore it off and threw it in the wash just like that
To be soaked and agitated spun, churned and wrung then pulled still wet and shaken tossed in a hot tumbler to dry It won’t survive, not in that shape but I’ll stitch up its wounds again and again because it’s not the long sleeves or the useful front pocket it’s the mow then wash wear and tear that has made it so perfect
Today is Haibun Monday at dVerse Poets Pub and I found the cherry blossoms prompt timely. I went out to admire the cherry-plum trees in bloom and noticed the grass is already littered with pink. I’m glad Frank inspired me to spend some time admiring the pink against the sky before it is gone.
Emerging
The first delicate, pink blossoms burst early this year, or was it me, still clinging to winter’s safe cave? Any excuse to stay hidden under the blankets ripped away by the brash budding cloud of cotton candy, contradicting the sky. But today, upon closer inspection, burgundy leaves already clash with the petals along the branch and the grass is littered with fallen flowers. The bee’s hum fills me with hope for future fruit. Last year I missed the juicy, pitted presents withheld, perhaps, due to a confusing late freeze. I am lucky to have poked my head out in time to witness this peek-a-boo of nature. Like an updraft billowing a circle-skirt, it surprises, shocks, and delights then is gone.
tiny pink blossom tickling periwinkle skies the flasher of spring
Yesterday morning I happened upon Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt. This weekly writing prompt offers a word prompt and a word limit. This weekend it is “Yonder” and the word limit is 44 words which I found familiar as it is the same as the dVerse Quadrille. I thought I would give it a go and remembered that it was Stream of Consciousness Saturday. The prompt was “run.” Those prompts could go well together, so I did some journaling.
I enjoyed the stream of consciousness writing and had some ideas for poetry but wasn’t ready to post yesterday. Today, I gave it another look and came up with a “yonder” poem of 44 words that I like.
Here is an excerpt of yesterday’s stream of consciousness:
. . . I used to love to run, through the woods around the lake, lil sjön in Sweden. Now, I run a few steps and I feel like I’ll die. So what “run” do I want to talk about? Colors run, mascara runs, people have the runs, a run in stockings, fingers run up and down scales, a keyboard, race to the finish, the rat race, sprint to the finish, flee from fear, run from a bad memory, from the past, run from the truth, run to love and hope, an embrace, someone’s arms, a familiar face, race to a banquet table, an all-you-can-eat buffet, “do you know where you’re running to? Do you like the things that life is showing you?” Run in place, on a treadmill, in a hamster wheel, run for the ball, run from the police, scatter, only have to run faster than the person behind you . . .
And here is the yonder quadrille poem I wrote this morning:
Ever Yonder
Beyond the hives filling with honey and the rolling hills where we would roll too through the soft, sweet grass that held us watching dawn to the lapping waves against damp sand we traveled so far to be here where nothing became any clearer
When I read The Tradition by Jericho Brown, I was drawn to his duplex poems. I was fascinated by how slight changes in the repetition of a line could completely change and deepen the meaning of both lines.
Inspired by Peter’s prompt at dVerse Poets Pub to attempt a circular poem, I thought I would try my hand at a poem inspired by this form.
It’s the last day of OctPoWriMo. Thank you, Morgan Dragonwillow, for hosting and for your inspiring prompts. Thank you to everyone who participated for your camaraderie and sharing your poetry.
It was a productive and creative month. I’m very excited about finally making the step in my exploration of klecksography to draw on my inkblots and write my poems on the inkblot page. I’ve wanted to get to that point for a long time. I’m also excited to continue exploring my new poetry form Tappswave and see where it takes me.
For my final poem, I’m going to try an idea I had over a year ago. When I read (amazon associate link) Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong, I was intrigued by his numbered poems in which the top half of the page had numbers typed in space as if notes or labels to the unseen and then those numbers were footnoted. The spacing of the numbers made me think of markers at a crime scene which led me to create my own crime scene photos with the intent to make poems that go with. I hope you will see what I mean below.
Into the Night by Maria L. Berg 2019
Into the Night 1. howling and yowling pull me from my bed into the moonlight 2. tufts of fur, ripped and torn bring worries of death 3. Don’t look up. I hold my breath as my ankle painfully turns 4. rustling leaves bare nerves aware I am not alone 5. on high alert, I do not turn around, but hurry, limping into the shadows
micro-story : When TV preacher Pat Robertson made his prediction I laughed and laughed. Watching Cthulhu rise from the waves in the light of a nuclear explosion, I have to ask myself: Whose laughing now?
NaNo Prep
Here we are. The insanity begins tomorrow. The time has flown by and though I am probably more prepared than I have ever been, I still don’t feel ready at all.
Tonight, my region is doing a costumed countdown to midnight. Since I doubt I’ll have any trick-or-treaters, and I’m not going anywhere, it’ll be nice to have an online Halloween with fellow writers.
For my final prep, I mowed the lawns and went to the Grocery Outlet where I stocked up on Amy’s frozen meals and a huge bag of coffee beans. This evening I plan to clean the bathrooms and vacuum, so I can start with a cleaner house.
One thing I learned throughout Nano Prep this month is putting my plans in these posts really helps me get things done, so here are my goals for the first week of NaNoWrimo:
Wake up early and go straight to my notebook for morning pages
meditate
butt in seat in office by 9:30 a.m.
take daily walks
read
I still haven’t decided what I’ll do here on this site during NaNoWriMo. I don’t plan on doing intensive daily posts like I have in the past. I want to get to my draft and write, but I also want to check in here.
What would you like to see on Experience Writing during NaNoWriMo?
I was thinking a daily photograph and something I find inspiring, motivational, or surprising while I’m writing. Other ideas?
Here’s hoping we all write great novels and have a lot of fun doing it.
