Embedded Files
One poem a day for the entire month of April - written by a non native English speaker.
April 11
April 11
Your challenge is, like Dargan, to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics.
Words are flowing out
Breath is flowing in
There is nothing much to say - we exist.
Images of broken light
Images in the mirror
Afternoon through a window - we exist.
Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Shades of a lie that never was
Something that will never see the light - this is where we exist.
Like a restless wind inside a letter box
You move around me and there is no staying still
You shutter me and break me into pieces
You come again and leave once more
I come again and leave you once more
Our secrets our bodies
Our lies and our stories
Our words and our songs
We created them and watch they go as
they make their way across the universe.
April 10
April 10
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like Bibbins’, uses alliteration and punning.
Acknowledge is a word
Where my spelling often goes wrong
Like throughout and through, though
Like the pronunciation of sword
Which I swore to remember
But failed to fulfill
This promise of pronounce
That bounces on my tongue
Sword swear sweat stress
Undress
Take the w out of it
And you - you get it
Successful is one
I can’t say nor spell successfully
It gets autocorrected
To show my failure
At being successful.
My tongue gets in a fight
It is a sword and my teeth are the shield
They battle and battle
But the sound still resists
One swoosh and one shiiii
One cs and one ssss
My sword is exhausted
It falls on the soil
And as falls
Looses a piece
Guess what,
It suddenly happens
It looses the W
And I can successfully say
“My sword is my words”.
April 9
April 9
Today we’d like to challenge you to try writing a poem of your own that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths.
Spring at night
I leave my home
I go outside
And
I
Feel free
I leave my home
In spring at night
Which is not
Like any
Other
Kind
Of nights.
Spring at night
Is the promise of the
Summer that will
Arrive and
Spring at
Night
Is
Wild and
Blossoming and
Pink and blue of such
A shade you won’t
Even believe it
Existed but
It did
And
It
Does.
Spring at
Night feels like
I have been waiting
My all life for
This night
And now
It
Is
Here.
April 8
April 8
Now try writing your own ghazal that takes the form of a love song – however you want to define that. Observe the conventions of the repeated word, including your own name (or a reference to yourself) and having the stanzas present independent thoughts along a single theme – a meditation, not a story.
Love has found us in a cabin in the woods
The season changes, furniture moves in the woods
Love can find new and mysterious way and looks
Life is free, life is big, life is huge, life is in the woods.
Everytime I feel constrained and I feel blue
Everytime life lacks enthusiasm, there are the woods.
Love is escaping, love is building a new reality with you
Love is no matter what, hang on, we go to the woods.
Love is you and me and us and all the time flying by
Love is having muddy shoes and dirty pants from the woods.
Love is holding on to a memory and a future that is not
Love is knowing there won’t be a lot more than the woods.
Loving you is saving me and loving you is also, I swear,
Is killing me all the time, in the city outside of the woods.
Loving you is writing and dancing with too much alcohol
Being your S. is being anew, a new person, in the woods.
April 7
Why I am not a song
I am not a song because a song
Has patterns
A songs has a melody
A song has a rhythm and order
A song would not
Fall down the stairs because she was not looking
A song would not
Betray and lie
A song is pure and true
Two things I am not
Nor I aspire to be.
A song won’t smell
When she is embarrassed
With her fancy dress
And well done hair
A song is something
And I am often nothing.
A song has no purpose
Higher than just existing
And that’s actually something we have in common.
A song belongs to everybody
And I want to belong
To myself only.
April 6
April 6
Oranges
Gurgle
Irreverent
From my land
It gurgles on you tongue
It tickles in your throat
It stains all your clothes
With sunshine spots.
My wild fantasy
To bathe into an orange juice
Freshly squeezed
Red like blood
Juicy and fleshy
Sticky and sweet
To be covered in the pure honey
Of Sicilian fruits and leaves
Irreverent isn’t it
Take the fruit and make it sexy
Take the food and make it lusty
Suck the orange from my body
Clean my flesh and rinse my mind
It’s just an orange juice
Full of vitamins and salts
It can do no harm.
April 5
April 5
Finally, today’s (optional) prompt is inspired by musical notation, and particularly those little italicized –and often Italian – instructions you’ll find over the staves in sheet music, like con allegro or andante. First, pick a notation from the first column below. Then, pick a musical genre from the second column. Finally, pick at least one word from the third column. Now write a poem that takes inspiration from your musical genre and notation, and uses the word or words you picked from the third column.
“play like you are about to start crying”
Tango
Sharks
Play like you are about to start crying
Or
If you are about to start crying,
Then play.
Cry like you are about to start playing
Play like you are about to start.
Dance like you are about to learn tango
Tango like you are about to forget how to dance.
Swim like you are chased by sharks
Cry like you just saw the last one.
Play the tango
Cry the shark
Dance the play
From the start.
Start again
Learn how to cry
Learn how to dance
Through every inch of the night.
Play like you are about to start screaming
To start laughing
To start sobbing.
Play like you are about to start living
And you don’t know
What’s going on.
Play like it’s your first day on Earth
Play like you are a new soul
Play like sharks are not to be feared
Play like you are about to start having fears.
Play and cry and dance the tango
Live like you are about to start
Don’t stop even when you are about to finish -
Always find out
What is about to start.
April 4
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem about living with a piece of art.
I can hear it
I hear it when I wake up
Sometimes when I go to sleep
If it’s not too dark
Or I am not too tired
To remember that things are beautiful.
I can hear it
When I am alone
The bedroom is tidy
And clean
And the world seems pleasant
For a moment
I can hear
The black and white rain
Pouring on me
On all my misery
And all my sadness
All my joy
All my mortality
Washing rain
Heavy rain
Green rain
Dark rain
White rain
Tropical rain
In Milan.
I can feel it
Soaking my bones
My clothes
My naked body
Flooding my bedroom
I can hear
The trees splashing
The trees dripping
The trees drumming
With the rain drops
Defeated
Or relieved
Miserable
Or thirsty
Crying
Or bursting
Am I talking about the trees
Or am I talking about myself?
April 3
April 3
Today we challenge you to write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist.
To explain why I am a poet
I should start by asking myself
Am I even a poet?
This road I am taking
It’s very new to me.
It may end abruptly
On the edge of a cliff
As soon as I find the hiking too steep.
It may end smoothly
Like a walk in the park
When the sun sets
And it’s time to go home.
It may end beautifully
Like a summer day
With a glorious sky
Full of red and purple and gold.
But why is that
That this is the road am I taking,
And not another one?
It has to do
With the way words combine in my head
With how I love the sounds
Of the s, the t, the r
How I love vowels and their endless combination
How I love languages
How I am not an English speaker
But I love in English
And I am loved in English.
It has to do with somebody telling me
That my talent might be writing
It has to do with the fact
That somebody saw something in me
And I want to see if it is true.
It has to do with the freedom
Of writing in the sun
With the comfort
Of sipping coffee and making lines
With the romanticism
Of a love letter in a stormy time
With the wilderness
Of punctuation and conjunctions and verb tenses and and
And
And
It has to do with me never knowing
When it’s the right time to stop
But starting a new verse
Always seems like
A good idea.
APRIL 2
APRIL 2
Today we challenge you to write a poem that directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word, an odd/unusual simile, a statement of “fact,” and something that seems out of place in time
Whatever turns you on
I am going to the woods with you.
Whatever turns me on
You are falling more and more.
I am speeding and getting fined
I am pushing and crashing
But you, you
Keep calling.
Out of time and out of place
Like a sofa in a church
A mango juice when it’s snowing
Like loving you when you are gone.
Like a Aphrodite emerging from the sea
Not in Cyprus but in me
Living life as a Greek myth
With all the tears and tragedy.
Escaping chronos for kairos
Come with me my newest love
Come with me my wild dream
Come with me my darer
The explorer of my body
Playing with my chords
Pianopianoing the fear away.
Get me out of this bored world
Get me out of my aging mind
Get in my decaying body
Swallow my lusting soul.
April 1
April 1
Today, we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms, or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses a new-to-you word.
Aubaude
It sounds so bad
Sounds like a storm
Of glass
Putting you down.
Sounds like
Somebody whispering
In a dark room
With a broken heart.
Sounds like
A broken dream
A forgotten promise
A disappearing memory.
The sounds is very misleading indeed
Sounds like a mourning song
But it is a morning song
Every morning should start with a song
A song that reminds me
That I do have a beating heart
I do have a shining dream
I do have a living promise
I still have all my memories
And I still have time
To make new ones.
I am going to be writing
My morning song
Every morning
And if I can’t
Too bad
Aubaude.
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