National Poetry Month Day Fifteen

Prompt:  Write a poem about someone or something you are longing for.  Maybe it’s a new life, a new relationship or a new president.  Maybe it’s a submarine sandwich, or a person you have a secret crush on.  Consider playing with the word “desire”—maybe repeat this word in every other line, or maybe use words that rhyme with “desire” throughout your poem.

Desire

Clean air

Clean water

Cures for disease

Enough good food
Opportunity to thrive

Possibility to succeed

Better unrestricted education

Teachers paid what they’re worth

See…

Under all our garb

We want the same things.

“Friendship is born at that moment

When one man says to another: 

‘What! You too? 

I thought that no one but myself . . .’”

C.S. Lewis

“Because in spite of everything 

I still believe that people 

Are really good at heart.” 

Anne Frank

National Poetry Month Day Fourteen

Prompt:  Write an eight line poem that uses the date of your birthday to determine how many words per line.  For instance 11/28/1972 translates to line 1 having one word, line 2 having 1 word, line 3 having 2 words, etc.  Zeros are wild cards, you choose the number of words.  Extra credit:  Reference an event that happened the year of your birth.

Poetic Justice

Anna Christina was hung in

MoMA

Scorned

In her pink dress she conquered limits

Still

Lost in her endless emptiness, she is now an

Icon of American art

Her mystery and reality upset the abstract judges

National Poetry Month Day Thirteen

Prompt:  Write a poem about a frightening experience you had as a child.  Write from an observational point of view using the third person (she/he) rather than first person.

Recourse

Waiting at the church

‘Cause Mom and Dad forgot her

Went home with Allen

National Poetry Month Day Twelve

Prompt:  Write a poem that uses weather terminology, but whose theme is not weather related.  Use some of the following weather terms: pressure, storm, fog, muggy, rain, gust, chill, slight chance, etc.  Extra credit:  write your poem in the form of a letter to someone who’s angered you.

Maybe Not Today, Maybe Not Tomorrow

When you stormed through

The haze of smoke

To stop the song,

All the love I tried to chill

Revived.

When the spotlight reached

Through the foggy night

To show the way

To escape the dread,

I cried.

I know I asked you

To think for me.

You said I’d regret it

For the rest of my life

If I stayed.

You must remember this,

Wherever you find yourself,

In my heart I’ll never leave you.

We’ll always have

Paris.

Ilsa

National Poetry Month Day Eleven

Prompt:  Write a poem inspired by this line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby:  “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”  Extra credit, use at least five of these words from the novel—ravenous, melancholy, dissolve, resentment, ceaseless, menagerie, nebulous, scorn, sport, fool, parties, tender.

How Did Your Day Go?

The sky is blue, the sea is calm,

The beach ahead is smooth and gray.

A time to shake off melancholy,

Escaping the menagerie.

I ease around the rugged point.

I scorn the slow incoming tide,

Ignore the ceaseless hiss of stones,

Putting common sense aside.

I stroll along the narrowing sand.

I relish blissful time alone.

Then, ravenous, reverse my course,

Resentment and all outrage gone.

An exclamation breaks my lips.

The sea has swiped my exit out.

Steep crags on left, high surf on right,

A fool I am without a doubt.

The loneliest moment in one’s life

Is when they watch their world dissolve.

I don’t stare blankly at my fate

But strive to climb the cliffs above.

My tender fingers split and bleed.

Three times I tumble, nearly fall.

I fight my way through briar and brush

And finally scale the rugged wall.

It’s dark but I can see the glow

Of headlights on the road to town.

Yet no one gives a ride to tramps.

Sad and wise I trudge back home.

National Poetry Month Day Ten

Prompt:  On a piece of paper, quickly make a black dot. Write a 12 line poem in which each line is a description of what the dot could represent.  Don’t mention “dot” in the poem.

Clueless

It’s only a fleck,

A grain of sand.

I can barely see it from where I stand.

The size of a pill,

No, the size of a pea

And now it’s the size of a bumble bee.

This doesn’t

Make any sense at all

‘Cause now it’s the size of a golfing ball.

It see it growing before my eyes.

Why is this rock increasing in size?

And then it hit me.

National Poetry Month Day Nine

Prompt:  Write a poem completely made up of dialog or an overheard conversation.  Extra credit—mention a recipe by name and/or the name of a saint.

Somewhere in Wyoming

Road trip day five.

Burger King somewhere in Wyoming.

Overheard from the next booth.

“I got this video to watch tonight.

Eddie get those fries out of your nose.

I’d seen it before

But it was on sale at Walmart.”

“Yeah we have that one.

I’ve watched it over and over,

And that is the STUPIDEST movie.”