Tag Archives: NaPoWriMo writing prompt

Hateful Brews


PROMPT #11:  write a poem that takes as its starting point something overheard

Purple-haired woman: your robes look totally stupid and you’re blocking the sidewalk—by the way this is hate speech you know

Hebrew Israelite king: Brother Judah ben Judah, read the scriptures to this Edomite lady.

Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you . .. 
       Cream

Surrounded by militant forms of Dumb;
To whose next rage must we succumb?
What ethnic-racial god of wrath
Will plunge us in his bloody bath
And wash foul whiteness from our souls
To further dimwit madmen’s goals?
YaHuWaHusha (hashtag #hate)
Has henchmen waiting at the gate
Misquoting scriptures, twisting phrases
Forcing words to march through mazes,
Quite assured they possess the key
To set their dark asylum free.
Babylon’s falling. Drain the cup.
Will the real Judah please stand up?
Crowns, purple aprons, boots on feet
Wash brains in scripture. Rinse. Repeat.
Their mind a concentration camp,
Hateful doctrines burn: their lamp
Now flickers, low on Israel-light.
God’s thugs are looking for a fight—
Whoever they hate is a Canaanite.

Risible Haiku / Selvas de Santana


The shooter enters:
Deadly earnest in resolve.
Laugh heartily, friends.

 


PROMPT #5

write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment –
or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.
O.K. I did the prompt.  Now here is one I had in my drafts:

Selvas de Santana

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.
Baudelaire
 . . . Be ye therefore wise as serpents,
       and harmless as doves.
  Matthew 10:16

Eternal in divine recurrence,
Wisdom summons to her feast.
Harmless dove as wise as serpents;
Meets the singing crying beast.

Rhythmic vision’s dark assurance
Made symbolically complete.
Borne upon upon nocturnal currents:
Comes the undulating beat:

Fabulous jungles of her love
Are glimpsed—as apes, excited, howl.
Dazzling plumage from above:
Cloudbursts startle tropical fowl.

I wait, that white Abraxas dove,
Poised in delight before her gate
And ready to partake thereof,
Entranced in wild hypnotic state.

Now metaphor’s dark humid heat
Is loosed with her cascade of hair.
Black magic beckons:  Take and eat.
That all taboo may tremble there.

Red chiles drying in the sun
Distill the thatched-roof village fire.
Rhythm’s laughing children run
Then plunge in pools of pure desire.

IMAGE CREDIT: Annunciation 
http://www.matiklarweinart.com

What The —


     What is forgetting ?

A chapbook of dull poetry gathering dust, unread . . .

 

  Today’s prompt asks you to begin by picking 5-10 words from the following list.
Next, write out a question for each word that you’ve selected (e.g., what is seaweed?)

owl / generator / fog / river / clove / miracle / cyclops / oyster / mercurial / seaweed / gutter / artillery / salt / elusive / thunder / ghost / acorn / cheese / longing / cowbird / truffle / quahog / song

Now for each question, write a one-line answer.
Try to make the answer an image, and don’t worry about strict logic.
These are surrealist answers, after all!

After you’ve written out your series of questions and answers, place all the answers, without the questions, on a new page. See if you can make a poem of just the answers. You may find that what you have is very beautifully mysterious, and somehow has its own logic.

In my opinion the above prompt is unworthy of a response, and shows what is wrong with modern approaches to the very concept of poetry. But you do you . . .

 


The problem you have is you’ve nothing to say
These MFA promptings are good for a yawn
So scribble some shit and then call it a day
Since most of your readers have long since moved on.

 

 

Cover-art Triptych


Hergé: Prisoners of the Sun

Seven Crystal Balls break first, with terrors—
Lightning vaporizes Rascar Capac
And leads us south into Andean errors
While the maidens chant to Pachacamac.

You have to have read it to have known it;
The Inca splendor, glimpsed in perfect art.
Truth recognized, and Hergé has shown it . . .
Calculus and Haddock: both play their part.


Hermann Hesse: Demian

For this gnostic nonsense, I drank and smoked alone. . .
wore scarves, became a misfit, took drugs, lived Art;
wandered at night in some existential zone
and saw myself a sufferer who dwelt apart.


Laing: The Politics of Experience

This Scottish doctor made me lose my way;
The psychedelic artwork had me fooled.
Yet I love the cover-art to this day . . .
(Though it took me a while to get un-schooled.)


PROMPT #1:
try to write a poem based on a book cover