Glopowrimo April 2019 (the journey so far)
I. Early bird prompt: "And now for our early-bird prompt (optional, like all our prompts!) Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poetic self-portrait. And specifically, we’d like you to write a poem in which you portray yourself in the guise of a historical or mythical figure. "
Self-portrait as .....
I am hanging between earth and sky
Breathing difficulty
Those who love me are far below
And somewhere up above is the Sky
When I cough it becomes thunder
The Sky answers with lightning
These are the words of my roaring
No one else answers
The drops of my sweat and blood
mingle
with the dust of the earth and the heat
Each drop has a cascading effect
From my eyes as they fall they seem to splinter
into the faces of millions
of drops
and shine
in the pitiless sun
tomorrow to be reborn
as a million different people
infused with my life and breath
Dead, buried, resurrected, ascended or not
The truth will be I will live on
in a million different others
Not in the ones who did not
but in the ones who will
My hunger for love
as vast as this Sky
in the echoes of always
eternity and infinity
being, from now on, fulfilled.
II. April 1
"For our first (optional) prompt, let’s take our cue from O’Neil’s poem, and write poems that provide the reader with instructions on how to do something. It can be a sort of recipe, like O’Neil’s poem. Or you could try to play on the notorious unreliability of instructional manuals (if you’ve ever tried to put IKEA furniture together, you know what I mean). You could even write a dis-instruction poem, that tells the reader how not to do something."
Instruction manual for poets
1.Better to be known by everyone
than to know everyone
so you can concentrate
concatenate your magic brew or potion
made of frogs, wood shavings and puppy dogs' tails
or lipstick, gloss and mascara's aid
2.Write to be the best
but don't rest
When you send things out and get rejected
remember it was only a misfit
and when you get accepted
don't take the credit lest you become lazy but
ascribe it to the same stars you were aiming for or at
3.The secret is to write
in such a way that
you write your heart out
so everyone reads you
but no one lets on
as they are jealous
as they get accepted
but they see burning in your poems
a fire
Icarus-like
in flight, without wings
soaring sunwards, higher than the heights
and just like Narayanathu branthan
roll your poems up Poetry Hill
then let let let let let them roll down
to the ground
and laugh
uproariously
whether they float or flail
on the ground
& whether they win, or they fall and fail.
III. April 2
Today’s prompt (optional, as always) is based on this poem by Claire Wahmanholm, which transforms the natural world into an unsettled dream-place. One way it does this is by asking questions – literally. The poem not only contains questions, but ends on a question. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that similarly resists closure by ending on a question, inviting the reader to continue the process of reading (and, in some ways, writing) the poem even after the poem ends.
The wall melts suddenly
Then I find it's under me
The devil is after me
Money takes wing and flies away
My health is a pool at my feet that I try
To make freeze into a piece of ice and put back inside
My body. Someone has my throat knifed.
I lie on my bed, stiff as a board
If I move I will be engraved
Too young for that, I do not stir
No dreams interrupt my ragged fight for breath
I'll get up and go for a syringe
A change of medicine will be, right now, just like a refreshing change of scene
It's death I am fighting, but I am not afraid
We fought many times before and each time we failed
To bring it to any definite conclusion
It can still go this way or that like the walk of a drunken inebriate
As for God, God is silent as usual
I put a coin in the slot of the jukebox
And hear relaxing music, deep-sleep refreshing music
Sounds of Nature, something something Hertz (582?), but I forget just how much it was
For six hours or eight hours
Or non-stop Christian hymns
Or worship music that gentles
Or old Malayalam film songs
Or what my Dad used to play
Country-classic gospel songs starting with Jim Reeves
All listened to for healing thatcdoes not come when I am in my sleep
I put a coin into the cup of God as if I am begging him to bless me
I put a coin into the cup of the watchman, the one who stands at the gate, and the doorkeeper
Then I run out of coins so it cannot become thirty
Three is the number of the ones in 'Tolstory'
I once loved a woman who probably loved me
Now she always and only lies to me
Whenever I tried to make the coin clink back in those days then it worked
But my fever I could not pass on when she twerked
Soon she was a tree and someone an axe
Who brought between her and me a tax
Of separation, a divide of contortion
A contraption of four legs that had no name but crawled
It crept into my blood like black ink in a cauldron
And as for all the others, they were axed into perdition
By me who could not stand for an instant any key
That could set me up or put me down to be
To end a long story or cut it short is to let it grow a tail
Am I sheep, pig, horse or donkey? I am unable to make avail
Of butterflies, sisters and three or four women in jail
I don't say it but I am pretty sure God is punishing me for my sins
I wish to stand up but when I sit down I'm on the windowsill
I look down, and the distance is too short to jump and kill
Myself. And there are no faces down there wanting me not to for me to get a thrill
And feel wanted. Just empty street. No kissing or whispering lovers, or songbirds trilling even, still.
My head was spinning and I was falling before reaching the end of the till
They may call it attempted suicide but as for me it was just a home-run of the ill.
A commonplace thing, when the pupa or coccoon
breaks, becomes a wet butterfly. But does it take to crooked wing?
(My poem hopefully does the opposite of the prompt)
IV. April 3
And now for today’s prompt (optional as always). Today’s prompt is based in a poem by Larry Levis called “The Two Trees.” It is a poem that seems to meander, full of little digressions, odd bits of information, but fundamentally, it is a poem that takes time. It takes its time getting where it’s going, and the action of the poem itself takes place over months. Today, I’d like to challenge you to similarly write something that involves a story or action that unfolds over an appreciable length of time. Perhaps, as you do, you can focus on imagery, or sound, or emotional content (or all three!)
Glopowrimo #3
Trivandrum: The 70s
You meet them, the mynahs, on the streets.
'One for sorrow
two for joy
three for a letter
four for a' ...
There you get stuck
so you listen, instead
to their whirring wings
(fluttering: small, chattering windmills)
their "key key key keeeeeeys" -
your home-brown smalls, their slender lives
see their black-and-white sprinkled, dark-brown coats
a variant of the crow-pheasant's browns
those yellow-ringed eyes, their dainty masks
Jeddah: 2009?
You see them again
They are not the same 'thems'
You, not the same you
Even the century, become new
The coconut trees replaced by palms
But the heart -
That longs only for some 'loving kindnesses'
and a few 'tender mercies',
'better than life' -
feels time fall away
and the dust of the past, of a space you love
settle again
on your parched lips
awhile.
V. April 4 "And now for today’s (optional) prompt, inspired by Teicher’s poem “Son“. One thing you might notice about this poem is that it is sad, but that it doesn’t generate that feeling through particularly emotional words. The words are very simple. Another thing you might notice is that it’s a sonnet – not in strict iambic pentameter, but fourteen rhymed, relatively short lines.
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own sad poem, but one that, like Teicher’s, achieves sadness through simplicity. Playing with the sonnet form may help you – its very compactness can compel you to be straightforward, using plain, small words.
Happy (or sad, we guess) writing!"
Glopowrimo #4 - A Roseate Sonnet
Self imposed exile for God knows what or why or what it means to Not Be There/Around
Life and Love are the great betrayers
Judas and Brutus, their embodiments
But even ordinary men, my mate
Can be or feel betrayed by indifferent Fate
As a child, his mother taught him to cycle
Along with his father. till he was happy not to topple
Off its saddle, but when he became a parent of three 'tenders'
He could not be there to run behind his kids' wobbling fenders
The women he loved and he were always parted
The things he wished he'd learned remained dear, but departed
Rose, sadness wears your brightest red hues
Oft, as the colour of a ghastly wound
Seen from the inside, pulsating, raw
Ever not healing, red as an infected craw
©®Koshy AV
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