Poems 4-10 for NaPoWriMo

This is my second collection of National Poetry Writing Month poems.

April 4th:

before me stretches a pool

on and on, like a hotel hallway.

the pool is deep.

I tread on the water

reflecting pink tiles,

and it's like I'm swimming in pink lemonade.

there are no ledges, just walls

that lead to a roof with many windows.

a chair and a door wait at the end of the pool -

I start to swim towards them.

I sweep my arms through the water

and slowly kick my legs.

the windows cast ribbons of shadow

across the pink water.

I cut through one shadow after another,

but the exit is no closer -

shouldn't it be closer by now?

there's a tightness in my chest

and each breath is harder than the last

after all this swimming.

I continue on,

the exit still no closer to me -

is it even further away now?

my arms feel heavier with each stroke.

I struggle on and on and on,

slower and slower

until I'm just treading water.

my head slips under the surface.

I panic and flail and gasp for breath,

choking as water fills my lungs,

and I sink,

sink

down.

The prompt for this poem was to write a poem about a photograph of a liminal space. I chose this photo from the Liminal Spaces Twitter Bot. Unfortunately sources are not provided on the Twitter Page and image searching on Google provided no sources.

April 5th:

Tree after tree

Streak across the sky

Tall palms and kudzu

Fade together as

Hurdling cars pass

Assorted flowers

Abloom in meadows

Overlooked by many

The prompt for this poem was to write a poem using the same number of lines with similar syllables of a poem you like. I chose Dust of Snow by Robert Frost. Each line of my poem starts with the same letter as the lines of Dust of Snow.

April 6th:

it starts as a

drip,

drip,

drip,

but quickly the drops become a constant hum

splashing into the creak, tumbling, rolling,

racing over and around stones, branches, life

until the river is rushing, singing

The prompt for this poem was to take a sentence from a favorite book and write a poem inspired by it. I chose Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech, a favorite from my childhood. My sentence was "It had been raining hard all afternoon, and the river was rushing along."

April 7th:

plunk

plunk

feet on

the boardwalk

startle a lizard

that scuttles into the mangroves

The prompt for this poem was to write a Fib poem, which is a poem whose syllables follow the Fibonacci sequence, which is a series of numbers where any number is the sum of the two numbers before it (I was obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence as a child). The syllables in lines of a Fib poem are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 syllables.

April 8th:

they buried me in the dirt.

they buried their dead fish in the dirt.

being flushed down the toilet is better than this -

at least I get to stay underwater.

but no,

I get buried in the flower garden

in the front yard

for rose fertilizer.

as I decomposed,

the rose bush grew stronger

and the roses grew larger

until all that was left was my skeleton.

maybe being buried in the dirt wasn’t so bad.

The prompt for this poem was to write a monologue from a dead person. This monologue is from one of my many pet fish from my childhood. Sadly, I don't remember which one we buried under the rose bush.

April 9th:

the

sun

rises,

breaking through

the silhouette of

far off trees, which cradle it for

a moment before

the sun breaks

free and

floats

on

the

sun

sinks, but

is caught in

the clouds like an orange

in a bowl; it hovers then falls

in the deep, dying

the sky gold,

as the

sun

sets

This poem was inspired by my watching of the sunrises and sunsets this week. It is also a Fib poem, but I added extra lines by going back down in the syllable count.

April 10th:

I don’t want to write

today - I am tired and

don’t feel creative.