Thursday, April 17, 2014

NaPoWriMo time

I just found out it's National Poem Writing Month! That's long for NaPoWriMo, which I'd never heard about, though I know about NaNoWriMo, the month of writing a novel, which happens in November (which, I realize, is the date of my last blog entry, around the time I also wasn't writing a novel), which I've participated in several times, unsuccessfully, though I do have a T-shirt commemorating one year. I thought, Well, this is far superior! Here, I have 30 days to attempt 30 poems, and even if I only manage to write one poem, I'll at least have the satisfaction of having finished one thing instead of nothing. Since today is April 16, I've clearly not succeeded at half the poems so far, but I took the prompt for the day from this year's day 16, "write a ten-line poem in which each line is a lie," and wrote a poem. Here you go:

This Poem Doesn't Know How to Tell a Lie

Of course it's Tuesday.
except when it's Tuesday—
then, it's any other day of the week.
This Tuesday, like any another Tuesday,
will be followed by a succession of Tuesdays, 
succeeded only by chance with a Wednesday.
And Wednesday's child is full of woe,
not bones and blood and guts and good intentions, 
rather, empty of all that is not woe. 
Woe, and also, contradictions.
She was up to her eyeballs in those.
Woe was also a cockatiel she knew
who belied his name by acting chipper.
Child of woe met bird of cheer and thought, 
Just once, can this be a bird who won't bite?
Of course Woe did.