NaPoWriMo Day 1: Repeat After Me

It’s Easter. It’s spring! It’s Day 1 of NaPoWriMo! You may have noticed it is also April Fool’s Day. But make no mistake, this is a serious endeavor! Check out my description of this month’s writing challenge here, where you will find links to learn more about National Poetry Month and NaPoWriMo.

And if you are ready to WRITE WORDS NOW, here’s your daily (optional) poetry prompt:

Repetition. Choose a word and repeat it throughout your poem, as Kevin Prufer did in his poem “Rain.” This prompt was offered up back on October 10, 2017, by the folks at Poets&Writers. They post three different weekly writing prompts on their blog “The Time is Now.” Poetry prompts on Tuesdays, fiction prompts on Wednesdays, and creative nonfiction prompts on Thursdays.

Here’s what I wrote. This started out as a poem about a Gwen Stefani song, so …. go figure. Editing is my friend. Except now it ends with the meaning of life, which seems pretentious. And maybe a little ridiculous. I’ll call it a work in progress. Onward to Day 2!

Knowing

And now, at the
midpoint of your life
(thank you, Dante),
knowing you can
make life, take life,
be marked for life,
knowing that,
though the sea
teems with life,
there are whole
stretches of space
unresponsive to life,
you wonder if your
life lacks Meaning.

And you forget,
Are you supposed
to go get Meaning and
give it to your life?
Or is Meaning there
already, waiting for
the tip of your spade?

The Internet, full of
other people’s answers,
assures you that
both things are true.
Tells you to get a life,
take charge of it,
turn the lemons
of life into sugar-free
organic beverages.
You must cultivate
simple moments,
make plans, get an
accountability partner.

But as you lie in bed,
churning to embark,
there is a tiny mole
on your shoulder,
shaped like a star,
or a lump in your
breast, like a kernel
of unpopped corn, or
a sesame seed-sized
spot on the rubber malbec
surface of your liver.

Because life
provides its own
accountability partners.
(Of course it does.)

Mole, lump, spot,
other people’s answers.
Just cut them out.
Just cut it out.

The meaning of life
is to live.

A Fresh Start

Ready to start something new? There is creativity and power in a fresh start. That’s why my writing practice is focused on a monthly re-boot. There is a quotation about this, about the power of dedicating yourself to a task and making a strong beginning, that I see repeated not only by authors but by people of other disciplines and walks of life too.

Here are a few examples:

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When you want something; all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” – Paulo Coelho

“The important point is to make a definite beginning somewhere and as soon as possible—Now. The moment such a serious beginning is made forces begin to gather round the centre of endeavour and take the aspirant forward towards his goal, slowly at first, but with increasing speed until he becomes so absorbed in the pursuit of his ideal that time and distance cease to matter for him. And one day he finds that he has reached his goal and looks back with a kind of wonder at the long and tedious journey which he has completed in the realm of Time while all the time he was living in the Eternal.” – From The Science of Yoga, The Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali, translated from Sanskrit by I.K. Taimni

 

On your mark, get set …

Hello friends! I hope you are ready to join me for this month’s writing challenge, National Poetry Writing Month. Stay tuned for prompts, information, and samples to keep you motivated, starting April 1.