You will remember this night

Driving down a long suburban road,

travelling alone in the blue dusk,

you know you cannot go back.

Every road is leading somewhere,

even this one with its rows of identical boxes,

doors shut to the evening.

Everything that happens is your road:

the houses and the people,

the lights and the dark.

You have no sense of what's inside,

but there is light in the window,

a yellow mist,

like the edge of a flame,

that does not change,

that cannot go out.

You will remember this moment 

when you stopped your car

and stood alone in the road.

You will remember this night,

this street, as beautiful,

the houses like lanterns.

Containers of light, it is right 

that the doors are closed.

In the morning they will open once again.

On The Mat

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: an old favorite – the erasure! This involves taking a pre-existing text and blacking out or erasing words, while leaving the placement of the remaining words intact … One easy way to get started is just to photocopy a page from a book or magazine, and black out words. Or you can copy a text into Microsoft Word, and turn the words you don’t want white. Erasures can feel almost like a game – carving new poems out of old texts like carving statues from blocks of marble — and so they take some of the anxiety out of writing. They can also lead to surprising new ideas, as the words of the original text are given new contexts.

If I had to take one type of poem away with me to a desert island it would be the blackout/erasure poem. (Although I wouldn't be travelling light. I'd also have to pack a stack of newspapers, magazines and books to use as my source material!) I have "written" several erasure poems already this month, including yesterday's poem. Thinking this was a bit naughty, I resolved that today's poem would not be an erasure poem. So, I had to laugh when I saw the NaPoWriMo prompt! Today's poem is meant to be an erasure poem. Hurrah!

The World I Know

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: Today, I challenge to write a poem that states the things you know. For example, “The sky is blue” or “Pizza is my favorite food” or “The world’s smallest squid is Parateuthis tunicata. Each line can be a separate statement, or you can run them together. The things you “know” of course, might be facts, or they might be a little bit more like beliefs. Hopefully, this prompt will let your poem be grounded in specific facts, while also providing room for more abstract themes and ideas.

Love's Memory

At night, in the old graveyard, we kissed.

By daylight, I looked for your face but found only ghosts.

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: I’d like to challenge you to write a landay. Landays are 22-syllable couplets, generally rhyming. The form comes from Afghanistan, where women often use it in verses that range from the sly and humorous to the deeply sardonic and melancholy. Check out this long investigative article on landays for a fascinating look into a form of poetry often composed in secret, and rarely written down. You could try to write a single landay – a hard-hitting couplet that shares some secret (or unspoken) truth, or you could try to write a poem that strings multiple landays together like stanzas (maybe something akin to a syllabic ghazal?)

Today

Cakes

Shining and sticky, they sit on the tray, won't be there forever, I know, so they tempt,

embarrassed I even want one, me, I am so, can't bring myself to take one, no

one wants items such as these anymore, say “items” to distance, hope it will cure 

the trauma of longing, “item” sounds tasteless, generic, but we know they are cakes, 

luscious, sugar filled, raisins bursting, covered with cinnamon and deepest darkest 

chocolate. I will have to act soon. Life is slipping from under my fingers. 

And they stretch. They want.

Today's poem is inspired by an exercise from 'The Music of the Line', a chapter in The Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux: Take a draft of a poem and rewrite it in the following ways:

very short lines

very long lines

some length in between

in three-line stanzas

in five-line stanzas

You will probably find yourself changing some of the words as you try out the various versions, adding and deleting material.

My favourite version was the one with longer lines. I tend towards shorter lines in my poems, so it was great to break out!

It's Time

My Body and Me

It seems there are two: my body and me.

Without her sweet nose I would not smell the flowers.

She is my teacup and I am her tea.

Together we walk, we eat, and take showers.

She’s sometimes asleep when I want to go dancing,

Yet without her sweet nose I would not smell the flowers.

With her, each new day becomes a romancing.

We splash in the puddles outside when it's raining.

Though she's sometimes asleep when I want to go dancing,

And when her bones ache, it’s me that’s complaining.

But this is my place to experience life;

We splash in the puddles outside when it's raining. 

We’ve been married since birth; she’s like my wife.

I do the looking but she has the eyes.

This is my place to experience life.

We sit on the sand dunes and watch the sun rise.

I do the looking but she has the eyes.

It seems there are two: my body and me.

She is my teacup and I am her tea.

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: I challenge you to write in the form known as the terzanelle. A hybrid of the villanelle and terza rima, terzanelles consist of five three-line stanzas and a concluding quatrain. Lines and rhymes are chained throughout the poem, so that the middle line of each triplet is repeated as the last line of the following triplet (or, for the last triplet, in the concluding quatrain). The pattern goes like this:
ABA
bCB
cDC
dED
eFE
fAFA or fFAA.

You can use any meter or line length, though you may want to try to have all of your lines in the same meter! (And you can always fall back on that old favorite, iambic pentameter). 

So far I have shied away from the prompts that encourage a specific metre or rhyme pattern. But today I surrendered! I'm so glad I did. Without the structure of the terzanelle, this poem would not have emerged in the way that it did. I also surprised myself by having a really good time.

The Suitcases

All the baggage, 

all the carefully selected 

valuables and practicals, 

packed in a rush, 

hardly breathing.

Our lives 

might depend on it later.

Then we are gone 

and the suitcases 

left in the square,

packed full of stories 

that won't be told.

But don't think about it.

Don't think

about the separation 

from the suitcase.

Soon, a deeper cut. 

No goodbye is possible.

The next time I see you, 

you will be smoke. 

The Brothers

The brothers bomb 
each other to bits
out in the wilderness.
They dig their holes
and make their plans,
knowing full well
there is no escape,

knowing full well it is miles 
to the nearest river.
They call up to the eagle,
each from their own holes,
and beg him: 
Tell us, what is it like
by the water?

Ode to My Ten Toes

One-eyed owls 

perched on a branch,

all with turquoise faces,

sisters singing a cappella,

a band of brothers, pacing.

Dancing partners,

long-time companions,

known since I was born,

smooth keys of a piano

on which I play my favourite song.

The end of the old road,

beginning of the new,

a landscape of mountains and valleys,

arrows pointing to the future,

I will travel with you always.

Secret agents

tracking every move,

in love with your disguises,

but when I find you naked,

you are full of strange surprises.

An illegal box 

of Cuban cigars, 

saved for a special occasion,

for that crazy party on the roof,

I won't need much persuasion.

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: In keeping with the mysterious quality of the number 13, today I challenge you to write a riddle poem. This poem should describe something without ever naming it. Perhaps each line could be a different metaphor for the same object? Maybe the title of the poem can be the “answer” to the riddle. 

My feet seem to be the inspiration for today! 

I am intimate with the bones of my feet

After Charles Simic

I am intimate with the bones of my feet
who gossip like grandmothers,
showing off their furs,
their perfume of decaying flesh.

Seeking a way in, ghosts creep
beneath the soles, whisper
which direction I should take
towards the yellow door of home.

Not another word of advice.
I can only heed these bones;
they tell me all I need to know –
a scripture of everything –

including all our futures.
They have nothing to do with God.
We will live at the heart
of a house made from twigs.

Like a zen monk welcomes 
each drop of rain, we will let them in – 
all the shadow selves.
They won't need to say a word.

Today's poem comes from an exercise I learned from the poet and songwriter, Barbara Marsh. Write a line in response to each line from an existing poem, either your own or someone else's. When you are done, save only your response lines and use these as the basis for a new poem. The poem I chose is My Shoes, by one of my favourite poets, Charles Simic.

The Gooseberry Girl

  I once cracked a glimpse

  of the gooseberry girl,

  lean in her tangle of twigs.

  A wild brambled thing,

  her eyes

  the colour of ponds.

  When I drew close,

  she rusted in my hands.

  Now there's a cabinet  

  filled with jars,        

  labels written by hand,  

  contents the colour 

  of moss and stone.

  Red stains my hands.

  My legs,

  cut with thorns of joy.

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form. Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives. Cut the lines where you see fit and, VOILA! A poem!

When I removed the unnecessary words from my descriptive piece, I found a story began to emerge. I ended up re-inserting a few articles and determiners in service of this new story.

The limitations of boyfriend creation

Today's poem was created using the Verses Poetry app. It's a bit like magnetic fridge poetry in that you are provided with a limited number of words with which to create a poem. 

Falling

After balancing 

continually, Derek 

eventually fell 

groundwards,

head inverted, 

jiggling knees, 

lips mouthing 

nonsense orations,

plummeting, quietly 

revolving, sorrowful 

tailspin, unforgiving 

velocity.

Wild.

XOXO youth.

Zounds.

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: I challenge you to write an abecedarian poem – a poem with a structure derived from the alphabet. There are a couple of ways of doing this. You could write a poem of 26 words, in which each word begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. You could write a poem of 26 lines, where each line begins with a successive letter. Or finally, if you’d prefer to narrow your focus, perhaps you could write a poem which focuses on a few letters, using words that repeat them.