napowrimo

Ghazal

 

Oh the mixed-up emotions of being back in London

Knowing you never ever can win London

 

At first it seems like a dream of English perfection

But then, you’ve always been good at spin, London

 

Your welcoming arms mask impervious charms

And they say everyone living here’s kin, London

 

How many folks when they dream of a place

Immediately go off and pin London?

 

Grimy streets and houses, all the same old shops

And you really could use some more bins London

 

But then there’s that energy, heady and strong

Delicious dens of vice, carousing and sin London

 

I may have moved on, but your pull is still strong

Feel you under my skin to chagrin, London

 

And yet I D-Claire, again I am here

Dirty-pretty auld town you’re a djinn, London

 

Today’s prompt was to write a ghazal. The form was originally developed in Arabic and Persian poetry, but has become increasingly used in English, after being popularized by poets including Agha Shahid Ali. A ghazal is formed of couplets, each of which is its own complete statement. Both lines of the first couplet end with the same phrae or end-word, and that end-word is also repeated at the end of each couplet. If you’re really feeling inspired, you can also attempt to incorporate internal rhymes and a reference to your own name in the final couplet. 

This is my first-ever ghazal 🙂 

 

 

 

Stop bop

The movie “Trainspotting”, based on the novel by Irvine Welsh, directed by Danny Boyle. Seen here, Ewan McGregor (as Mark Renton, aka: "Rent Boy"). In an imaginative scene, Rent Boy dives and swims in the toilet bowl to retrieve opium suppository. Theatrical release in United Kingdom, February 23, 1996. Screen capture. Copyright © 1995 Channel Four Television Corporation. Credit: © 1995 Channel Four Films / Courtesy: Pyxurz

 

Thoughts churring, whirring, lines of text unspooling

that god damn Irvine Welsh story stuck

again in my head when will it come right

no one cares about a Sydney goth take on

Trainspotting anyway you idiot but

everytime I try to put it down, I can’t

 

When will I, when will I… stop

 

Sad and anxious and my clothes

are getting tight and I thought

exercise! But the wrong lane in the pool is

an elastic band of swimmers pulled too taut

or bagged out loose and saggy like the fat guy’s

stomach as he churns by making me

panic and there’s nothing so much like

drowning as not swimming well

 

When will I, when will I… stop

 

Walking home I wondered

If I can story and drink and poem

and retain my sanity. I don’t mind telling you for a minute there

(OK maybe several minutes) I considered

I’d better pause the poetry but the obvious answer

is to thirst myself more carefully

 

When will I, when will I… stop

 

My heart sank at today’s prompt: The Bop (see below) because it seemed too difficult and I’ve been struggling with my poems and my other writing lately, on top of various other life-happenings! But I read the examples and the Ravi Shankar one reminded me of my old fave, Frank O’Hara: Poems about the desperation-but-ordinariness of everyday life. And I found, as I did in last year’s NaPoWriMo, sometimes the best poems come from what seem impossible prompts! I really enjoyed this one. It’s nice for me to step away from rhyme and go with rhythm sometimes. 

The prompt: the Bop. The invention of poet Afaa Michael Weaver, the Bop is a kind of combination sonnet + song. Like a Shakespearan sonnet, it introduces, discusses, and then solves (or fails to solve) a problem. Like a song, it relies on refrains and repetition. In the basic Bop poem, a six-line stanza introduces the problem, and is followed by a one-line refrain. The next, eight-line stanza discusses and develops the problem, and is again followed by the one-line refrain. Then, another six-line stanza resolves or concludes the problem, and is again followed by the refrain. Here’s an example of a Bop poem written by Weaver, and here’s another by the poet Ravi Shankar.

Photo via: http://pyxurz.blogspot.ch/2016/05/trainspotting-page-3-of-10.html

Gouache

 

colour to create a cocoon

wind spider webs of words round

the loom

add glitter and a mirror

so you’ll see

what’s truly meant to be

with music, film, clever lighting

overlaid

like reams of gauzy, tie-died muslin

an Egyptian mummy

paste it thick

with paint

then

scrape it all back

lay it flat

isn’t that a portrait?

 

I think I spent more time farting about with online photo editors to get the pic than I did writing this poem! You can tell, right? Today’s prompt was to write a poem that’s a portrait. Mine is a rather narcissistic one informed by my other writing struggles today. I’ve been throwing words on pages, only to scrape them off again… see if it looks right… not yet… sigh. 

Bad fairy

My Faerie Queene is Carabosse

I somehow took her mantle

Bad fairy-witch by whom we lost

Our beauty to a spindle

For what use mine her blonde airhead

When I am clever, dark and cruel

Tho she may wish she stayed in bed

When she meets the big-prick fool

Who blunders in, destroying slumber, makes her go to school

 

Today’s prompt was as follows: Because today is the ninth day of NaPoWriMo, I’d like to challenge you to write a nine-line poem. Although the fourteen-line sonnet is often considered the “baseline” form of verse in English, Sir Edmund Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene using a nine-line form of his own devising, and poetry in other languages (French, most particularly) has always taken advantage of nine-line forms.

I don’t know too much about Spenser’s Faerie Queene and I think I flunked out on the iambic pentameter. But hey ho… I’m thinking about fairy tales and darkness and why not follow me on twitter @Carabosse !? 😉

Happy Birthday

a beautiful girl

with flowing hair

who came from my hometown

forgot

I don’t speak her language

unexpectedly

she has another name

randomly

although I mentioned Lisbon

forgot

my dress was from there

we all talked about our children

and she

had told her sister about me

flatteringly

for a moment I

forgot

to be angry

or even sad and

lonely

what did she say

forgot

(ich habe vergessen, aber ich verstehe meistens)

she goes through life, ich denke sehr

differently

to me. And yet… und doch… we have so much / wir haben viel

similarly

and I just remembered I

forgot

to sing happy birthday

 

 

Today’s prompt was  to write a poem that relies on repetition.

Rage

Photo: http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2015/06/hith-bloodletting-E.jpeg

 

bled my rage into a bowl

then held it in my hands

to throw against a wall?

what good is all

this blood in boil

I don’t understand

 

I’m off prompt today. Had a bad day. Rage is possibly my most difficult emotion to deal with. How do you? As a woman (and probably as a man, but I can’t speak to that), we live in the world of outrage. But what about just plain old-fashioned rage… if anger is an energy, how do you harness it without causing pain and destruction? Is something always burnt in that fire? Is it worth it? Is it inescapable?  I don’t understand. 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Skirt

Photo: jeanpaulgaultier.com

1. The only decent thing you own. Can be appropriate for almost any occasion

2. A uniform. A way to disappear

3. Coveted. Searched for high and low. Discovered. Too expensive. Maybe next month

4. Too short. She was asking for it

5. Jean Paul Gaultier – skirts for men – catwalk excitement

6. Heat. A dragon’s breath-waft of warm air trapped in a dark cave of material

7. An ocean at night that froths and surges around my legs as I walk

8. A long velvet one. On a day when everyone else looks summery

9. Flapping on the clothesline. Inside out. Slashed lining. On purpose?

10. Last time I wore this… oh

11. An old friend. I am most myself in it. Even more so than if naked. Cannot imagine life without

12. The witch in a fairy tale. Maybe she is secretly the heroine

13. Hides the dirt. There’s a lot… I never wash it… If skirts could talk

 

Today’s GloPoWriMo prompt was  to write a poem that looks at the same thing from various points of view. The most famous poem of this type is probably Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”. Mine is a slightly tongue-in-cheek take on Stevens’ far more sophisticated poem!  Aaaannd we’re back to the goth theme 🙂

Up in your shit – and Spoken Word

 

what was red in tooth and claw

is covered now in iron ore

this springtime that I once enjoyed

is today spoilt by the noise

of busy building sites a-groaning

how must it feel for those in loam liv’d

oceans pure and deep and blue

scummed over with plastic refuse

while we finger glowing screens

ignoring slave-mined metal’s screams

Nature thou art but a plaything

for human waste and fattened purse strings

however one does hope, suspect

in the end, you’ll win out yet

 

Soundcloud link – with added building site backing! https://soundcloud.com/user-808707280/up-in-your-sht

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a nature poem. Um, now I look again it was supposed to be about a place / animal / thing you know well. I guess I wrote it about the whole damn unknowable world. Hmm… 

Inscrutable

 

can you stain your face

white?

hide your lips behind

a dark rose?

can you wear

black hair

like a habit

even if you’re not a nun

(maybe adopt her severity)

can you paint your eyes

in liquid lines

and hide

or is the truth

never quite disguised

can you garb yourself

in widows weeds

or a uniform

from outer space

… a spider’s lace

what is hidden

what’s revealed

beauty is

a kabuki iceberg

so

many

secrets

concealed

 

Today’s GloPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem with a secret – in other words, a poem with a word or idea or line that it isn’t expressing directly. The poem should function as a sort of riddle… not sure I completely managed this. I think I took it a bit too literally. But in keeping with my goth theme so far, it seemed appropriate. 

The Season of The Witch

 

The Witch had lots of money

and a sly sense of humour

I’m not sure if she liked me

or what I did for her

 

Her coven met after noon

flocking round her cauldron

breathing the oracle fumes

ignoring Cassie’s warnings

 

The way she would produce those jewels

diamonds, emeralds, rubies

taken greedily as our own

but there was payment, truly

 

Hard to fathom a Witch’s depths

under all the scheming

does a spider spins its web

just to practice weaving

 

I turned when he impaled her

delight she took so well

and watched the cruel betrayal

when he stole her spells

 

Her teeth so small and pearly white

she clutched my arm and cackled

perhaps those moments of delight

are all that really mattered

 

Today’s GloPoWriMo prompt was to write an elegy – a poem that mourns or honors someone dead or something gone by. And to center the elegy on an unusual fact about the person or thing being mourned.