Na/GloPoWriMo Day 17 Challenge:  Write a poem that  presents a scene from an unusual point of view.

I used to be like the other houses

that lined the streets of this town

I had curtains in my windows, mail in my mailbox

a dog house in the backyard.

 

One year I was painted white, another year I was painted brown

I had a lawn jockey at the end of my driveway

and roller skates and bikes in my front yard

 

And then one day the mail piled up and spilled from

outside of it’s well worn box

the curtains blew in  and  out  of my empty window frame

my  furnace ran until the oil ran out.

 

My bedrooms are always full of

sleepers who don’t dream or toss or turn

they never get cold or hungry

they never say a word.

 

But sometimes

they wake

and sometimes they walk

and sometimes their dog

who lives far away

snaps open his eyes and barks

 

at nothing, it’s nothing his new owners say

as they watch him run to the window and cry

it’s nothing

he’s just dreaming, let him be, he will be okay.

 

 

Na/GloPoWriMo Day 16:   Write a poem that uses the form of a list to defamiliarize the mundane.

Down to the tracks, rusty old bones

Each morning I ride them, with half open eyes

Sadly they bear me far  from home

Purring in happiness  the blue and green beast steals me away

All around the air is stale with heavy sighs

Iron and concrete unburied remains the air is stale are we all corpses?

Ride the monster twice a day, Despair the Commuter is my name.

Na/GloPoWriMo Day15: Write your own dramatic monologue. It doesn’t have to be quite as serious as Browning or Shakespeare, of course, but try to create a sort of specific voice or character that can act as the “speaker” of your poem, and that could be acted by someone reciting the poem.

 

I found something buried in the Gardener’s Shed and I ask you, my late night visitor,  why would someone bury something that wasn’t quite dead?

The thing in the shed isn’t buried very deep, so if you were to crawl over the dead fall in front of the door and were able to push your way through he matted cobwebs and you didn’t mind the smell of rotting leaves and small unburied creatures you’d see there under the window a slightly raised mound of earth.

Were you to look at the raised mound long enough and the light somehow managed to find it’s way through the little panes of glass covered with dust and dirt you’d think someone was lying there on their side with one arm cradling their cheek and the other laying comfortably on their side.

Wouldn’t you?

If you brought a flashlight and the beam was bright you might think you could see something wrong with the entire left side of the sleeping figure’s face. You might think that maybe that the face was gone, smashed in by something like that shovel in the corner.

Isn’t that right?

They might wonder what you were doing back there in a rotting shed behind the Manor House in the dead of Night, they might see you take the shovel and try to smooth and pound that little raised mound of Earth flat.

That’s what they’d see wouldn’t they?

So I must ask you again, why would you bury something that is not dead yet? Go ahead you can tell me. It will be a secret between me and you. Just keep your hands were I can see them.