Category Archives: NaPoWriMo

CJ
Everything’s tight,
everything hurts,
again with the shoulders
up by my ears.

Except for before
when I let loose
the sobbing today, right then
I was loose
all over, no crying for me,
no quiet tears, just heaves
of choking, some gasps,
a big, fat grief orgasm.

I am not pretty when I cry.

Eleanor
My sister was better acquainted
with the deceased, but, if I may,
let me observe how utterly
inappropriate her racket was today.
She says I’m cold at the core.
Well if I am, at least my ice
doesn’t go melting when and where
it ought not, leaving a big mess.

_____

CJ
Standing with the smokers,
watching the shadows of clouds race
up the big hill, wishing I could
walk there and lie down
in one of the big green stripes.
Now a big cloud covers the sun.
Now everything looks gray again.
Even the green looks smudged.

Eleanor
It was kind of a hard day, see,
because it was kind of misty
and I just could not get settled
on the the whole wiper setting
because one was too fast
and one was too slow
and the adjust-a-speed one
just wasn’t right at all,
so I was really irritated
when I got to the funeral.

So far for National Poetry Writing Month, I’ve done a haiku-ish poem I like to think of as a like-ku, a parody, and some found poetry that led to a poem I found genuinely startling (did I really write a breakfast cereal called Jezebel Crunch that had little crunchy bits shaped like her hands and feet? Yes. Yes I did.)

So now let’s try some lines for a verse play, called Headache Weather. And then let’s see if I come back to it after today.

_____
CJ
Just driving in the driving rain
my elbows up around my ears,
I thought, “This is the kind of day
that I call ‘headache weather’

because I get these migraines
I don’t call migraines.
I figure calling them that
gives them power I don’t want

my headaches to have. Words
and names and utterance,
they all can make things
really real. Real as birds.

_____

Not really a verse play yet, just one voice speaking. Hm.