Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?
Day 1 Prompt
Sometimes, writing poetry is a matter of getting outside of your own head, and learning to see the world in a new way. To an extent, you have to “derange” yourself – make the world strange, and see it as a stranger might. To help you do that, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by this animated version of “Seductive Fantasy” by Sun Ra and his Arkestra. If you don’t feel after watching it a little bit like the top of your head’s been taken off, and your thoughts given a good stir – well, maybe you are already living in a state of heightened poetic awareness!
Happy writing, everyone!
Day 1 Poem
If Only A Day
1. Legs
It’s the wind that lifts you to walk on your toes
Sprinting is the speed needed to take you everywhere you go
No longer trying to understand why your King binds your feet every night
All you know is the stretching of your calves and ankles while you dream
The aches that come in the morning
Hoping that the braces are forgotten for a days repast
One day, breaking free from the restraints
And flying back to whence you have come
2. Arms
Your wings are masked as the limbs of a girl
Only you know their true composition
Instinct demands their exercise
So you flap them, trying to fulfill their purpose
Why can’t people see what they really are
Is still a mystery to you
So you play ignorant as to why you flap
Its just something you do
When something important strikes you
The mental computer appears just for you
To mark these events so you can revisit them
You are the author of your own future
3. Eyes
When the world is too much
When everything comes at you at the same time
Your eyes roll back to protect yourself
To see your memories
To see your true home
To see inside your own thoughts
The quick shallow breaths coincide with your eyes
The perfect shade of the sky on a cloudless day
Sparkling when you see Papa
Tearing up when no one understands your ways
4. Face
Every time I blink or rest for an evening
I see your smile straining to reach from one side to the other
Your cheeks bulge out and are filled with breath
Your eyes squint trying not to let too much in
Its as if your whole face must participate
With any utterance of emotion
My definition of happiness no longer contains words
Just images of the contours and lines and folds of your skin
You, fully embracing whatever emotion strikes
5. Voice
If I was deaf, I’d still understand you
The force of your words passes through my apathetic soul
When you read and your pitch raises a half octave
Its because you want me to know the performance has started
And when the words come that you don't know or don’t recall
Stubbornly you push through and repeat them until they are mastered
Creating songs out of air about love comes naturally for you
As the wind is your mother
And your breath is your father
6. Mind
Since you were born
I have tried to fill you with light, beauty, positivity and love
Banishing my demons and the creatures that lurk behind these windows
You seem to know of their existence
And you try to reach through to calm me
It is the touch that I fear most
Not wanting you to be infected by their ravenous hunger
With a word or a look or a fierce hug
You attempt to strangle them and free my soul
To escape the bonds that keep me chained to the ground
Oh to be like you again and to warn of what it is to be me
This is every day with you
And one day you will drag me away
To live inside your thoughts
And know innocence again
Reaching Out
To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.
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