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 18 Prompt
And now for our (optional) daily prompt! This one comes to us from Stephanie Malley, who challenges us to write a poem based on the title of one of the chpaters from Susan G. Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words. The book’s table of contents can be viewed using Amazon’s “Look inside” feature. Will you choose “the poem squash?” or perhaps “grocery weeping” or “the blue socks”? If none of the 60 rather wonderful chapter titles here inspire you, perhaps a chapter title from a favorite book would do? For example, the photo on my personal twitter account is a shot of a chapter title from a P.G. Wodehouse novel — the chapter title being “Sensational Occurrence at a Poetry Reading.”
Day 18 Poem
Grocery Weeping
I stand in the store
Mask donned, list in hand
People moving around in a frantic pace
I try to maintain the prescribed distance
But constantly get bumped from all sides
No one is paying attention to each other
Just focused on what is in stock
And muttering a what they can’t find
The shelves are getting more bare
Each time I do the weekly shopping
With more left on the list being unfilled
That what I can find
It takes about a month
For me to sit in the car
After another failed attempt
To begin to cry, alone
I so want to be the breadwinner for my family
Be the stone they can rely on
In these terrible times
I look back at the diary I’ve kept
And see the despair grow with each entry
My wife says it will all be fine
We will make sue with what is available
Besides we don’t need all that meat
Vegetables can be made a million ways
But every trip brings less and less
Its not that we don’t have the money
As that is what the issue was when I was a child
Watching my mother cry when the bill was too high
And I had to put back the food
This is different
This is not supposed to be
This is not the American supermarket
As told to us by Ginsberg
This land of plenty
Has turned into a weekly battlefield of selfishness
This once “great nation” has eaten away at itself
No toilet paper, no precious hand sanitizer
Others have hoarded it
Others have followed the trucks bring in supplies
And raided them while they are being unloaded
Is America great yet
And then one day the tide changed
Something happened that the stores became better stocked
We weren’t scowling at each other
When we saw that person got what we could not
I can’t point to the exact day
All I know is that one day
I wasn’t dreading the trip to the store
That I actually got everything on the list
I got everything and a little more
And that little more turned into everything I wanted
Not needed
And I wonder
When the next time will occur
When the stores are empty
When we will be at each others throats
For I fear we have not learned the lessons
That have been graciously given
And soon we will be back at it
Ramming carts into each other
Trying to loosen the others stockpiles
And taking what we claim is ours
In order to keep our greatness
At their expense
Will it be a blizzard in Texas
Or a heat wave in Maine
Or will the oil dry up in the middle east
And we will be forced to walk 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.
- Email: timothy@createartpodcast.com
- YouTube Channel: Create Art Podcast YT Channel
- IG: @createartpodcast
- Twitter: @createartpod
- Mighty Networks: Create Art Podcast