Author Archives: Kat Myrman

April 8, 2020

NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 8

By Kat Myrman

death, 
distinct 
with ripeness
lines corridors
casualties of war
denied last rites for now
sealed in polyethylene
an invisible foe looming,
poison wafting in the putrid air
where superheroes with stethoscopes fight
to save those stricken from drowning
the last acts of compassion
some will know in the end
in solitary…
darkness falls
on us
all

~kat

Another poem for our times today for NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 8. I cannot adequately express the gratitude I feel for those on the front lines of the battle against the coronavirus. This week our country is facing the incomprehensible death tolls. To the heroes who give their all in doses of much needed compassion for the fallen. We owe you everything, our gratitude and our prayers!

The prompt: peruse the work of one or more of these twitter bots, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem.

I chose a bot from @percybotshelley “death, distinct with ripeness”. Today’s poem is a variation on a nonet.

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Challenges and Writing Prompts, Digital Art & Photos, napowrimo, Nonets (9 Lines/9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1), Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings

April 7, 2020

Vicar on Fire! – NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 7

By Kat Myrman

Vicar on Fire!

A vicar from Plymouth, his parish, St. Budeaux
gave his virtual flock quite the spirited show
as he paused for a prayer
brushed a wick, unaware
then he ended his sermon with “stop, drop and roll”!

~kat

True Story: Coronavirus Vicar Accidentally Sets Arm on Fire While Recording His First Virtual Service. A Limerick seemed to be the perfect form for today’s NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 7 prompt: Write a poem based on a news article.

 

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Challenges and Writing Prompts, Limericks, napowrimo, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings

April 6, 2020

NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 6

By Kat Myrman

give a heretic
paint and canvas, art becomes
psychotic, frenzied,
the stuff of nightmares, much like
a Bosch painting, demon play

~kat

A Tanka today for NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 6. I just could not get into this painting with one disturbing image after the next. So I opted to write about the artist…he was certainly an odd fellow I think!

The challenge: Today’s (optional) prompt is ekphrastic in nature – but rather particular! Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famous (and famously bizarre) triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights. Whether you take the position of a twelve-legged clam, a narwhal with a cocktail olive speared on its horn, a man using an owl as a pool toy, or a backgammon board being carried through a crowd by a fish wearing a tambourine on its head, I hope that you find the experience deliriously amusing. And if the thought of speaking in the voice of a porcupine-as-painted-by-a-man-who-never-saw-one leaves you cold, perhaps you might write from the viewpoint of Bosch himself? Very little is known about him, so there’s plenty of room for invention, embroidery, and imagination.

The painting featured in the background above is the rather dark section of Hieronymous Bosch’s famous trytych, The Garden of Earthly Delights.

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Challenges and Writing Prompts, Digital Art & Photos, napowrimo, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings, Tanka

April 5, 2020

Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 5 April 2020

By Kat Myrman

nightfallI used to live for weekends. We all did. During the week, 40 odd hours were not our own. We belonged to businesses, our bosses, the offices and cubicles, the worksites and workplaces that paid the bills and if we were lucky, we managed a few pennies to tuck away or spend on the glorious weekend. Our time. 

But these days many of us find the lines blurred between work and home. Our weekend destinations are shuttered. We are rattle around in our houses forced to find new ways to entertain ourselves. 

It’s hard not to write about this strange new normal we are all living. I suppose it is only normal to write from what one knows, and for me, for now, sheltering in, working from home, waiting for the storm to pass is what I know. 

I used to think of myself as solitary, contemplative. I liked being at home, keeping to myself, but for daily conversations with the Muse and snuggling with my furry housemates. But when forced to shelter in place, home changed. It feel less and less like the sanctuary I once loved. 

It takes effort to find new ways to notice my surroundings and to appreciate them. In fact, I am finding that there are all sorts of things I’ve never noticed before. Every moment is an opportunity to find the hidden treasures that have been here all along. I realize before this new reality, I had been living a superficial existence, content to exist on the surface of the familiar. But oh, the things I’ve missed in my busyness! I shall never take my freedom to move about in the world for granted going forward. But I have also fallen in love with the home that shelters and sustains me; the place that grounds me, where I can lay my head to sleep, the place where my soul keeps. 

Happy Sunday. Stay safe and well. Peace…

Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 5 April 2020

i’m just listening to the wind
kitsch, in full, on crude display
crimson flushed, vexed by this calamity’s cruel din
it is quiet, oh so quiet, but for chattering birdsong, and rustling
don’t believe in everything you see
my mind won’t let me go to sleep

~kat

A ReVerse poem is a summary poem with a single line lifted from each entry of a collection of work over a particular timeframe and re-penned in chronological order as a new poem. Unlike a collaborative poem, the ReVerse features the words of one writer, providing a glimpse into their thoughts over time. I use it as a review of the previous week.

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Challenges and Writing Prompts, Digital Art & Photos, Essays, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings, Reverse Poem, Shi Sai, Week in Review

April 5, 2020

days of wine and distancing – NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 5

By Kat Myrman

days of wine and distancing

the days are grains of sand
setting the soles of my feet on fire
i feel them screaming when I pause
to watch the waves swallow
the strand into the blue
cloudless, Atlantic sky laughing
the soles of my feet are frozen
no comfort where my heart resides
it’s giffle gaffle, to live this way
lies become true if you believe them
when life give you lemons make lemonade
tipple the tart koolaid of imbeciles
where pandemics disappear like magic
and service workers are masked superheroes
and this couch potato is saving the world
they all learned they were kindred then
behind the walls of their penetrable fortresses
we will beat this invisible foe or die suffocating
apres la pluie le beau temps
where dancing dogs fiddle, my feet burn
home sweet home is bittersweet

-kat

NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 5: Use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course,  if you can’t fit all twenty projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!

  • Begin the poem with a metaphor.
  • Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
  • Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
  • Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
  • Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
  • Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
  • Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
  • Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
  • Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
  • Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
  • Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
  • Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
  • Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
  • Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
  • Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
  • Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
  • Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
  • Use a phrase from a language other than English.
  • Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
  • Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Challenges and Writing Prompts, free verse, napowrimo, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings

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