Tag Archives: poetry challenge

in a fog

in a fog

while people mourn the sick and dead
trump proclaims ‘we’re rounding the turn’
there’s no end to the lies he churns
he fills his sycophants with dread
‘it’s all a hoax, trust me instead…
masks? wear them or not…you choose
stop testing, silence the fake news!’

we’ll all soon have a choice to make
we have a voice in what’s at stake
this time we can’t afford to lose

clouds drench the hollow
blooms of opaque gray matter
obscure perception

~kat


For Ronovan Writes Haiku Challenge – Prompt Words: Bloom and Wet (Drench) and Décima Challenge – Prompt Word: Fright (Dread) / A-Line Rhyme .


Tanka Tuesday – The Illusion of Power

when the wind
bellows through a forest
it’s the trees
that yield,
not those that are unbending,
that endure unmoved

~kat


A Shadorma (3/5/3/3/7/5) for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge. Today’s Prompt Theme – “The Illusion of Power”.


who else but the muse? – NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 14

who else but the muse?

she peeks at me through tree limb slits,
lunation’s phases streaming; she speaks to me
in bubbling babble, peeper’s croak and avian
warbles and trills; she whispers in the wind, and in
stillness, barely breezing; she warms me on sun-splashed
shade-less afternoons, at night from crackling hearths,
in bubble baths, the glow of jasmine tea sating my thirst
to the core, and nips my nose and toes on frost-iced
mornings, crisp air stinging my cheeks; she infuriates
me, exasperates me, moves me to passion, to hilarity,
to tears, everywhere, she is there nudging me, filling
my head with beautiful words, so many words, I am never
at a loss for them, but dare not call myself a poet, though
I try to dribble out a coherent verse or three, especially
in those moments where I find myself utterly speechless

~kat


For NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 14: write a poem that deals with the poems, poets, and other people who inspired you to write poems. I am inspired by everything, big and small, human, animal, vegetable, mineral. There are of course people in my life who inspire me…too many to name, so they shall remain nameless, though some of them know who they are. To simplify my adoration for these inspirational motivators that surround me, I tend to lump them all together into one…my Muse, I call them…her. I could not imagine my life without her.

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

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.

to poets…NaPoWriMo 2019 #30

…to poets

oft’ melancholy,
we’re an oddity at best
seeing things others don’t see,
crazy, some might jest
how dull life would be without poets!

~kat


For this year’s final NaPoWriMo 2019 Prompt #30:  try your hand at a minimalist poem, I am using a micropoetry / short form I created a few months ago that I call the Horatiodet, inspired by the Horatio-styled Ode. My micro-version is 5 lines in all with a syllable count of 5-7-7-5-9 and a rhyme scheme of ababb.

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