It’s day five of NaPoWriMo and if you are ever going to join in, this is the time to try. Try being he operative word here. The prompt is called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Given another day I might have been able to include all twenty suggestions. I ran out of steam and now it’s really late, but this list is so much fun. I’ts an extremely clever way to shove a poet outside her own box. This exercise is a keeper!
Sturm und Drang
Rained out before her first dance, Aella
failed rapidly, sliding down-scale
from squall to gale in violent aeolian gusts.
slowing from wind to breeze, zephyr
to dead calm, seeded by Marleybone’s
infamous weather balloon.
Sister Audra roared into Raintree township
like the tornado she was, missing the service
but tearing up the cemetery in a maelstrom
of pink manzanita petals, scattering every honeybee
greedily licking sweet nectar from seductive stamens.
It was an April morning made in Heaven
until the hell that was Audra swept
into the Marylebone metroplex.
If you could call such a dreary, dead-end
pair of twin cities in the middle of jabipsville
a complex of metropoles. Only dumb dog
boosterism explains that kind of denial.
Suddenly the air reeks of burnt wire, an acrid
metallic tang presaging her arrival, giving residents
fair warning to take shelter. Two minutes later
sirens sound, one after another, chiming in
across the city like a chorus of cattle singing back-up
for Chris the Weather Gal who is braving a live broadcast
from the middle of Main Street.
Viewers watch in horror as she hurtles off screen,
tumbled like a weed by blinding clouds of choking dust
that sift past locked windows and closed doors
until every resident tastes it turning to mud
in their dumbfounded mouths. Mon Dieu! Haboob!
Mused by Magdalene 