NaPoWriMo/ GloPoWriMo 2019: Days 19 to 22

Hold on tight, fairies and sprites! Today, to catch up on my NaPoWriMo backlog, much neglected after three full days of travel and uproar, I give you four poems born out of a sleep-deprived brain!

For day 19, a poem about states of emergency.

Emergency Measure

This is not a drill:
gather your thoughts and evacuate
this house of horrors.
This is not the time
for high-heeled shoes
or last goodbyes.
The house is on fire,
there may be
no way to save it.
I repeat, this is not a drill.
Gather your thoughts
and go.

For day 20, a poem about three wicked sisters: anger, anxiety, and anhedonia.

Anger

Is what keeps me up at night,
along with anxiety, and sometimes
anhedonia. Three sisters meeting again
and again, at the witching hour,
ripping the dream-curtain, casting spells.
Potions don’t work against them, but words
do. Dark words, glass-words, sharpened
to a point. I meet them with
gritted teeth and patience, perseverance,
sometimes a gesture of peace. They are
small, only their threats make them
seem larger than life. They are small,
smaller than the eye of the needle
through which a camel can find safe passage
if only the needle wills it so.

The poem for day 21 comes with a question about people we associate with in life.

The Boaster

He spoke of the moon
as though it were
his own pet, safely tied
to his gatepost,
so it would not run away.
He spoke of the stars as of
distant cousins
who telegram him
from time to time.
And of earth he spoke
as of the village
he’d left behind
for lack of opportunities.
And was this the man
to walk the world with?

Finally, for today I answered the prompt asking us to write an ekphrastic poem – a poem that describes another work of art.

Not an Ekphrastic Poem

I considered writing
about the gardens of Semiramis,
about their pendulous
tamarisks, stretching to meet
the lovesick bulrushes below,
about their floral arches,
and the sweet perfume
of desertborne clay
adorned with milkweed,
storksbill, pimpernel.
But what is ekphrasis
without the languid body
it strives to trace?
The outlines of memory
do not give in.