I've finally caught up with NaPoWriMo! Hooray! I'll be posting some poetry here soon, but first I wanted to say, y'all are doing an amazing job! I'm going to give you a round of applause *claps* 

I wrote two poems for the "hometown" Escapril prompt, a part i and part ii. (constructive criticism is welcome!!)

hometown part i

you can find me by the ocean

walking on the rocks at east end

or christmas shopping on commercial street

or on the back bay sidewalk on fourth of july

fireworks illuminating my sky

i love the brick streets downtown and

restaurants by the dozen

and playgrounds and grass fields and

you know, i'm portland born and raised

but there's still so much i 

don't know and can't say about this city of mine

but you can find me by the east end hill

half-filled with love

and ocean wind 

---

hometown part ii

you can find me walking my neighborhood

**** ave and ****** street

but sometimes lately there's no one else around

and all the shops are closed and all the restaurants

my city's fire snuffed out like salt waves doused it

and i hope we pull through

and i hope we snap back from covid-19 soon enough

but really i guess i just

hope my hometown 

stays alive 

Here's my poem for today's prompt ("the poems, poets, and other people who inspired you to write poems"). I'm sure you can tell where my inspiration came from. :)

I remember when I was younger and I lived

in a thick fog of my own delusions,

surrounded by dry, cracked poetry, 

when I didn’t know you could write poems that didn’t rhyme

or, at the very least, followed patterns of limericks or acrostics or haikus,

when I didn’t know that the best poetry was full of description that

bloomed on the tongue like red-orange Starbursts,

when I didn’t know that there was so much more to writing

than anything I’d been taught in school.

And then I stumbled through an ivy-ringed doorway

into a brightly lit forum full of virtual laughter,

where quirky people shared thoughts and art and writing,

where introverts and poets were not the exception but the norm

(not that extroverts and the poetry-averse weren’t also welcome)

where threads were chock-full of eloquent poetry that sprouted 

thoughts and inspiration at every glance,

where I learned that there were oodles of options for how to write poetry,

and no one minded if I tried them all.

Now I’d like to think that I live not in a fog,

but in a sunlit clearing,

surrounded by interesting, diverse poetry that I can be proud of,

still taking inspiration from other poets,

but also -- hopefully -- inspiring some myself. 

I almost ran out of time today, so here's one from today's Escapril prompt (thanks again, Leafy!)

the moments are like

spotlights and shooting stars and pixie dust

like finales 

like the last day of school and acceptance letters and finished masterpieces

like being twenty pages from the end of the novel

like the possibility of greatess

like finding your way home

or finding new friends

or finding old friends

like jumping up and down and smiling so hard your mouth hurts 

and your mind is racing in the best way possible and your eyes are darting around like

are you seeing this, too? are you here too?

does is this feel like a dream? is this reality?

like knowing the answers to all of your questions is yes

like knowing all your answers to the questions are correct--

they are celebrated accelerated moments of happiness so true it doesn't feel real

even as it feels undeniable--

they are scattered like a rainbow of flowers,

dew that glitters like your eyes--

over and over again, always changing and always the same. 

I liked both prompts a lot today, but I couldn't get into them. And then I went outside on a walk and ended up writing this, so I didn't need a prompt. I was torn between having it in first or second person, but I ended up sticking with first. Although, now that I write this, I wonder how it would sound in third person. What do you guys think?

I like the feel of afternoon sun on closed eyes--

it feels like surety, a kind of golden guidance.

they say sunset is the golden hour

and when I stop to absorb it

it tastes like the last bite of hard-earned orange-and-yellow dessert

dissolving into moonlight on my tongue.

I can feel it all around me,

falling in thick drips towards the horizon,

so that when the last of the stars finally appear like tiny silver stitches in the sky above me,

my fingers will be sticky with sunbeams. 

Today I had a school assignment write a poem inspired by This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams (you know, that famous one about the guy who took the plums from the refrigerator), so my poem for today is from that.

Dear Universe: This Is Just to Say

I have found

the time

that was hidden away

somewhere between yesterday and infinity

and which

you were probably

saving for yourself

Forgive me

I was so hopeful

and it was so endless.

Here's mine for the today's prompt of "an ode to a homemade gift." This is a real thing that happened, but I feel like I didn't do it justice. I'm not super proud of this one, but I missed the past couple of days, so maybe I just need to get back into the swing of things.

you told me you were making me a playlist

but you didn't tell me you were making

three hours worth of songs worth of notes worth of

if you unspooled the words and paper and melodies

I could wrap myself up in it for years to come,

except that I know you'd have dozens more songs by next month 

you told me you were making me a playlist

but it feels like so much more;

it feels like a piece of your soul wrought in

color-coded five-point scale of mellowness.

you told me you were making me a playlist

but this is a love letter to me and to music

and I can see the laughter in your eyes in how you find ways to call so many songs your favorite

you feel the whole universe so fully it bleeds over into me in

the way you ordered the songs feels like glimpsing distant stars

that could never shine brighter than your smile

and when I close my eyes I see you dancing--

you've delivered your world to me and I want to press it to my heart

but it's so big I could never hold it all in my hands--

you told me you were writing a playlist

and it takes me days to get through but

it'll take me years to get over

it'll take me lifetimes to thank you. 

And, because I'm behind, here's a quick haiku for today's Escapril.

the moon is round like

the circle of your embrace

lighting up the dark. 

poetry love poem

I love the shapes the words trace on the page and in my mind

love how they are almost riddles

imperfect mazes, eternal enigmas wrought in similes

that can never be fully solved.

I love the prose so completely I am wrapped around and around them

circling story fragments from every angle

in the hopes of understanding until I find my way around back to the beginning.

I love the rhymes and the repetition and the way the lines

break so that I can gather up their fragments and make something new.

I love the sound of the fast rhythmic cadence of slam poetry like something between ocean waves and heartbeats in my ears

I love the sight of the poets,

they never look the same but for the poems that glint from their eyes, the stories living within them and the stories living without them--

I love how they don't seem to be speaking the words so much as radiating them like scent

(no, I can't name just one

they smell of sunlight and sea and sulfur and cinnamon and sweat and

so alive)

I love the taste of their words in my mouth as I imitate them in whispers late at night

I love the feel of tears on my cheeks preventing me from delivering the final line

the feel of easygoing early-morning laughter at my own expense before the tears have finished drying.

most of all, I love learning new ways to love myself

I love myself in the lines and between them,

find myself wedged between the metaphors, floating free in the imagery

love my own words bubbling up like lava and honey in my mind

love finding new names for my thoughts

love finding new potential for myself--

love how they build me bridges and boats and blimps to cross so many dark oceans that seem endless until they aren't--

I love loving loving myself

infinitely between pages of universe where poems are planets and words are stars burning bright

like the inherent incessant want to create poetry

like love. 

Here's mine for today's Escapril promt-- does anyone have ideas on how to write poems as gifts?

my arms are flailing around, graspinig for everything

because I'm not sure which way I'm falling to be

honest I'm barely sure of anything anymore

but my trust in trust is not so eroded

so that I can still be 

confident that what I feel is real--

(my cliff ledge is in couch cushions and computer keys and headphone wires and pavement and

my plummet is in empty sunbeams and the infinity of the footsteps in the hallway and your laugh)  

I bury my hands in the texture of the world so that

my fingertips will stay grounded even if the rest of my body unspools into string and screams.

@Stardust, you're doing really well. You're such a good poet, omigosh. I love all your wordplay and metaphors and everything. 

I've kinda fallen way way behind on this ugh, idk if I'm going to give up or try to write enough poems before the end of the month to meet my word goal....