Play Along for April - NaPoWriMo - National Poetry Writing Month

* UPDATE: Scroll down for update and for today's topic out of the hat.
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Write a poem a day (Reyes Cardenas is yawning) for the month of April. My poems thus far for April are what I call "play poems" - these written in 7 minutes or less, and revised a bit (line breaks, etc.) when I typed them up. They all have titles that came out of whatever people wrote and put in a hat.

I'll be posting whatever came out of the hat left over from various workshops and classes in reverse order of when they were pulled from it. Aha! Now something to do with all these little slips of paper!

Don't have 7 minutes to write a poem today? Do what I do. Try 1 minute and write a hay(na)ku in 60 seconds (cool rainbow timer). Just go to OneWord com and get one; start there if you want, that's the first line in a hay(na)ku poem, the next is 2 words, the third is 3 words. Simple. Start again for next stanza. I end up with a 3 - 5 stanza poem in 60 seconds. Like running sprints. You can post it to their site. I use one slash to indicate line break and two for stanza break.

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So, got seven minutes to play? You've got 24 hours to type it up (I like to scribble, then I feel less like someone's going to be looking over my shoulder and censor) and post it to your blog. Post a link or post it here in the comments if you want to play along with me.

Okay, here's today's slip of the hat - get a timer ready (works best with someone else in the room calling out the last 3 minutes, 1 minute and time to wrap it up):






ONERY


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Don't like that idea? My students are writing ten lines a day for ten days. Try that.

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UPDATE: 4/6/06

Here's my poem now posted at my MySpace space:


Onery

for New Orleans and the survivors where ever they are)


'Twas an onery wind
blew in that summer sadness,
that twisted the trees and the lumps
in the hearts -- all those hearts thumping
that day, that train-blasted winded
day the levee didn't hold. Hold on!
was the rains' echo, and its past,
the summary of scattered pages,
jackets sog-strewn and bogged down
in the comprehension of it. Incomprehensible.
All etched into history: the upside
down non-survivors strung up on the crossing.

You look out there, that sad somewhere
cresting, that homesake sinking
it in. I'm beginning again, and truth
is all they have to say, the trailer
bound, high-mark lifted souls in shatters,
these shackles of survival hanging on
a phone call, FEMA, the men in charge
while memories mold and families hunger
and the old just can't take any more.

Will you take this loaf of bread?
Would you trade this big screen
for a loaf of time? Would you shoot it
in the air for them to come to you, give water
to the baby who does not cry again?
Just to say -- I'm here. Come out and save me.



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Today's topic out of the hat is:

"Friendly Fire"