#spprompts

[schuylerpeck]

Woot woot!! It’s NAPOWRIMO time, babeeeyyy!! Pen a poem everyday for 30 days or browse around and write when you can—the choice is yours. ❤️ I’ve loved making prompt lists over the years and I’m excited to see what this years brings. Be silly! Write some bad poems! Write some okay poems! Enjoy ya’self. Love you. ❤️

instagram: hiitssky

[arckhaic]

april01. how did spring greet you?

curled, the unnoticed moon sits dead on the edge of the bed unmade for two months. of all the graves i could think of to dig for it, i thought this would suit it best because i'm here.

i thought that part mattered but i'm not sure anymore.

i mix the dust with the ache in my chest and it slops into mud. i eat it. i leave nothing left. i clear the plate because i thought that part mattered too ( but i'm not sure anymore. hello? can you hear me? are you listening? will you — i thought it would help. i thought i was good. i thought i was doing the right thing. ) my body grows heavy with sediment instead of the light i thought it would make inside. the weight of a dead, unnoticed moon slings itself around my neck and i can't bear to get out of bed.

rotting, unnoticed moon sits dead in my chest for the next week or so. i don't know that the dirt beneath my nails is actually skin and i won't match wound to weapon for another week. my thigh hurts and i can't figure out why.

i'll spit the moon up in the bathroom sink and watch it slug down the drain. it was supposed to fix me .

there's supposed to be a full moon in five days but no one will notice that the moon is gone. and i'm not sure anymore but i thought that part would matter. maybe that's why i did what i did.

[betweenthetimeandsound]

The city looks so peaceful from up here; 1,553 above flames and melting garbage, a certain surrealism flying out of the smoke on glass. Smoke on glass.

Smoke on glass obscures the sunlight, colors it all tangerine, and hell on earth emerges.

It's a beautiful day to escape, and watch the sullen movements of a world gone yonder. --Elda Mengisto

[drearydaffodil]

I was not Lot, no love

lost for scrub pines, for

sagging sofas, stooped

shoulders, circus circus

second hand carpet and

some hurricane of smoke

my cindered lungs stuck

on an exhale, too big for

a small town, absent plans

and yet there were reeds

between my toes, a torture

glue and feet and traps

a shriek of escape from

the entrance of all the

ghosts with hollowed eyes--

I didn't look back

[valotar]

1. i haven’t been there since i was ten. i still remember the coastline and all those rocks better than i remember what the cabin itself looked like. i loved being there, i think. i was always uncomfortable being seen. it was just another place i couldn’t hide in. i'm not sure why i liked it. maybe it was just not-here. i think i've always been hazy, like this, only pieces of a whole, parts of me always missing, the full picture never there. remembering my childhood is a bit like holding my breath; there is always something insencere about it. something desperate. something half-dead.

i remember the blueberries.

2. i was fourteen and always on the brink of losing my mind. i was always bad at making friends. i never felt like it was real. i was always too much too fast or never enough, not sure how to breathe around all these feelings so i just swallowed them. i know i kept my heart buried too deep, and i know she burned too bright for me, and i know we were both wrong.

i still miss her.

3. i eat too fast and i sleep too light and i don’t feel comfortable with my back to the door. i don't want to know what it feels like to know this kind of violence. i wish i could put it down. i remember moving out and it didn’t feel like anything because i never felt at home there. i've never been able to relate to homesick children, and it makes me feel like there’s something missing.

i still don’t quite feel like i fit in anywhere. my whole life all i wanted was to leave, but i never knew where to. it's hard to want something when you don't know what it looks like.

[hopebe]

summer warmth with a cool breeze, knees bent casually, maybe fitting in the crooks of my elbows, and the sun low, brightly dying and casting through the trees, a peculiar light; I want to be on a grassy hill, looking over an unraveling world below and occasionally I will half-close my eyes, sleepily, listening to your voice, or we may not speak at all—

Prompt: a daydream, a moment you hope for in the future.

[autopsyinreverse]

Ode to Storms

I wait on my front porch for you to arrive

be it easy afternoon or midnight,

spring, autumn or midsummer.

There must be a lake in me.

It’s been too long since your last visit,

and I can feel it receding.

I throw fern leafs into water, scatter saffron on the wind, 

whistle in your honor.

Your cool touch calms the hot pit of fear in me

that nothing else can touch

The rumble of thunder strikes my heart into beating

like a hammer on an anvil

I turn my face to meet your kiss, still, every time

[katlypso]

Day 2: In Iron & Wine’s song “Call It Dreaming”, Sam Beam sings “we can weep and call it singing”. Based off of those lyrics, use one verb and call it something else.

Couldn’t pick between the two poems so I picked both of them

[y-not-i]

You pull the curtains to the side, letting the sun bathe the room in light

after I drew them close, to hide in the dark 

You get up early to enjoy your coffee black, while I stay up late to drink my tea with honey 

You are the singing voice in a musical 

and I am the hushed whisper in the library 

You layer your clothes in pinks and yellows,

brightness to match the ever present glow in your blue eyes

while I wrap myself in the brown and black and green of the Earth

We are like the sun and moon, 

chasing after one another in a playful game that keeps our routine in motion

and that is one of the many reasons why I love you 

[mugishalffull]

#1: Dancing

Shield blocks spear with a bright clash, though the point of the weapon sticks into the block of metal. Sharp enough and with enough force to injure a shield arm. “This is good, I approve.”

“You’ll take the lot of them then? Three javelins and the matching pair of spears?” Rine bows his head and smiles warmly, pulling the shield off his arm and finding another. “Or did you want to go another round to see me with a weapon?”

The patron, a lithe Elezen woman with height above the Xaela grins. She brings the spear point up again. “Shall we sing a song of blades? I approve of the weight so far.”

“Untested weapons shall break and bend, or maybe I like having a sparring partner that can keep up.” He presses the attack with a shorter spear of himself, blocking blows with the shield and then rushing the Elezen’s legs.

She jumps and spins, landing onto his shield spearpoint down. “Pinned, mmm?”

“Only one arm,” a jab from the shorter spear aims for her side, barely missing as she twists away and jumps back. The Elezen takes another spear from the table leaving the other stuck into the shield.

“Continue.”

[schuylerpeck]

(3/30: a poem about a legend)

instagram: hiitssky

[arckhaic]

april04. poem topic: self-mythology

i have a document saved somewhere on an old computer titled self-mythology. there's nothing on it except for a question: how does one make a myth of oneself?

as far as i knew, the gods were only ever gods and you were either born a bright, golden sun or you're a daughter, bound hand and foot to the base of the altar. i never found an answer to that question. i can't identify myself the way a myth can. her name might melt into another or her father might switch his face, wear the skin of another man's, another woman's. but for thousands of years, she will die over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

she never becomes the sun. she never dances. she never walks away from the altar alive. only a myth can unbury the dead. and only a dead thing can make itself a myth.

and i never sought the answer either. because we don't remember the myth for the fact that she lived. that she danced. that she ran. we only remember it because he wept knowing that she would die.

[betweenthetimeandsound]

In 150 Characters (elda's version)

--after Nikita Gill, prompt from @schuylerpeck (22 April)

Everything is on fire, but everyone I love makes love through fishing wire and shining crystal; I don't want to believe in a mere rock, but I cling onto stars. --Elda Mengisto

[snarkyelf]

Prompt #1 Dancing

She was a beautiful young woman, with ashy skin like the aftermath of a volcano, the hazel eyes like honey in summer, and hair like snow in the silence of winter wrapped up in long, lovely dreds. Her toes were light as she danced, but her body language demanded attention and the square corners of a leader.

Frederique smiled at the his daughter, happy that the attention she wanted was not one of a wily girl, but one trying hard to make her own mark. Trying to lead her in a simple 3/3 trot in a dancing lesson was not working out, therefore the woman was leading him. She was a foot shorter, and much less graceful, but she was stomping out the steps as instructed.

Fred was dancing with his daughter, a daughter that lacked a lot of emotional bonds with him, but was slowly warming up to the idea of having him nearby when times got tough.

“Don’t look at your feet, Amandine-” he tried to remind her, but she snapped up at him with a vicious, frustrated glare.

“I know dad, quit repeating yourself. You sound like a broken orchestrion roll,” Amandine groused at her father, then a moment later when back to looking at her feet.

Frederique just smiled and let himself be run into a dragon tree plant because she wasn’t paying attention to where she was leading him. And he was so very, very happy.

[valotar]

today i left my apartment for the first time in -

i don't know how many days. almost a week, i think.

it's been raining. i haven't been well. i have too much to do, and not enough time, and my body feels like a graveyard. unkept and haunted and falling apart in so many different places that you could never fix all the problems at once.

Because there's always things growing in places they shouldn't, and somehow the flowers are never okay no matter how well you try to take care of them, and the air always feels grey and heavy around here.

the stones are sinking into the ground,

and it's been raining.

[hopebe]

Meditation

Returning what love bought, a secret, a silence; move with care. Remember all at once, the furrowed cliff eating away at the horizon. Swallow the wind and be ugly. The world was not changed, but I had changed. Sleep on the floor to realign your back, it was suggested to me, but you don't want to live there, on the floor. Remember our skin sun-kissed or burnt, watching the sky change each hour, a patchwork of shifting clouds; calm down, calm down, calm down, leaning over balconies, trusting railings, because we know the ground will catch us, inevitably.

Prompt: Today's poem is a meditation. Write yourself back to stillness.