POETRY FOR 30 DAYS IN APRIL DAY 1

Project Details

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

Day 1 Prompt

Sometimes, writing poetry is a matter of getting outside of your own head, and learning to see the world in a new way. To an extent, you have to “derange” yourself – make the world strange, and see it as a stranger might. To help you do that, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by this animated version of “Seductive Fantasy” by Sun Ra and his Arkestra. If you don’t feel after watching it a little bit like the top of your head’s been taken off, and your thoughts given a good stir – well, maybe you are already living in a state of heightened poetic awareness!

Happy writing, everyone!

Day 1 Poem

If Only A Day

1. Legs

It’s the wind that lifts you to walk on your toes

Sprinting is the speed needed to take you everywhere you go

No longer trying to understand why your King binds your feet every night

All you know is the stretching of your calves and ankles while you dream

The aches that come in the morning

Hoping that the braces are forgotten for a days repast

One day, breaking free from the restraints

And flying back to whence you have come

2. Arms

Your wings are masked as the limbs of a girl

Only you know their true composition

Instinct demands their exercise

So you flap them, trying to fulfill their purpose

Why can’t people see what they really are

Is still a mystery to you

So you play ignorant as to why you flap

Its just something you do

When something important strikes you

The mental computer appears just for you

To mark these events so you can revisit them

You are the author of your own future

3. Eyes

When the world is too much

When everything comes at you at the same time

Your eyes roll back to protect yourself

To see your memories

To see your true home

To see inside your own thoughts

The quick shallow breaths coincide with your eyes

The perfect shade of the sky on a cloudless day

Sparkling when you see Papa

Tearing up when no one understands your ways

4. Face

Every time I blink or rest for an evening

I see your smile straining to reach from one side to the other

Your cheeks bulge out and are filled with breath

Your eyes squint trying not to let too much in

Its as if your whole face must participate

With any utterance of emotion

My definition of happiness no longer contains words

Just images of the contours and lines and folds of your skin

You, fully embracing whatever emotion strikes

5. Voice

If I was deaf, I’d still understand you

The force of your words passes through my apathetic soul

When you read and your pitch raises a half octave

Its because you want me to know the performance has started

And when the words come that you don't know or don’t recall

Stubbornly you push through and repeat them until they are mastered

Creating songs out of air about love comes naturally for you

As the wind is your mother

And your breath is your father

6. Mind

Since you were born

I have tried to fill you with light, beauty, positivity and love

Banishing my demons and the creatures that lurk behind these windows

You seem to know of their existence

And you try to reach through to calm me

It is the touch that I fear most

Not wanting you to be infected by their ravenous hunger

With a word or a look or a fierce hug

You attempt to strangle them and free my soul

To escape the bonds that keep me chained to the ground

Oh to be like you again and to warn of what it is to be me

This is every day with you

And one day you will drag me away

To live inside your thoughts

And know innocence again

Reaching Out

To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.