POETRY FOR 30 DAYS IN APRIL DAY 18

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 18 Prompt

And now for our (optional) daily prompt! This one comes to us from Stephanie Malley, who challenges us to write a poem based on the title of one of the chpaters from Susan G. Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words. The book’s table of contents can be viewed using Amazon’s “Look inside” feature. Will you choose “the poem squash?” or perhaps “grocery weeping” or “the blue socks”? If none of the 60 rather wonderful chapter titles here inspire you, perhaps a chapter title from a favorite book would do? For example, the photo on my personal twitter account is a shot of a chapter title from a P.G. Wodehouse novel — the chapter title being “Sensational Occurrence at a Poetry Reading.”

Day 18 Poem

Grocery Weeping

I stand in the store

Mask donned, list in hand

People moving around in a frantic pace

I try to maintain the prescribed distance

But constantly get bumped from all sides

No one is paying attention to each other

Just focused on what is in stock

And muttering a what they can’t find

The shelves are getting more bare

Each time I do the weekly shopping

With more left on the list being unfilled

That what I can find

It takes about a month

For me to sit in the car

After another failed attempt

To begin to cry, alone

I so want to be the breadwinner for my family

Be the stone they can rely on

In these terrible times

I look back at the diary I’ve kept

And see the despair grow with each entry

My wife says it will all be fine

We will make sue with what is available

Besides we don’t need all that meat

Vegetables can be made a million ways

But every trip brings less and less

Its not that we don’t have the money

As that is what the issue was when I was a child

Watching my mother cry when the bill was too high

And I had to put back the food

This is different

This is not supposed to be

This is not the American supermarket

As told to us by Ginsberg

This land of plenty

Has turned into a weekly battlefield of selfishness

This once “great nation” has eaten away at itself

No toilet paper, no precious hand sanitizer

Others have hoarded it

Others have followed the trucks bring in supplies

And raided them while they are being unloaded

Is America great yet

And then one day the tide changed

Something happened that the stores became better stocked

We weren’t scowling at each other

When we saw that person got what we could not

I can’t point to the exact day

All I know is that one day

I wasn’t dreading the trip to the store

That I actually got everything on the list

I got everything and a little more

And that little more turned into everything I wanted

Not needed

And I wonder

When the next time will occur

When the stores are empty

When we will be at each others throats

For I fear we have not learned the lessons

That have been graciously given

And soon we will be back at it

Ramming carts into each other

Trying to loosen the others stockpiles

And taking what we claim is ours

In order to keep our greatness

At their expense

Will it be a blizzard in Texas

Or a heat wave in Maine

Or will the oil dry up in the middle east

And we will be forced to walk 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.