POETRY FOR 30 DAYS IN APRIL DAY 30

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 30 Prompt

And now for our final (still optional!) prompt. Today’s prompt is based on a prompt written by Jacqueline Saphra, and featured in this group of prompts published back in 2015 by The Poetry Society of the U.K. This prompt challenges you to write a poem in the form of a series of directions describing how a person should get to a particular place. It could be a real place, like your local park, or an imaginary or unreal place, like “the bottom of your heart,” or “where missing socks go.” Fill your poem with sensory details, and make them as wild or intimate as you like.

Day 30 Poem

Where is Sanity

I zigged when I should have zagged

The map I used was from three hundred years ago

And the gas station I picked it up in still sold leaded gas

So when I left the station, my car coughed tremendously

Like a tuberculosis patient waiting for their next treatment

I tried to phone a friend when I grew up

And started this journey of adulthood

Only to find out

She was a paranoid schizophrenic

That liked to chase her kids around the house

With knives drawn

Thinking we were spawned from the anti christ

Which turned out to be her husband

I tried talking with a man of so many letters

The alphabet couldn’t keep up

And as I talked with him,

His phone blew up with messages and calls

He didn’t hear a word I said

And decided I needed pills

So I pretended not to hear him

Or when the pharmacy called

All I am trying to do is get from where I was

To where you are

In hopes that you know the way

I tried people with smaller letters behind their names

One used my connections to get a better job

Another used my knowledge to help her clients dodge dui’s

So now I am looking at another person

With smaller letters behind their name

When I asked my doc where my motivation went

He sent me to CVS for a pick up

I’m wondering if he is going to be my dealer now

He didn’t give me a free sample

Aren’t you supposed to get the first hit for free

Think I’ll just lay back

And see if there are any hidden messages

In the vinyl records I play

That would lead me to where I want to go

Maybe there is something in the flat earthers podcast

Or in the teachings of Q’Anon

My brain isn’t that fried yet

I think its time for a little Tom Waits

Or maybe some Trane

They have kept me alive all these years

Maybe the deep bass whisperings of Ken Nordine

Or the absurdist stories of Joe Frank

I think I may have not listened close enough

To my dead heroes

And I may just need to reconnect that link

If you know the way to sanity

I’d ask that you not try to send it telepathically

The quickest way is not a straight line

I know that from my experiences with cartography

Just point me in the general direction

And let me know if there is a coffee shop along the way

I may need to fuel up

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.