Today’s prompt is honestly the toughest prompt I’ve seen the good folks over at NaPoWriMo put out.
It’s called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course, if you can’t fit all twenty projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!
- Begin the poem with a metaphor.
- Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
- Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
- Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
- Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
- Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
- Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
- Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
- Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
- Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
- Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
- Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
- Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
- Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
- Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
- Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
- Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
- Use a phrase from a language other than English.
- Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
- Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.
I do not see myself weaving all 20 of these into a singular piece – for the most part because that does not interest me. Thus, I will be incorporating one of these things.
Peach Perfect
“You’re a peach!”,
Merriam-Webster exclaims is the best example of a metaphor,
To call someone pleasing.
Au contraire, my peachy friend,
Peaches are not pleasing,
Their colour, in fact, they’re merely leasing,
Their appearance?
Round gluteus maxima, I say.
Oh, and the descriptions of their taste,
“Juicy orbs of sunburst deliciousness”,
Clearly, you pick fruit with haste,
But, come now, we must do our due diligence –
and spot the fur from a mile, nay, a marathon away.
You may think we’re brothers,
Maybe the hair gives you that notion,
In reality, we’re third cousins,
My genes contain some of the worse portions – and
as a result my appearance is a gag,
“A potato with fur”,
“A haggly sack”
I so dislike this peachy business,
Why must he get all the praise,
The next time you see someone please you,
Please call them a kiwi, I say.
“You’re a kiwi!”
You see, it rolls off the tongue,
Kiwi is two syllables,
While peach is just one.
Tejas Rao 