Tag: Daily Prompt

GloPoWriMo 2020: 27/30

Tejas Rao6 Comments

Today’s prompt is to write a poetic review.

Curd Rice 

How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways –
I love thee as the perfect palate cleanser
Between courses in a meal,
The ultimate finale to them all.
I love thee as my meal itself,
With tadka, with pomegranate,
Or the simplicity in plain serving,
I love thee on plates,
In bowls,
And from banana leaves,
In English,
In Kannada,
In Tamil, and Hindi – even in tongues I don’t speak,
I love thee across continents,
Europe, the Americas, and
Africa too
I’ll find you to in Antarctica if I had to,
Mosaranna, I love you.

GloPoWriMo 2020: 26/30

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I don’t quite enjoy today’s almanac questionnaire prompt. I’m also in the mood to write haiku, so that’s what I’m going to do. Since I recorded a piano cover of “You’ll Be Back” from Hamilton: An American Musical (see here), this was the only thing that felt appropriate.

King George III

My loyal, royal
Subjects will be back to see
They belong to me.

 

GloPoWriMo 2020: 25/30

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It’s difficult to put a prompt like today’s into words, so here’s the hyperlink to the original. As is the case with most poems that ask me to do more than one thing, I find it easiest to try to incorporate as many as I can without taking too much stress.

10 Seconds

In a ten-second span a lot goes through my head,
Its’ incredible to me how I can sway from joy to
Angst, to sadness, to
Dread,
Yet what I admire is the tenacity of the brain – to
Find the small spots of yellow in a
Palette that can sometimes feel grey.

 

GloPoWriMo 2020: 23/30

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It’s a little sad that’s we’re down to our final week of GloPoWriMo already. Another 7 poems and we’re done for the year. Today’s optional prompt asks me to write a poem springboarding from the shape of a letter in the alphabet.

P

Like a proud windsock,
Or a hoisted flag,
A cutlass, unangled,
A scimitar with a handle,
Portable paper fans,
All of these represent the letter P,
Initially just a box in Hieroglyphy.

GloPoWriMo 2020: 22/30

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Today’s poem asks me to use a saying from a language other than English, and make that the starting. I picked “The pillow is the best adviser”, a saying in Swedish.

Sleep

When confronted with the unpleasant,
The difficult, the disenchanting,
I put my head on my pillow, and close my eyes, and
Try to drift off for a while,
Amidst tears, and even when I’m upset, I hope
Pray, that I’ll wake up wiser,
Particularly since the pillow is the best adviser.

 

GloPoWriMo 2020: 21/30

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Today’s poem provides a lovely opportunity to look at poems from other languages and create a homophonic translation.

I picked the following verse from the poem, Meteor, which is originally written in Slovak. I wanted to pick a language without a Latin base to make it tougher for me to create  a homophonic translation:

Pripravili sme ti strašnú smrť.
Nechali sme ťa klbčiť sa so šelmami.
Mysleli sme si, že si jednou z nich.
Dovolili sme ti skrížiť
mliečne zuby s ihličkami,
lastúry mäkkých nechtov s pazúrmi.

Here’s my translation

Meteor

Primarily, smells suffocated me,
Not smells to combine with salami,
But smells yes, those smells, shallow and rich,
Drearily smells, they squeeze
Millenniums and ruby, entangled origami,
The story makes nectar seem like blasphemy.

 

Open-Ness

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There are several things I’ve taken up during this lockdown: things I’m finding helpful to give me a sense of routine, as well as mini-goals to look forward to each day to keep busy while being away from University and sitting at home. So far, I’m enjoying all of them. For the most part, each day feels distinct from the last (on occasions I don’t write, the days sort of meld together). I start each day clearly knowing what I’m trying to do through the day, which I find particularly helpful, and I end each day feeling grateful for having the day to spend the way I’ve wanted to – without University pressures or anything of the sort.

I have, however, noticed one thing. Most of this, whether it’s the research I’m working on, or the new skills I’m trying to learn, or even the reading I’m doing – it’s all happening on open-source software systems, or openly accessible sources that are not behind a paywall. Paywalls are prohibitive, and that argument stands, and yes, of course, I could get behind the paywall by paying a fee and breaking it down. However, most of the things I’m enjoying at the moment, including plays and concerts are happening on software that doesn’t contain paywalled content – take Twitch, or YouTube.

This is an incredible thing.

I fully understand neither Twitch or YouTube are fully free, but you get my point. The content I’m accessing is free, and for the majority part, most content is. Select portions of content are behind the paywall.

Now, I’m conservative with the money I spend, so it takes me a while to commit to spending on something, including books and resources. I usually turn to open source stuff anyway, since they’re almost at par with their paid compatriots.

However, the current success of openly accessible things is telling me one thing. After this coronavirus pandemic ends, I’m joining the open-access brigade with more passion and fervour. I understand the economics of things, but I think the open-access model can be made viable if people chip in and actually contribute to things, and financial backers end up backing these open-access things. And opening up access opens up a world to the person creating whatever media is being consumed because more people will consume the good.

Atleast go freemium.

And not barebones freemium.

GloPoWriMo 2020: 20/30

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Today’s prompt is very nice. It asks me to write about a handmade, or a homemade gift I’ve received. I’m grateful to have people who have gifted me some really, really meaningful gifts over the years. This one stands out though:

Cookie Bouquet

Glass stirrers wound tightly with royal blue chart paper and a
Purple ribbon held the sweetest gift I’ve received – a bouquet of
Twelve cookies.
These golden disks of joy wrapped in
Tin foil to preserve freshness,
Forgetting that I was a monster who ate them all at
One go.
The cookies lasted twenty minutes at the end of the day
I was giddy:
Didn’t know if I had won every jackpot,
Every carnival game,
Or if it was just love –
The subsequent nap confirmed it was but,
A sugar rush.

GloPoWriMo 2020: 19/30

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Okay, NaPoWriMo’s prompt today was to do a walking archive: where you go for a walk and gather interesting things from that walk. Owing to the present circumstances with COVID-19, their very helpful suggestion is to walk around the house and pick up interesting things at home. I didn’t want to do that. Instead, I think the idea of a walking archive has made me think about the act of walking itself, and how much I miss the freedom of walking wherever I’d like.

On Strolls

The only walks I take these days are to buy groceries –
Nothing else,
No speed-walking around campus to get from my hostel to the administrative block,
Or to get from one end of the administrative block to the other.
I never ran,
Always speed-walked,
Even at school, as if being late to class would
Be the end of me.
What I wonder today, though, is what
I’ve missed while speed-walking
How many cricket matches I could have caught a glimpse of at The Oval?
How many times my friends in school would have convinced me, in the
hallways,
To bunk Physics – and
I know that after this lockdown ends,
I will take a stroll,
Meander through the streets,
Traipse along the pathways,
Deliberately – so
I never forget what a privilege it is to be able to walk freely without
The threat of illness in the air.

GloPoWriMo 2020: 18/30

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Today’s poem stems from the prompt that asks me to write about life’s simple pleasures. There is a lot that I’m grateful for every single day – especially these days. Being at home for the past month, though, has reminded me of the pleasure that was living and growing up in this bedroom. I’m also very grateful to have an attached bathroom these days, and that forms today’s poem.

Health Faucet

When I was a young boy,
The washroom had a small little sink in addition to a big one –
Far too low for a regular human of any size to reach
I’d always assumed that’s where babies were bathed,
These special sinks to keep them cozy.
I had no idea these were bidets,
Used to clean oneself after the greatest part of the day.

I’ve always used health faucets, so Outbound Trips and America felt strange
Toilet paper always disarmed me,
I felt robbed of my only weapon –
Something one of my friends called a “potty gun”,
Leaving me in splits.

At University, we had two options:
An seat in-built jet-spray and the mug,
My pre-bathroom checklist included flushing,
Checking if the jet spray worked,
And praying.

That’s why returning home felt comfortable –
Not my beanbag,
Not my bed,
But my trusty health faucet, with
It’s 100-pin holed head.