words recycled like radio songs

Same as last year, no real goals. I'm jumping around a bunch of different projects, but I do have a couple poem ideas so we'll see what happens.

Thread name inspo-I know that radio isn't really a thing anymore, but it sounds cool. And I tend to recycle ideas the way new songs tend to interpolate/sample old ones (case in point literally today Spotify fed me a "new" song that was literally Doechii rapping over "Somebody that I Used to Know." Girl what?

Friendly heads up-there will almost certainly be 16/18+ poems with language/sexual references, just based on the last couple years of NaPo threads. Also likely poems about weight/body image. Poems will be marked/spoilered as needed.

Also, while I occasionally have thoughts that aren't Good Omens related, there will almost certainly be GO content. Sorry not sorry.

ink spilled on atrophied wings (2024, not completed but I'm amazed I got any written at all)
The past is not clay, but the future is not stone (2023, not completed but I won April Madness so that's pretty neat)
lost stones, old address books, and spreadsheet weeds (2022, not completed)
a year lost, at home with nothing to write about (2021, not completed)
weathered, yes, but still standing (2020, completed but barely)
saturn is home, and all is well (2019, completed)
all the thoughts you wish weren't real (2018, not completed)
buried under the coffee table (2017, completed)
the (non) master of my own (sham) destiny (2016, completed)
often wandering, still quite lost (2015, not completed)
Niteowl's Nest (2014, not completed)
Niteowl's Nonsensical Nothingness (2013, probably not completed)
Nite's Poetry Dumpster (2008, not completed)

Little Nest of Prompts (things I may or may not use for NaPo)

Spoiler

Fandom auction poem-bidder requested A/C protecting/caring for each other in some fashion, fluffy vibes

GO poem prompt I wanted to write for but didn't have the right idea for in time: villanelle, prompt is "temptation." There was another one I abandoned a long time ago: Shakespearean sonnet "favor"

"husks of lives I once lived" from a discussion on the decluttering subreddit. I almost titled this thread "dusting off a life half lived" but I feel like that implies a stronger theme of decluttering/object poems than I truly expect to explore.

"I want to know how your every hair curls in the air" (idk this line idea just came out of nowhere)

"the clouds suffocate but the sun is a punishing eye"

"oh how I long to rewrite who I was"

a social media post a friend shared "ever since someone said that stretchmarks kinda look like sunlight on water, i've liked mine"

-semi-related, at this moment my skin feels super dry and scaly, and I want to just scrub it all off and that feels like a great metaphor for...something.

“I’d rather let things explode than ever admit I dropped them” (backstory here, I dropped my work laptop and walked around for a year with an expanding battery because I didn’t want to get in trouble for like abusing company property or something. Like that could have literally exploded)

from my review here: work/Liminality/some-ruins-160055?c=762581#c762581 the line "persisting with life in a ruined land" feels very poetic. Especially given the current political situation...

“What is your life but a container for a story?” Quote from “Thistlefoot”

1. the horrors of persisting

The hardest part is starting, or so they say. But have they (whoever they are) ever tried persisting? Tried existing in a world that doesn’t want you to exist? Tried changing a body that doesn’t want to be changed?

If I stop to catch my breath, I may never start again. But if I don’t stop, I might die. Or continue in this half-existence, which might be worse.

The blank page is a silent interrogation, the voids between lines asking why they are still empty.

I’m not sure if interrogation is the right metaphor, but it is a metaphor, which makes this a poem. But now that I’ve written it, I wonder if the page regrets asking for my words.

Perhaps that is the reason I survive each day, striving to become someone worthy of my own ideas.

"The hardest part is starting, or so they say. But have they (whoever they are) ever tried persisting? " The poem's premise contrasting the difficulty of beginning and persisting is such an apt one for the beginning of NaPo and certainly resonates. It is hard to begin, but it is also hard to continue! Love your twist on the classic "blank page" pressure poem and looking forward to following your thread as usual nite!

2. things i should maybe declutter but haven't

the postcards i've collected since i was seven. the shotglasses that joined the postcards at twenty. i've displayed some, but turns out i'm not the sort of person who likes changing out displays. i'll set something somewhere "for now" and find it there two years later. are they all just pieces of paper and glass, tacky things that mean nothing and often bear little resemblance to what i actually saw when i traveled? i didn't buy a single postcard or shotglass in las vegas. maybe i need to fly back just to get one. or maybe this is the end of something.

the bookshelf my mother once painted with block letter and animals and such for a baby me, that we painted over zebra print when i was a teen and then red a few years later. it still holds a few child books and teen books, but also all the grownup books i fear i'll never have the attention span to read. it also holds laundry detergent, because i have learned that hiding laundry detergent away is a barrier to actually doing laundry. i suppose this one is an outlier on this list. i am using it. i have no reason to dump it. but it's a thing with a story, so i guess it's on this list anyway.

the rock collection i had because i was a geology major and thus should have a rock collection. it's been a decade since i knew why any of these rocks were special. if i let them outside to be tossed again by wind and rain, to erode back into the natural order of things, would that not be a more fitting place for them than inside a box?

the journals that i almost tossed before i moved here, then fished out of the garbage, and now i don't know if they're essential links to who i was or thoughts i'm better off forgetting. i could open them, and scan them, but is all my old pain worth revisiting, worth preserving?

the stuff in the back of the closet that has been there. untouched. for seven years. i can see my cap and gown peeking out of one bag, but the rest i have no idea. if ive lived without these things for seven years, could i not just toss them?

What if these books, these souvenirs, these remnants of a life I once had or wanted to have, are holding me back? What if I’m choking on the dust of old lives? What if I’ve made myself heavier in keeping clothing I wore when I was lighter?

If it all burned down, I would still be here. I’d still remember all the bits of those old mes that matter (and several that don’t.) logically, most of these things are worthless, useless. so why is it so hard to let them go?

3. flip turn (mild language)

perhaps the act of writing poetry is another old rock collection. i was a poet, if only in my mind, and it is april, and therefore i write poems. but these attempts at poeting again are like the first time i tried swimming proper laps and found that i am a land beast trying to swim like i'm still a fish. because i was a fish. i did swim. not olympian fast, but faster than those who barely treaded water.

"can you do that thing where you turn and push against the wall?"

the flip turn. so ordinary in my past life on a swim team. but my coworker just learned to swim a few years ago, so it sounds like some mystic feat of flexibility to her. just breathe, roll, push, dolphin kick out until you have to breathe again. it was second nature when i was a fish.

"i could back then. but now i'm afraid i'll get stuck."

the flip turn.
even now, as i am scared of it, my body remembers, wants to flip as i approach the wall, is disappointed in me with every touch turn.

would i truly get stuck if i tried? or crash into the wall? or just get a shit ton of water in my nose and briefly forget how to breathe? or will it be easy, the muscles falling into place and remembering how they used to move?

if i tried to fly, i would fall. my body knows falling, but never knew flying. but i did fly once, in the land of chlorinated buoyancy. i spun, kicked, glided through water. my body remembers, and it longs to be a fish again.

will i ever trust it enough to flip turn again?

4. Monatetra-Adventure

(from a Good Omens poetry prompt challenge. Form: Monatetra, Prompt: Adventure)

(Good Omens season 2 spoilers sort of, angst w/happy ending)

Spoiler

We were a team, a group of two
But then I left for I had to
My parting words, lips stained with you
"I forgive you, I forgive you"

But as I left, I swore a vow
I’d save the world and us somehow.
Apologies I dance, then bow
Forgive me now, forgive me now?

Now all has passed and we are free
And new adventures we shall see
So now I ask you on one knee
Please marry me, please marry me.

You say of course, and oh! Your kiss
a thrill I never want to miss
Again. Keep holding me like this
And it is bliss, and it is bliss.

Spoiler

Monatetra form:
Each stanza has four lines (quatrains).
Every line has eight syllables.
The rhyme scheme is AAAA (all lines in a stanza rhyme).
The final line of each stanza repeats the last phrase, creating a punchy and lyrical effect.
This poem can be as short as one quatrain and as long as you like!

Also, I never said thanks for the lovely comment @alliyah! Hopefully I'll be able to churn out something better than bad GO poetry and pressure poems lmao)

5. a perfectionist writer's lament

Once again, I find myself wondering:
How do you know when the story ends?
How do you know when a work is ready to release into the world?

I write my words over and over, ever erasing, tweaking, rewriting, splicing, moving around in an attempt to elevate this page to perfection. Had I been born before computers, my works would be merely ink blotches.

Some lines I reread and I am in love. For a moment I believe it is perfect, that I have ascended to the level of a true Creator. But then I read the next paragraph and it looks flat and stale and I wonder how I have any business at all picking up the pen. Or keyboard, really, but a pen sounds more romantic.

I can edit and rewrite forever, never letting another soul see it. But if these words were meant to be shared, if the joy in telling stories is in letting others listen, who am I to declare them unworthy of such joy? Who am I to trap them, screaming in my mind alone?

[spoiler]really living up to the thread name with this one. Not knowing where the poem or story ends? Check. Angst about perfectionism? Check.

6. your inner poet is somewhere nearby

There is no airtag for a poetic voice.
No sound that rings between your eardrums telling you yes, this is the path of neurons that leads to the lobe of your brain where poems come from. No map of your cranium dropping a pin at the last poetic phrase you wrote. Maybe you were trying to rhyme, and you wrote a line that ended in “love”, and too late, you remembered that one of the many flaws of the English language is that nothing rhymes with love except dove and above and maybe some enjambent with of, and the lack of rhymes froze your poem in time.

But that makes no sense, you say.
I was never one for rhyming anyway.

But that’s okay, because losing
is not an act that makes sense.
If you’d left your poetic voice
somewhere it made sense,
you would have found it by now.

So here I tear my mind apart
looking for words stuck in my heart.
Or maybe they just fell behind
the lids of my screen-weary eyes.
I see the time and realize
I need to sleep, perhaps in the night,
My poetic voice will come to light.

7. i do not know

i do not know how to be a poet
i know only how to burden you
with the imperfection of my words.
i can know they are imperfect
but have no idea how they can be reshaped
into something better. and if i cannot give you perfection,
i do not think i should give you
anything at all.

Spoiler

so despite how empty this thread is, I have written a few poems, but I don't find myself wanting to share them. There's a few more I might add, but my brain hasn't wanted to write much this month after a couple of months of writing like crazy.

8. Us-a Good Omens sentence poem

From before time, to Eden, to London, we shall be Us ‘til The End.

Spoiler

What is Sentence Poetry?
It's a poetry form invented by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in the mid-1980’s as a twist on traditional haiku. Like haiku, American Sentences consist of 17 syllables, but instead of being arranged into three lines, they are written as a single line or sentence. Ginsberg, himself, stated that the poem, if possible should mention either a time or place (or both) and the use of articles such as “a” and “the” should be avoided.

9. in times like these

(spoilered bc vaguely political, but not detailed)

Spoiler

in times like these
all words seem wrong
no words make right
no silence heals
no speech saves
stay silent, no soul
speak out, no life.

Spoiler

perhaps one day I'll write a good political poem. But it's not happening today.

10. can i at least be a poet on paper?

pens are not for poems in my world.
pens are for scribbled work-call notes, those
names and fragments i have to make
a coherent call log at the end of every day.

my stories and poems are typed onto
the same screen i doomscroll with.
google docs autosaves, preserving all the ways
you wrote a scene before you found a better path.

have i lost something in the convenience?

i scratch the pen across the journal
i started on 1/1/2020, full of naive optimism.
i last wrote in it in 2022.
and with every word i feel more raw, more honest,
and it's ugly, but when it's done,
i am lighter.
i am free.

11. in times like these (2)

(spoiler for politics, language)

Spoiler

is it wrong to rest in times like these?
to recharge and do something other
than freak out about all the newsworthy events
you can’t do jack shit about?
where is the line
between protecting your peace
and hiding in your privilege?

in times like these
i don’t know how to keep myself afloat.
i don’t know what to write. nothing i say seems to matter.
nothing anyone says seems to matter.
speaking out does nothing, but am i complicit
if i say nothing?

i write, not because it will save the world,
but because my voice is all i have left
even if no one listens.

12. thoughts on my metaphorical deaths

(warnings for mental health issues, suicide references, death thoughts, language)

Spoiler

by all rights
i should have died fourteen years ago,
the spring i thought i was god
and then woke up in an ER.
i can’t help but wonder
if the lavender walls of the psych ward
were the pearly gates
and i just didn’t see it.
(the doctors there would call that a delusion)
somehow, i rebuilt my life, one pill at a time.

or perhaps i should have died
ten years ago, when i wanted to celebrate
my twenty-fifth birthday by jumping
off a highway bridge in atlanta,
at least piss off some people in traffic
on my way out. why is it always jumping?
i don’t know. what i do know is that
i turned my soul inside out that summer
and found the will to master out. i told my advisor in september,
which my advisor said i should have done back in january,
but there’s no sane way to explain that i had to not-quite-die first
to realize it was time to live again.

perhaps i was heading towards another
not-death death at thirty, but then the world stopped
and i might have just been surviving,
but everyone else was just surviving too.
perhaps that made me want to survive more than usual?

or maybe i’m just trying to analyze
how i’m staring down the barrel of thirty-five
and i don’t want to pull a literal trigger,
but i can’t help but think
the poems drying up are a sign
i need to (metaphorically) die again
in order to have something
to write poetry about.

maybe in five years
i’ll have my latest non-death certificate in hand
and i can tell you how i was reborn.