Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Greetings, poetry people! I got behind and lost my mind because that shit happens, but now I'm back to share prompts with you and wax philosophical on this poetical day.
I created a two-verse Senryu using the following prompts.
The first Twofer Tuesday for this year's April PAD Challenge invites poets to create a sad poem and/or a happy poem. My poem was a bit of both because it honors a friend who is no longer of this world, but he still visits me in dreams. Believe that or don't. Any comments written with the intent of stirring the shit will be ignored.
The April PAD Challenge prompt integrated nice like stir fry and rice with the NaPoWriMo prompt, which asks poets to write a platonic love poem. I love my phantom pal very much, and it's always been a platonic kind of love. I'm his kid sister from another mother. When you learn that I'm 59 and he would be 77 if he were still here, that may sound kind of funny. I say there are some people who can make you feel young no matter how old you are, and if you have one of those people on your team, they're an MVP.
And now, on to Day 3.
Cactus Clem
Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors
"Hey Grover, I'm startin' a black metal band!"
Ghost Town Grover
Free use image from Clker Free Vector Images
"That's swell, Clem! What's it called?"
To understand more about why I think this is funny, read this.
This bit of humor isn't entirely original on my part. Someone once posted a photo of a pile of wood on Facebook stating it was going to be their new black metal band's name.
Now, how in the world did I get started down this path?
Follow along if you dare.
Today's prompt asks poets to pen a surreal prose poem. They suggest taking inspiration from a collection of Franz Kafka's parables.
The first thing I saw when I got there was this image.
Image by Aimee Pong
The image rather reminded me of a black metal band logo. Combine that with the April PAD Challenge prompt, which asks participants to include a musical artist in their poem title, and my bad brain started working overtime.
It's serendipity, I suppose, that I'd recently gone down a black metal rabbit hole while doing a bit of research to try and get back into writing the stuff I really love rather than spending most of my creation time trying to generate the elusive social currency.
I'm not sure I managed to nail the surreal part. I decided to roll with a Haibun. It was speculative but not necessarily surreal. I dedicated it to this dude who used the stage name Dead during his brief life. He has been inspiring my work for a couple of decades now and still does.
Per Ohlin
16 January 1969 - 8 April 1991
He was a talented and creative person, although deeply troubled. I prefer sharing this photo over those in which he's wearing his stage attire. Too much has been made of his image. There is, unfortunately, a notorious photo of the aftermath of his suicide that is still in circulation today. I will repeat what his bandmates from Morbid had to say about that.
No thanks to the distributors and buyers of the post-mortem pic. Fuck you.
I will add this.
Show some damn respect.
Ornery Owl Has Spoken in a Grim and Frostbitten Voice
You don't really want ole Ornery to make a black metal album.
Trust me on this.
