Tomorrow: NaPoWriMo Day 5

NaPoWriMo Day 5: 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!

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”

12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

 

I tried using as many as I could, about ten I guess 🙂

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Tomorrow

 

Fear- a contagious virus,

Has infected my today, tomorrow and probably,

the day after…

 

For fear of living

Is not letting me live

So who wins- the virus of fear or life?

 

Unable to contain, the stress within

I wake up dead everyday, to live another day

or so I think…

 

One day at a time, they say; we do

Hmm…isn’t it what we’ve always been told to do?

“Live in the present!” don’t you agree?

 

If I live in present, shall I keep any hopes in tomorrow?

Would tomorrow even know which promises to fulfill?

Or will it again challenge me like today, who knows?

 

Oh yes, I can see it approaching scornfully

I can hear it grinning,

“I hope you’ve learned something from yesterday (or today)”

 

Ah, I learn, I forget,

I re-learn, I rehearse

I’m a human, you see, I’ve tons of tenacity!

 

Qualms, I may have

Ambiguity, precariousness too surround me

But I have one thing more- the thing called “hope”

 

So I still do believe

Tomorrow will be better than today

And even yesterday

 

For tomorrow is another chance

To experience life

To breathe, to stand, to feel alive!

 

©Vandana Bhasin

05.04.2020