NaPoWriMo poems
An extra sub page with whatever I write directly off the NaPoWriMo prompts throughout April
My (hopefully) daily page is here for NaPoWriMo
Prompt 1: (01 April 2025)
And now, to round out our first day, here’s our optional prompt! As with pretty much any discipline, music and art have their own vocabulary. Today, we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms,
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Dancing
“Dancing like a ghost, the words fall out of the actor’s mouth almost like they are speaking about their own lives, half-forgotten like a ballad opera remixed for the modern day, contradicting the play they are meant to be performing.
Basked in the moonlight, – each line a mirror to their soul, warped into a different meaning rewriting the past as much as hollowing out the truth, the play losing it’s meaning becoming more and more like a melodrama instead of naturalist with each step.”
Wrote 2 April 2025
I couldn't manage the prompt today for NaPoWriMo so intend
went for this prompt from https://gooduniversenextdoor.com/2025/03/29/new-poetry-prompts-for-napowrimo-2025/
which listed things as "Hey, nobody’s perfect, right? Let’s lean into the places we fall short. Take a look at “I Fail in Many Tenses” by Donna Vorreyer then make a list of your own failures and use them to launch your poem. While it doesn’t have to be part of the assignment, notice how Donna’s poem turns at the end. After several stanzas of lamenting her failures, the speaker implores God for more. I’m in love with that twist and how it builds on the poem’s earlier celebrations and proclamations." and produced a prose poem as below.
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Struggle in Silence
I may struggle frequently in conversations which have long bursts of silence, struggling to understand when somebody doesn’t response immediately to a question they have being asked.
I may struggle working out frequently how to turn the lock on my parent’s front door, sometimes going on the defensive without realising when my father close to 90 snaps let me do it and turns it in seconds.
I may struggle in life whether in crowds or one to one sometimes, but I never let minor things going wrong define everything I do, telling myself I may get confused but I never let my weaknesses rise and take control of my life.
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April 3 and April 4
Not real prompt, just a poem about memories about travelling through Stockport over the last fifteen years or so.
Poems I haven't written
about Stockport
The new bus station and the 327
which if we get back to Denton
takes about 15 minutes
instead of about 45 if we get the 330
a few minutes later.
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Bask around Stockport Train Station
and whatever it was called before
where we did a Podcast with Aggie
and the same tramp pestered us
five times in about a hour.
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Stockport County FC
where I have being to twice
and saw them battered 5 - Nil
resulting in my friend (jokingly)
banning me going ever again.
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Wetherspoons next to the Market
and the Petersgate Tap
before Amanda decided
she preferred Street Guys
down Wellington Road South.
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Stockport County Court
where I have just applied for a job there
and the Council who turned
me down for a job there
ten years previously.
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Stockport Market last Christmas
we bought some dad some chill cheese
that made him turn purple,
and the Goth Market
where I purchased a mini Paddington Bear.
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The first place I went out
to for the day
after I became Diabetic.
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April 5 and April 6:
I’ve also wrote a 2K short story which I may share another day, but this short sequence also came out which is a very fragmented poem I feel.
Five Ways to Disappear
1) Never announce your departure or say goodbye. Simply cease to be there.
2) Turn the lock once, not twice to heighten the mystery and do not stop until you get on the train.
3) Tell your bank you want all your money placed into bundles of £20 and placed into your bag and then head off in a different direction.
4) Leave your phone on the coach and get off at the next stop quickly before anybody can run after you.
5) Announce to everybody you are setting up a new account on social media and be in touch and then don’t.
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April 9, 10 and 11:
Books he will never write (extract)
He walks the length of his street from beginning to the end not because he must like going to work like he does on most days, but because it is there. Each road unfolds into the next, a chain of small inevitabilities or sliding doors leading into different adventures. Each direction feels both intimate and distant, whether you go left or right, you know you will some go back on yourself.
There is something in the act of moving forward whether you move left or right, or North West or North East conscious that the path leads you in a circle, a map of lives which will tangle you into. A woman passes, her shadow brushing yours for the briefest moment. You see her lips move but hear nothing. You wonder if you are meant to answer.
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Cubism Experiment (Extract)
Shattered light in the cafe, Splinters of blue in the canvas sky on the ceiling — A broken clock ticks, each hand spinning backwards, forward, neither here nor there before stopping.
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April 18
the other side of new street (extract)
I could never show you my poems, Andy
let alone show the guilt
I carried in my heart
about the split in your marriage
or the tension I caused between
you and both of your daughters,
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April 19 and 20:
Beltane (extract)
times were different then
spilling out across the forest
awash in Beltane celebrations
and everything we saw
from the ancient songs we heard
stripping the tension far away
from the harsh winter breeze,
i study it now again
looking back as a adult
at the edge of the river
and watch the children
run around laughing loudly
around a maypole
in the middle of a country fair,
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Dottie Hustwick and the Case of the Missing Martian Easter Egg (Extract)
Dottie's door knocked twice at 8 pm on Easter Sunday. "Who on Earth could that be? Winnie." She looked at her dog, a Malshi dog, a cross between a Maltese and a Shih Tzu eating slowly into her carob-made chocolate Easter egg on the floor. "I've been manic all day today"
Dottie was known throughout York as an award-winning therapist, but for a few weeks every year she closed her practice to go and help people find missing Easter Eggs.