“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
- Les Brown
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
- André Gide
Halfway! If you stumbled, gotten out of the groove or if you haven’t started the NaPoWriMo poem a day revolution yet…today you can start.
Prompt 15 —Opposite. Write an opposite poem. A poem that embraces, celebrates an opposite intention. What do I mean? You decide and write the poem.
Keep writing.
PROMPT 13 was about writing an ominous, dark poem, perhaps one to give readers a shiver or two… Make it ominous, dark, perhaps a horror poem. Turn down the lights….shshssh.. what was that?Here’s what I conjured up:
On Cemetery Road
By Christopher J. Jarmick
Cemetery Road snakes like a B Horror movie cliché
underneath ancient maple and elm trees
Some with giant alligator eye branch scars
Others whose scars,
rot,
battle with elements
have created malevolent foreboding faces
etched in weathered bark.
They say the limb from that beast was amputated
Shortly after an innocent man was hung from it
St Paul’s built in 1874 gothic is gate keeper for a
13 modest stone crypts and two hundred stone markers
dating back to the early 1800s.
Teenagers trespass after dark to drink beer, smoke cigarettes
play pranks and dabble in amateur séances.
Stories are told of the dozen grave makers just beyond the
Waist chest high stone and rusted iron fence
The ex-communicated dead, the cursed, the rejects,
the mostly unmarked that some swear drift over the wall
dance on the graves of men and women who kept
too many secrets, told too many lies, but were never punished.
There’s one story, too terrible to tell that few even remember
That I shall not relate, but when there is no wind,
some nights you can hear its whistle and see movements
not created by any night creature of this earth. There’s reason’s
but since only the living get to lie, I’ll pass on the temptation
and not reveal why.
Truths are stranger than fiction and harder to believe
And you need more faith than I’ve got, or perhaps more
Courage to believe anything will be set free by this particular
Revelation. The last man who tried….
well, since you’re still wondering,
you know what happened.
Can I really bear to go to my grave
Keeping such a story as this?
I mean to sleep well
I mean to sleep well.
Copyright© Christopher J. Jarmick 2013
The root of the word Poetry is from the Greek ποιέω (poieō), “‘I
make’”). , poiesis, meaning a “making” or ‘creation’
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Poetry is Everything
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Christopher J. Jarmick is a Seattle based writer, very active in the Northwest Poetry Community. His latest book is called IGNITION; Poem Starters, Septolets, Statements & Double Dog Dares. Click on it to find out more about it.
Copyright© Christopher J. Jarmick 2013
