Underground movement

Trees talk
They plot
Oxygen bombs
Mass extinction

The prompt at octpowrimo.com today was trees. There’s so much we don’t know about them. The Ted Talk is fantastic, you might never look at trees the same way.

Ire

 

I was eating anger by the spoonful, stuffing it into my mouth with unwashed hands, greedily swallowing without chewing, starved of life force, smearing my face, not caring what it looked like, eating, stuffing, swallowing, until I could feel the sadness subside.

I am at peace

Todays prompt at octpowrimo.com was black. It’s one of my favourite colours to wear, and charcoal is a wonderful medium to work with. Even with all these happy associations with black, I ended up writing a darker poem. I’ve written aplenty about depression, so there’s more blackness if you like.

I lost connection

at the pharmacy		while bombs fell
I worried when		you texted me
good things		you’ll miss
in life		the feeling of being alive
seemed to fall apart		beyond repair
the news broke		your last selfie
my train of thoughts		shattered
I switched off		your dreams
	and apologised

Jane Dougherty wrote a fabulous cleave poem today, for the silence prompt on octpowrimo.com. Hers made me want to try one too. It turned out to be contagious. SMSaves wrote a very good one, called Working Mind Wanders.

How to read a cleave poem?

1. Read the left hand poem as a first one.
2. Read the right hand poem as a second one.
3. Read the whole as a third one.

I guess I could claim I’ve invented a new form, with the title and last line turning the poem into a diamond shape – if your fantasy is rich. I’ve been experimenting with tables before, I suspect I may have written one or more cleave poems before. I’ll search through my site and see if I can add some links or tags, so they are easier to find.

Update: no cleaves found yet, but two table poems, one diamond and one square:
i is a number (I’m not)
Disposition

Minted

I thank #ThursdayDoors and #OctPoWriMo for an important insight I had today. Explanation first, poem next, doors at the end of the post.

This morning I was wondering if I still have doors left on my camera to use for Thursday Doors, since I’m don’t go out much with my broken foot. I live close by a former mint, which has fabulous doors. I remembered I’ve photographed them, but not shared them yet.

My next question was how to use the mint for a poem for October Poetry Writing Month. It made me think of money, because that’s what a mint does: it creates money. Did I want to write a poem about money perhaps? For me money has always meant freedom. I started working when I was 15, and the money was mine to keep, my parents didn’t need it for their household. I didn’t spend it, it saved it because I loved idea of possibilities. With money, you can do things and go places. So those first hundreds of guilders ended up being used for my first holiday abroad without my parents, interrailing through Europe with my boyfriend after I finished high school. It was a great experience, and I think about it regularly and fondly.

Fast forward to me being self-employed, as a coach. I get paid by organisations, and I get paid by individuals. I always struggle with my fee when it comes to people who pay for my services out of their own pocket. I’d secretly feel guilty for receiving their money. I always felt as if their spending money on me, made other things impossible for them. Which made me rather crap at marketing, since it felt like a mental form of robbery.

This morning I understood:
For me: money = freedom
If someone pays me → I take some of their freedom

fallacy alert!

I realised coaching is actually something that increases freedom for people. In the coaching space, people figure out thinks like:
– who they want to be
– who they don’t want to be anymore
– where they want to go
– where they don’t want to go to no more
– which patterns are holding them back
– how they can create change
– how to accept themselves more
– etc.

So even if I’d want to keep believing that idea of money = freedom, they would pay with a form of freedom, to gain a different freedom.

This last sentence might make sense to no one but me, but for me, it made a lot of sense 🙂

I’ll end this line of thoughts with the poem I promised.

Minted

Money equals freedom
If mints can turn
paper into wealth
I can mint freedom
Money is just means to an end

 

Unseamed see

I see
I seem
I seem to see
I seem to see sea
I seem to see sea, seamed
I can’t seem to unsee
I can’t, seemingly
I can’t unsee
I can’t

seamlessly

The prompt for day 9 was to think about viewing things in a different way. I ended up playing with words. If you want to read what other people wrote, check here and scroll to the comments.

Overperfumed

Overperfumed people
make food
taste like aftershave
But they don’t
appreciate when
I rub fish
behind their ears

The prompt at octpowrimo.com was scent, and one of the suggested forms free verse. I’m doubly on prompt with this scentorial pet peeve written in my most commonly used form 🙂

Sometimes

Children
Great to rhyme with
Less to reason

The prompt today was tongue, tasting and speaking. I obviously went with speaking 🙂 The suggested form was tongue breaker. Other people did great things with that. These were some of my favourites:

https://thetenthzodiac.wordpress.com/2019/10/07/the-teetotaler-poem-for-7-10-2019/

https://paeansunpluggedblog.wordpress.com/2019/10/07/flavours/