Day Twenty One-Napowrimo-Garden Log: Morning Report

NaPoWriMo: here’s our daily (optional) prompt. Sawako Nakayasu’s poem “Improvisational Score” is a rather surreal prose poem describing an imaginary musical piece that proceeds in a very unmusical way. Today, try your hand at writing your own poem in which something that normally unfolds in a set and well understood way  — like a baseball game or dance recital – goes haywire, but is described as if it is all very normal.

Day Twenty One-Napowrimo-Garden Log: Morning Report

Art: Thomas A. Gieseke - Spring

I stretch and stretch and pull weeds from around the blood-dripping hibiscus—still leaking despite last week’s pruning. The Ixora has developed short tentacles again. They’re within acceptable length but have begun waving and dancing mid-air, which may require intervention if it continues during pollination hours.

The neem tree has, as expected, relocated to its favorite corner. I’ve spoken to it twice about overshadowing the herb bed, but it pretends not to hear. Classic neem!

I water a hundred liters a day, though evaporation has increased ever since the soil began whispering back. The fish—I can angle them directly from my chair now. No bait needed. They volunteer.

A gardener I am, of the rarest kind. I soak the seeds in my palms and sprout directly from them—once this week, twice last month. Regulations don't cover this method yet, but it yields excellent foliage.

Manifold flora and foliage to go. The jasmine has begun humming.

Will monitor.

This took some time for me. I had to get the hang of it! 

Once I fell into the zone, it was fun! Hope you like it too, dear Reader.

Day Twenty-Napowrimo-Carpe Diem

NaPoWriMo:write a poem informed by musical phrasing or melody, that employs some form of soundplay (rhyme, meter, assonance, alliteration). One way to approach this is to think of a song you know and then basically write new lyrics that fit the original song’s rhythm/phrasing.

I went along with something spontaneous and followed the impulse without pondering too much. I have been unwell for quite some time now, and so some days are still tiresome and taxing.

Here's my take on the Day Twenty prompt:

Day Twenty-Napowrimo-Carpe Diem

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, by John William Waterhouse-1909

1

Think of all things nice
Light, soft, and not a tinge of vice
Join in the summer slumber
I might order a juice or two


2

We can go fishing together
Though I can’t cast a line or bait
Seen some souls doing just that
Playing enough games, alright


3

Silhouettes play games at night
Lurking behind to surprise our might
The wind whispers some scary secrets
Rise, sister, rise from the dead


4

Throw your concerns, hey, you
Let it disperse like a dandelion
A cold song begins to blow
A star shower spins to a sinuous flow

5

Enjoy, my friend, seize the moment
Carpe diem! Why, lament?
Let us turn into the night
Hold each other, let it set right.

Do leave me your thoughts.

Day Eighteen -Napowrimo-At This Hour, What Sound

NaPoWriMo: Take a look at Ellen Bass’s poem, “You’re the Top.” Now, craft your own poem that recounts an experience of driving/riding and singing, incorporating a song lyric.

Day Eighteen -Napowrimo-At This Hour, What Sound

Death and Life - Gustav Klimt - 1911

Winding through the wet hush of dusk,
your song spilled from the stereo—
Enna satham indha neram*—
and something inside me slit, quiet.

The road curled like longing around the hills,
each note looping through my ribs,
a ghost of jasmine on humid skin,
a voice brushing the soul's raw door.

We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to.
That melody—half prayer, half wound—
unraveled time,
and I wept like the sky knew my name.

*Enna satham indha neram - What sound at this hour?

This poem is a response to the haunting Tamil song “Enna Satham Indha Neram” from the film Punnagai Mannan. It is the first song that came to mind as I read the prompt, so I went ahead with it. It explores a quiet, emotionally loaded moment shared between two people. The piece draws on the poignant knowledge that in the film, the lovers are living their final day together, which echoes into the lives of the listeners in the poem, acting as both a soundtrack and a catalyst for introspection. Hence, this artwork - Death and Life by Klimt, though some may find no correlation. 

Day Seventeen-NaPoWriMo-Alchemy of the Two

NaPoWriMo: ...now for our daily optional prompt. The surrealist painters Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington moved to Mexico during the height of World War II, where they began a life-long friendship. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem themed around friendship, with imagery or other ideas taken from a painting by Carrington, and a painting by Varo.

Day Seventeen-NaPoWriMo-Alchemy of the Two

Leonora Carrington-The-Lovers / Remedios Varo-The-Lovers (same title, different versions)

In a blue-walled casa, the air looms dense
Two sisters stir their tea with magic spells.
One with a wild robe, a defiant visionary
The other, a quiet soul, hid in the imaginary.


They swing in the air with their fingers laced
Like Varo’s Lovers, they mirror their face.
Both tread under the inky-liquid sky
They trade secret spells in a moonlit vase.


The kettle speaks of a one-legged wolf
Blue-Red lovers lie around thick-robed forms.
Carrington dreams of a glowing tent
Varo threads through the cosmic fold.


Not muses, never! — not someone’s mirror—
But cartographers of the unseen.
Friendship, they learned, is a spell well-spun
two minds, two moons, orbiting one sun.

Carrington and Varo are both my favourites (I do have a lot of favourites, though). I am in awe of the surrealists, the way they blend dreams with reality in unexpected ways. It is like a liminal space - irrational, strange, symbolic, challenging logic and convention. It is like perceiving someone else's dream and getting drawn into their mystery. What makes them so interesting is how they turn the bizarre into beauty, inviting you to see the world differently.

I had in mind the artworks titled The Lovers by both artists.