Day Seven-Napowrimo-Why I am Not a Dream Catcher

Napowrimo: Here’s our prompt for the day – as always, optional. A few days ago, we looked at Frank O’Hara’s poem in which he explained why he was not a painter. Jane Yeh’s “Why I Am Not a Sculpture” has a similar sense of playfulness, as she both compares herself to a sculpture and uses a series of rather silly and elaborate similes, along with references to dubious historical “facts.” Today, we challenge you to write a similar kind of self-portrait poem, in which you explain why you are not a particular piece of art (a symphony, a figurine, a ballet, a sonnet), use at least one outlandish comparison, and a strange (and maybe not actually real) fact.

I haven't chosen the said art though instead I went with the dream catcher, a bit of something mysterious and magical.

Why I Am Not a Dream Catcher

I am not a dream catcher,
though I’m often asked to hold onto things
that slip through my fingers like mist.
A dream catcher collects,
woven threads in perfect symmetry,
gathering the restless rumours
of forgotten hopes and shadowy fears.
I—on the other hand—
am more like a net full of rifts,
letting everything fall through,
from the mundane to the strange,
like marbles tumbling down a staircase.

A dream catcher hangs still,
swaying only in the softest breeze,
its feathers brushing against the air
as if it knows exactly what it’s meant to do.
I am more like a kite with frayed string,
tangled in the branches of an uncertain tree,
flying only when it feels like it.
I’ve tried to catch dreams before—
but they slip past like fish that never touch the shore,
leaving me with empty hands
and an unflinching sense of forgetfulness.

They say the first dream catcher
was made by the Ojibwa* people
to protect children from bad dreams,
but the truth is,
it wasn’t made to catch dreams at all.
It was a way to catch the threads of stories—
the ones that slip into our minds at night,
but can’t quite remember when morning arrives.

I am not a dream catcher—
I can’t weave the perfect circle
to capture the fleeting,
the ethereal, the delicate.
Instead, I watch them float away
like whispers that vanish before I can ask their names.
I gather only the scraps—
the half-remembered, the forgotten—
and call it a night.

*Protective fetishes (objects believed to have special powers) appear in numerous indigenous cultures, but the dream catcher typically associated with Native Americans originated in the Ojibwe (Chippewa) culture.

Day Six-Naopwrimo-Tea

Napowrimo Day Six: Today’s prompt (optional, as always) veers slightly away from our ekphrastic theme. To get started, pick a number between 1 and 10. Got your number? Okay! Now scroll down until you come to a chart. Find the row with your number. Then, write a poem describing the taste of the item in Column A, using the words that appear in that row in Column B and C. For bonus points, give your poem the title of the word that appears in Column A for your row, but don’t use that word in the poem itself.

I chose number Four. The edible item from column A, an onomatopoeic word cuckoo from column B and an adjective from column C.

Day Six-Naopwrimo-Tea 

The cup rests like a promise, warm in my hands,
a rich, amber sun rising from the earth’s soft breath.
The taste is wild — strong and sweet — a cuckoo’s song,
unfit for anything but silence — for stillness.

Each sip — a quiet understanding,
the leaves, the rain, the deep hum of the world.
I hold it close, and the morning stirs,
a slow, knowing joy, like a bird lifting into the sky.

Are you a tea lover? I am one. I prefer tea more than coffee. So this was an interesting take. What are your thoughts? Do leave me your thoughts.

Day Five-Napowrimo-Louder than Possible

 today’s (optional) prompt is inspired by musical notation, and particularly those little italicized –and often Italian – instructions you’ll find over the staves in sheet music, like con allegro or andante. First, pick a notation from the first column below. Then, pick a musical genre from the second column. Finally, pick at least one word from the third column. Now write a poem that takes inspiration from your musical genre and notation, and uses the word or words you picked from the third column.

Details here: https://www.napowrimo.net/day-five-12/

Day Five-Napowrimo-Louder than Possible

 

Let me remember those days

When I thought you loved me—

My heart ached louder than possible

O dear, only to see you once again.

 

My love, I longed for your words—

Your touch, your gaze, your circular face—

My heart ached louder than possible

I felt the shadow of love cross my bones.

 

The night the moonlight wept

The clock mocked me, slow and steady—

My heart ached louder than possible

It’s ticking, a whisper I can’t escape.

 

I won’t stop you now,

The pain has seeped deeper into my bones

My heart ached louder than possible

Let this pain be my final song.

Notation: Louder than possible

Genre: Aria

An "aria" originally refers to a type of song in opera, typically one sung by a soloist with an orchestral accompaniment. It's usually a moment of emotional expression or reflection in an opera. In a poem, the use of "aria" may evoke this idea of a solo performance or a lyrical, expressive moment. It can symbolize a character's personal or emotional outpouring, much like an aria in an opera. "Aria" often conveys beauty, depth, and emotional intensity, and it may signal a moment of intense feeling or contemplation in the poem.

Words: bones, shadow, clock and moonlight

Day Four-Napowrimo-Embracing Couple

...today’s (optional) prompt. In her poem, “Living with a Painting,” Denise Levertov describes just that. And well, that’s a pretty universal experience, isn’t it? It’s the rare human structure – be it a bedroom, kitchen, dentist’s office, or classroom – that doesn’t have art on its walls, even if it’s only the photos on a calendar. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem about living with a piece of art.

Art by T K Padmini

Day Four-Napowrimo-Embracing Couple

 

In the late summer afternoon

When the languid air breathes fire,

I sweat under the Embracing Couple, basking

Under the blood moon and primary colours –

Their day was perhaps Red.

Entwined in a trance-like embrace oblivious to the world –

They feel like one rather than two bodies.

Their love seems to have stood the test of Time.

 

Padmini, you must have felt it in your bones—

Love or the lack of it to have conjured up the couple.

Your innermost realm seething and simmering

For something you constantly yearned for

Your canvas has those intentional solid strokes –

You breathe into it the darkness that enveloped you—

The tempering of your anguish.

You gazed beyond your age and times.

 

The painting, pulsating with love—a fragment

In the fabric of a larger story— akin to an elegy than a sonnet.

This is one of my favourite Padmini works and it hangs in the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi's Durbar Hall Art Gallery in Kochi. There's a dedicated section to Padmini's art housing her collection even her sketchbooks. Padmini passed away at 29 following complications after childbirth (her child didn't survive too), quite young leaving behind an incredible oeuvre ahead of her time. I always imagine what she would she would have achieved if she had lived on. Many more incredible paintings lost before they had the chance to be born. I dream of owning this someday, a part of Padmini's soul.

I am loving this year's NaPoWriMo theme...Ekphrasis. Each day I am looking forward to what's coming up. It's quite exciting and exhilarating maybe because it involves my my two loves - art and poems. 

Day Three-Napowrimo-Why I am not a Mind Reader?

Day Three - NaPoWriMo

And now for our (optional) prompt. The American poet Frank O’Hara was an art critic and friend to numerous painters and poets In New York City in the 1950s and 60s. His poems feature a breezy, funny, conversational style. His poem “Why I Am Not a Painter” is pretty characteristic, with actual dialogue and a playfully offhand tone. Following O’Hara, today we challenge you to write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!

Here's my take:

AI vector art that I created with prompts on Adobe Illustrator

Why I am not a Mind Reader?

The brain is a complex character

What about the mind?!

Ask someone where the mind is—

Some point to the head, some place a hand on the chest.

Now, how do you read something

When you are unsure of even its location!

 

Besides— the kinds of people, People!

Lamenting in more ways than ever before

The mass hypnosis and the collective dirge

Sometimes envelops the air so much

That it spreads like wildlife catching up city after city,

Once, I even saw a lone palm aflame¹ in a desert!

 

Look into anyone’s eyes and you are bound to suffer—

Or even for that matter their palm, their foot, their belly²,

The whole body or their elaborate astral charts—

They reel you in and you are lost in the labyrinth forever!

Why go through all the trouble when you can stir a dream—

Sprinkling hues and shades, serving it in a metaphor of mindscapes—

Pour it onto the canvas or paper?

One just has to cook it up (somewhat like a mind reader?)

 

 

1.lone palm aflame – is an expression to suggest a haunted spirit creating chaos.

2.their palm, their foot, their belly – indicating palm reading, foot reading, and belly/naval reading

Day Two-Napowrimo-Woman Who Rode Away

Day 2 of NaPoWriMo

Write a poem that directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word, an odd/unusual simile, a statement of “fact,” and something that seems out of place in time (like a Sonny & Cher song in a poem about a Greek myth).

I decided to address Georgia O'Keeffee herself and write about her as she is one of my favourite artists.

Red Hills and Bones, 1941 by Georgia O'Keeffe
image:https://www.georgiaokeeffe.net/

Woman Who Rode Away

Look at you, Georgia

You turned a hermit

With those white walls and long halls

Those painted canvas and the framed window

You turned inwards and outwards, all at the same time.

 

How I envy you!

 

Picking the heat and the scattered skulls

You were more Zen than any person I can think of

The black door lending mystery and a frame

Providing a witchotization* of an intriguing backdrop

The long black box (1) adding a dash of humour.

 

The window overlooking the mountains

Frame within a frame, seeking you as you seek them

I can feel the longing you felt for the Red Hills in your bones,

Canna red and orange, the white birch in autumn, the pink tulips—

They grow in me as Blue and Green music.

 

Under the evening star, under the Starlight Night

You dream as a meteor shower painting into thin air

Conjuring forms from the nothingness of time and space

Holding the life force within like a time capsule ready to burst

From eons past and you stand here in the future.

 

And here I am, conjuring you.

*(witchy exotization)

(1)the long black box -  it is said that O'Keeffe chose the Casa for the black door which appears in several of her photographs behind which was nothing else but her storage space. People often thought of the black door as mysterious. She continued the theme of black in her studio space where she had a long black box that contained nothing but her art materials. There was no mystery there. I guess, she just had a sense of humour.