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:
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| AI vector art that I created with prompts on Adobe Illustrator |
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
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