As I've done for the past several years, I'm participating in NaPoWriMo in April. Thirty poems (or drafts of poems) in thirty days! I find it helps get me writing and that I get at least some good drafts out of it. It's scary and fun and a challenge.
Over at the NaPoWriMo site, Maureen Thorson posts optional prompts and featured participants. If you'd like to play along, you can still register your blog on her website (or just write!). Either way, you're welcome to follow her prompts or not. I'll take my drafts down at the end of the month and choose some to revise. (Also, my definition of "poem" will be loose. Some will have lines. Some will be prose poems. I also tend to do some very short poems, some found poems, some prose "dispatches" from daily life.)
Here's a prose poem I still like that wrote for NaPoWriMo 2012:
Opening Day
OK. First of all, it's warmer out than I thought, and so I'm overdressed. Second of all, even with sunglasses on, I'm squinting. Thirdly, when a bird goes, poo-tee-weet, I direct my next thought toward it, thusly: "Petulance. We like the sound of the word petulance, don't we, birdie?" Then I pass three separate teenagers, still young, still forming, looking elastic in spirit like fourteen year-olds mostly do. I wish them the best. I begin to worry. They look so full of potential. As the third one passes, I sigh loudly in his direction, and he politely looks away, ensconced in his own hat like that. When I get on the subway, all the adults look vacant and spiritually sparse. At least there's one kid. At least he's scowling with his hands jammed into the pockets of his jacket and thinking what look like serious thoughts. At least he's swinging his little feet. His socks are black and white striped. His Adidas are the same ones my 25 year-old brother has. Welcome to opening day, little boy. Play ball, I guess.