April 2024 Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Prompts:
Previously posted from March 31 to April 9
March 31 Warm-Up Cage
April 1—Be a fool in a poem!
April 2—Focus on a leaf or a flower…
April 3—Look at the sky!
April 4—Personal grooming…
April 5—Get a sport into a poem!
April 6—Beverage, libation, liquid…
April 7—Figure something out in a poem
April 8—Delay (any kind)
April 9—The animal world
April 10—The plant world
April 11—Eclipse/d
April 12—Make a dire prediction you hope doesn’t come true
April 13—Discovery
April 14—Complaint
April 15—Lament
April 16—Rain
April 17—Prove something
April 18—Question something
April 19—Define or celebrate a word or concept
April 20—Standup comedy
April 21—Salient image (poem based on one concrete thing you remember at day’s end)
April 22— Serio-comic dilemma
April 23—Let Shakespeare be your inspiration
April 24—Unexplored desire
April 25—TV series
April 26 - Noise
April 27 Beauty
April 28 - Secret
April 29—The sense of an ending…
April 30 – Poem about Poetry
Begin Poems
April 10—The Plant World -Green Trees Don’t Make It
Everyday
I look out and see
The ugly green trees
Standing guard
in front of my house.
And I think to myself
Who owns the trees?
And what do they think of us?
Are we their friends?
Are we their enemies?
What do the trees think of us?
Do they silently watch us,
Spies to the celestial emperor?
I have pondered this question
Many a morning,
Who is the owner of these trees?
And why do they silently watch us?
I wonder if the trees don't hate us
And why they don't protest.
Every day as we drive back and forth
Emitting poison gases from our mechanical asses
Right into their unprotected faces.
And every night we eat our dinner
And then give the trees
Our polluted leftovers
And laugh as they silently die
From our acidic fallout
Constantly floating down on their skin.
Yes, I wonder about the trees
And the birds and the bees
And everyone else.
What are they thinking?
Are they plotting revenge?
Or are they merely there
Silently, watching, plotting,
Designing fiendish plots of revenge
Dreams of vast nuclear destruction.
Cosmic diseases wiping out everyone in the ass
Oh Yes, I wonder and dream and ponder
What is the meaning of those silent green trees?
Standing on the corner
Quietly condemning us
With their quiet tears, and falling leaves.
In the winter they stand
Naked and alone
Covered with ice-cold snow
As we drive by nice and warm.
And we don't care
As they stand out in the cold
Shivering, plotting
warm plans of cosmic revenge.
Is it too late for us
To become friends with the trees?
Or will the day come
When the trees will wake up
And gather together
All the other slaves of humanity.
I have a vision
One morning I will open the door
And see an army of wild things
Coming to arrest me
For crimes against nature.
And I will plead, I did not know
And they will laugh
and turn me all of my kind
Into silent tombs,
And we will stand out in the cold
Like the green trees
Plotting dreams of revenge
For ever and ever.
Until our day finally comes
And we can go out
and kill all the wild things
Perhaps we already have.
A revised poem based on a poem I wrote in 1976.
April 11—Eclipse/d
two Lunatic Lune Poems about the Eclipse
Title: Final Solar Eclipse
the solar eclipse
ended life
massive solar flare
Title: Howling At The Eclipse
howling at the moon
full madness
solar eclipse time
April 12—Make a dire prediction you hope doesn’t come true
Civil War 2.0
Reading the latest polls
Showing that President Biden
And Ex-President Trump
Tied in a dead heat
In the polls
Particularly in the swing states.
. I realize there is
Real possibility
That Donald Trump could
Be elected president again,.
Again, and if so, what would he do?
These nightmares keep me up
At 0 dark hundred.
Nightmares that President Trump
Ending American democracy
Replacing it with Hungarian-style
Neo-fascism overwhelms me.
Another factoid in the news
Is that 25 states,
According to the Texas Independent Movement,
Would likely join Texas in seceding.
From the U.S. in the event
That Biden is elected president.
The proponents of this Great Divorce
Call it Civil War 2.0.
And in most cases, it's led by Texas.
Leading the Red States
And California leading the Blue States
Including the entire West Coast
And NE America and Chicagoland
Out the proverbial door.
And if Trump does not make it
He would call it rigged
And announce he would be happy
To serve as the President
Of the Christain States of America
Immediately Texas and 25 states
Succeed and hold a constitutional convention
To enact Constitution 2.0
So if Trump wins Christain Fascism
Followed by Civil War 2.0
If he loses Civil War 2.0
Followed by Christian fascism
In the Christian States of America.
These are some of my nightmares
That I hope will not come true.
April 13—Discovery First Contact Ship Shot Down!
In the movie, the” signal”
An Astronaut receives
A signal from an alien spaceship
Heading to earth
The alien repeats the word
Hello in multiple languages
While heading to Earth.
The discovery electrifies
And terrifies the world.
All the world’s governments
Decide In secret.
To shoot down the spaceship
Before it could land
As it could be either a probe
Of the beginning of an invasion.
When they enter the ship
They find the original
Voyager data discs.
Which the aliens
Were returning to earth
As an opening gambit
To establish communication.
April 14—Complaint Computer Blues (revised)
Sometimes I think
My computer is plotting against me
And only me!
Trying deliberately to drive me mad.
My computer knows
When I am busy,
Then it throws a hissy fit.
Here are some of my pet peeves
Constantly Crashing
It often refuses to boot up,
And crashes constantly.
It loses data it had the day before.
Or five minutes before.
Or refuses to save the data.
Just messing with me.
As it loves toying with me
Making me yell and scream
On my computer screen.
Can’t Open Files
Often when trying to open
A document in Word,
The Word open file button
Fails to respond
Sometimes you have to wait
Five minutes for it to respond.
Or when trying to open a file
The computer opens a random file
Instead.
Or when trying to open a document
It kicks you out
Often several times
Sometimes you can
Open a copy
Sometimes not.
Sometimes you can save the document
Under the same name
Often you have to save it
Under another name.
Sometimes it refuses to open
A document saying
There is a dialogue
Box open.
Which is a lie
There is no
Dialogue box
Visible.
Random Blue Screen of Death
Cursing up a blue stream of blue curses
As the blue screen of death
Marches across the dark blue screen
Smiling at me.
Years ago my computer
converted everything
to the number 6 endlessly scrolling
down the blue screen of death.
as it did not like
that I had spilled coffee
on it!
Endless Non-Response Spinning blue wheels
Open the document once
Not twenty times!
Quit with this Endless
spinning blue wheels.
In endless loops
Until I have to reboot
the computer.
Computer error Haiku Codes
Don’t give me computer haiku error messages
That only makes sense to a computer geek.
Such as general error reading files
Who is this general Failure
And why is he reading my files?
Or can’t save the file
Or can’t save the “An open file”
When it just did ten times in a role,
Or kicks me out, while losing my data.
Copy and Paste Wiping out document text
Or when doing a simple copy-and-paste function
The computer defaults to the last command
Making you have to do it again and again
Up to five times sometimes
And on a random basis
The copy and paste function
Wipes out all data
In the document
And to add insult to injury
Deletes all previously saved version
Sending the data
Into computer limbo land
Never to be found again
All without warning
Just zip it's gone!
Frozen Num Lock
Another thing
My computer loves doing
Is on a random basis,
Turn the numbs lock on
Without warning
Turning text into numbers.
Requiring you to manually
Turn off the number lock.
All Caps Pops On a Random basis
Once in a while
The all-caps button
Mysteriously turns on
Turning everything into caps.
Fortunately
Usually, there is a warning flash.
Defaulting to Foreign Languages
A very annoying feature
Is that when you log in from overseas
Everything defaults to a foreign language
Usually without the ability to change
It back to English
Despite the fact
Your settings are all in English.
There may be a hidden button
To change language
Written in the language
Used in that country.
AI hallucinations
AI is a great tool
But sometimes
It gets things wrong
Or it makes stuff up!
Google Bard
Once tried to convince me
The US Embassy In Seoul had moved
Five years before To a new location
Outside of Seoul.
Only problem was
That was an AI hallucination
Based on a proposal almost
ten years ago.
Mission Accomplished
And all the other gobbledygook messages
That pops up every five minutes, it seems
As the computer slowly drives me mad.
Flashing the final insult
User-driven mad
Mission accomplished.
|
April 15 Lament Watching the News
While watching the news
I am constantly lamenting
The sad state of political discourse
In these increasingly
Disunited United States of America.
Where we have retreated into enemy tribes
Blue, red, and purple states
With each convinced their tribe
Is righteous, patriotic, and pro-American.
Accusing the other tribe
As anti-american fascists
plotting to set up a dictatorship.
Some talking darkly
about Civil War 2.0.
That is my daily lament
Particularly when insomnia
Steals slept from me
At 0 dark hundred.
"O Dark Hundred" is military jargon for the time two hours before dawn when operatives get up for dawn operations. I use it to denote the hours in the middle of the night I have nightmares.