2017-04-03

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 3rd - Did you grow up in a literary family?

The official NaPoWriMo prompt for today links to this interview, in which the first question asked is:

Did you grow up in a literary family?


Mother was entirely fictional.  So dad had
various girlfriends and some of them, pitying us,
would sometimes read out extracts from her life.

My sister and I would argue about who was
the protagonist.  She always thought it her while I,
uncertain, dithered over people met that day.

My uncle lost his appendix, and later on the plot,
eventually misplacing all the contents pages
for his mind, his life, and his wife: Aunty Peggy...

who lived, we thought, for forty years in the mad attics
with the first Mrs Rochester, and a portrait
of Doreen Grey -- now into her second childhood.

The old die old, the good die good and, they hope, well
and all my pages grow sepia at the edges
while my spine stiffens and small print blurs.

My sister failed to become the villain, married badly;
tried again, with a book-shopkeeper's son called Sid,
and now swells well with a kid and a sequel to come

and what have I done.  It seems I am the focus
character after all and I hope I haven't bored
my readership along the way.  Did I grow up

in a literary family?  Well actually
I haven't literally grown up at all.

2017-04-02

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 2nd - There's a certain formalism in these things

There's a certain formalism in these things


When she is willing, or even keen, she strips
the flowers from her hat and scatters them
upon the treacherous back step.  For him
he'll try to get her attention, by reading, silent,
in the outside loo.  There's other things they do:
she smokes a cigarette -- some hours before
and far away -- which weaves faint smoke smell through
her hair; he moves her chair an inch, no more;

she wears that old torn dress, that still a bit
reeks of sweat and other fluids.  He picks fights
over small things.  She invites him to fuck off,
cordially.  Eventually they will both hit
upon the same room, mood and time, and minks
would blush.  Usually ten minutes is enough.

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 1st - The Impirator's Trending Clothes

The Impirator's Trending Clothes

Twenty-Three Thousand People are talking about this,
and of course you want to Save the Bees, so click:
the simplest act which in an earlier
and less gratificationally now
regime would have seemed as if it could at best
form just the smallest part of the process, the start
if you will, or perhaps the end.  New on your feed
what do you want to eat?  Where and with who?
How can you know what to do without ratings, reviews,
the telling clique of stars beside each name.
She clicks the link, you won't believe what happens
next
...  You've had a text from a so-called friend
amused that trolls beneath the bridge have told
the goats and sheep that you're a freak (though they
of course used your wrong you're: their stupid).  Click
to save sick kittens -- but where -- trending now, click here
to learn this simple trick
-- but where in all
this maze -- suggested page -- where did you leave --
why don't you want to see this ad -- where did
you leave your life?  Be first to comment on this.