Fourth day and counting. Today, I really meant to go with the official prompt and write something inspired by traditional blues. Needless to say, after almost an hour of mulling this over, I eventually gave up. Next, I was struck by the lightning of Divine Inspiration, and decided to challenge myself to write a poem in terza rima instead. But as soon as I sat down to write it, this bizarre thing came out instead:
Bedtime Story
Crick, crack, crock
the sound of chalk
crunching on the blackboard.
One, two, three
wish you could see
my Persian slipper
white silk and chipper
playing at hopscotch.
Fee, fi, fo
used to know
all the riddles and rhymes
all the bells, all the chimes
when the clock struck twelve
threw a pebble: knock-knock.
Swish, swash, hush
please don’t rush
can you see that door
on your bedroom floor
now it breaks with a ‘crack’
there’s a coat on the rack
who’s that, ‘tick-tock’, on the hook?
I’ve never actually made use of onomatopoeia in my poems before, but it’s refreshing to try something new for once. I wonder what made me write this poem the way I did…
April 5th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
I cried a thousand bitter tears
Yeah, bitter tears, it’s true
And the next rainy night you’ll know
That I’m still crying them for you
(Nick Cave, “A Box for Black Paul”; in many of his early songs you find sudden apparitions of bluesy rhythms and imagery. Pretty dark stuff, needless to say.)
April 5th, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Yes, I was sure that if I wrote something inspired by blues, you’d be there to… do something with/to it. Maybe that’s why I wrote something entirely different in the end.
(Also because I don’t know that much about blues. 
)