In Answer to the NaPoWriMo Prompt I Ramble On

My dreams are like recipes which incorporate ingredients drawn from a hat filled with not only all the people places and things I ever encountered in my life but all the people places and things that I have not.

My dreams prefer salt to sugar.

My dreams see the future inside the rhythmic pounding of ocean waves.  My dreams taste the stars inside the fragrance of the sea that lingers on my fingers after they trace the spiral inside a shell.  Everything I touch is turquoise.

My dreams have visited van Gogh in Arles and Basquiat in New York but they have not met Matisse anywhere.

Now here I am again, wandering through subterranean tunnels—grey, endless, ominous.  The word “tenebrific” appears over and over in black-light-neon, vibrating from the ceiling—or is it just a very low sky?  How can sky exist underground?  It must have fallen.  Oh well.  Que Sera, Sera.

All of this ubiquitous talk of being is like a door slamming in my mind over and over.  Why can’t we take a break and spend some time not being for a change?

I’m going to tell you exactly what I think.  K. is exhausted.  K. doesn’t want to hear about it.

But tomorrow is bound to be different.  It will emerge in some other costume, some novel era.  The future is not only shifty, but questionable.  It has nothing at all to do with my dream, or any dream that has forever been lost inside the other dreams that are waiting to be found.  Who said dreams are sweet?  I prefer them salty.

But tempus fugit.  My dream says this monologue has gone on way too long.

The turquoise on the edge of a spiraling wave.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is actually a list of prompts, each supposedly building on the ones before. I remember when I did this previously I rambled on without making sense, too. I think the purpose is not to make an actual poem, but to come up with some things that might be extracted and used somewhere else, and it certainly could work for that.

But mostly I’m using it as a vehicle for showing the collages I did recently for a Kick-About prompt, where I used artist postcards (including Basquiat and van Gogh) as my base. They are in the same spirit as the NaPoWriMo list I think.

Oh, and tenebrific means “being without light or without much light”.  I’m quite sure I’ve never seen it in a poem, or anywhere else for that matter.

33 thoughts on “In Answer to the NaPoWriMo Prompt I Ramble On”

  2. I feel like I just listened to a very cool album. Dang, Kerfe, you’re on a roll. A little sunshine and green can infuse the muse. Your “snapshots” are very dreamlike and a lovely smorgasbord. I like sweet dreams but salty ones are also tasty.

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    1. Thanks Jade. Longer days definitely lift the spirits.

      Different tracks on an album–that’s exactly what this prompt is like. Dreams are a good framework for many speculations.

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  3. don’t know what to say. Oops I lied.

    I like hats more than snakes, but
    dolphins more than hats, so
    why ask a bear? because.
    I like Godzilla more’n Japanese do
    but beside them critters in bed,
    move over, make some room.
    nonsense and I are on good terms.

    I’m probably not doing well, but yea,
    you’re on a roll. Fair enough?

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  5. This was a great post to read when my own energies are already flagging (my classic horserace, putting too much into the start, but I’ve yet to quit; I’ll post something on WP soon.) And you’ve just given me a word I have to use in a poem, somehow, as soon as possible. 🙂

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  6. Pingback: In Answer to the NaPoWriMo Prompt I Ramble On — K.

  7. Love these. Hardly know what to say. There’s so much. The ramble and the collages are both marvelous. Personality being what it is (being, not not-being), my mind fastened immediately on turquoise because I had a dream about a mentor whose kitchen was a most stunning turquoise, then many years later I had a sort of waking dream of myself sitting writing at a table in a turquoise kitchen. And the waking dream arrived while I was out walking in DC’s most famous park, walking by Rock Creek, with the water crashing over boulders making a wonderful sound. My mind was both places at once, in that park by the water and in a turquoise kitchen — an event almost as surreal (perhaps) as your stunning collages. These are brilliant, Kerfe. Cannot express how much I love them. If I ever have a pet snake, the first thing I plan to do is buy him a hat.

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  10. I loved this poem with all 20 little prompts! Also tenebrific! I love that word! The Tenebrae service is one of the highlights for some of the kids – they love it when they turn off the lights and everyone drums on the pews and stomps their feet!

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