Monday, April 28, 2014

PAD Day 28: A Slightly Revised Horoscope

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "settled" poem (anyting to do with settling - pioneers, tie games, compromises, etc.) and (2) write a "found newspaper" poem - take an article from a newspaper and use the words from that article in any way you want. what I did was to search for the word “settle” on the website of my local paper for today. It came up in the horoscope, so I wrote an “excision” poem (where you use the words from another source in the order they appear, but cut out as many of the other words as you want). I did this once with Billy Collins' poem "Victoria's Secret" and trimmed it down to something about 90% shorter and more surreal - it was fun. Here’s today's result:


Today’s Horoscope

Your imagination will be as you imagine it.
Spoil yourself – you’ll need to make more money.
Much depends on the immobile solar eclipse.
Focus helps immutable circumstances –
boy, do you have it. Several people recognize you.
You’ll be stymied by today’s puzzle –
let it be chaotic. Emotions eventually
will settle themselves. If you kick the problem,
the situation will be lost, a solution never thriving.
Hypotheticals waste the end of the day.
Who could ever be sure of that?
The door isn’t standing wide open, it’s ajar.
Stop thinking big. Create some minor rock songs,
even if it’s a bad one. Be kindly.
Your next idea doesn’t really work,
and it doesn’t look cool.


[Source: Holiday Mathis' syndicated column in the Camden Courier Post, April 28, 2014.]

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