NaPoWriMo Day 30

 Hello!

Yay! I've made it through a whole month of poems!  This was definitely a really great year for poem writing.  I'm really happy with how they all went.  For the final prompt today, the challenge is to write a poem that involves a series of directions.  I decided to go with something more abstract, and give directions to joy.   Joy is something I'm good at.  Despite my anxiety and everything in the world around me I'm usually a very joyful person, and I'm good at finding joy.   So in a way this poem is my way of sharing how I'm able to find joy myself and hopefully help you as well.  I've done a lot of free-style the past few days so today I wanted to get back to some rhymes.   The rhythm changes which each stanza, but I was going more for the rhyme than the meter for this poem, so it might feel a little off in that regard.  

And before I get into my poem I just want to say thanks to everyone who took the time to read through all my poems this month.  I hope you enjoyed them, and this final poem for NaPoWriMo 2021!

The Path To Joy

There are many ways to arrive at joy
Here is the path I enjoy regularly:

Your starting location is to have an open mind
You must be receptive, or joy you will not find. 

Next start down the road of open eyes
See the world around you, for joy can come in disguise.

Then turn right and go your way down the rainbow street
Colours all around you, wear them head to feet. 

It also helps if you have glitter or sparkles close at hand
Your travelling companion as you wander through the land. 

Now you will be passing the grove of the smile
I recommend you pause here and enjoy it for a while. 

The final point of interest is the cuddle intersection
These fluffy, soft, and adorable things are here for your affection. 

Moving on then you'll find you have arrived at joy
And here you will find happiness for every girl and boy. 

Thanks for reading!  See you again for NaPoWriMo 2022!

NaPoWriMo Day 29

 Hello!

So today's prompt was interesting.  It was to write a poem with the idea of looking through a window.  What are you looking at?   It's a fun idea to play with.  Almost right away I was reminded of the song Waving Through A Window a song from the musical Dear Even Hansen.  To be honest I haven't seen the musical yet, but I've listened to the soundtrack and I really love it.  I really relate to the main character because of his anxiety and this song really resonates with me.  So I used this as inspiration for my poem today.  Going with free-style again so that I could let my thoughts flow.   In the end this poem ended up being a lot darker than I intended.  It talks about my inner world, my Oblivious Oblivion as I like to call it.  Here is a glimpse into my mind and my anxiety.  

Waving Through A Window

Here I sit in my own little room
My Oblivious Oblivion
With a window to view the outside world. 

I see those around me
Happy and socializing
I want to be there
To be one of them
But when I try to speak, try to move
I'm blocked
My window keeps me apart. 

I wave and smile
But get no responce
No one saw me. 
Perhaps that's for the best. 

In my Oblivious Oblivion things are simple
Things are easy
It's only me. 
It might be lonely
But that is better than embarrassing myself
Saying the wrong thing
Or being socially inept. 
No, alone in my world is best. 

I've created a world for myself
Filled with reflections
Reflections of the people and things I see through my window.
My window to the world
Sure it may be imaginary
And all in my head
But it's mine and it's real to me. 

Some days my world is enough. 
Others, I look out my window longingly
Wishing I could be where the people are. 

In the rare moment I break free
Free of my little world
I have a moment in the sun.
But often regret it
Something always goes wrong. 

I long for the sunlight beyond my window
For friends and smiles and laughs. 
But in my little world I'm safe
And perhaps that's for the best. 

My Oblivious Oblivion
With the window to the world. 

Thanks for reading!

NaPoWriMo Day 28

 Hello!

The poetry prompt for today is to write a poem that involves questions.  At first I was thinking about my anxiety, how living with anxiety is living with questions constantly filling your head and having to answer them or fight against your own body. But I couldn't think of a good way to phrase it and write it so I moved on from that idea.  Being the geek I am, I then thought of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and how the answer to life the universe and everything is 42.  But 42 what?  What's the question?   The book doesn't answer that, so I thought I'd play with that idea in a free verse poem.   Enjoy!

42

The answer to life the universe and everything.
But 42 what?

The number of people you must love?
How many roads you must walk down?
The amount of adventures you go on?
Quantity of jobs to have in your lifetime?
The number of mistakes you need to make?
Or new foods to try? 
Perhaps it's the number of animals you need to cuddle?
Could it be the number of times you need to wish upon a star?
Or feel sorrow and loss?
Hopefully it's that you need to eat 42 jelly beans everyday.
What does our lives and the universe need 42 times?

Perhaps, that's for us to decide. 

**** **

Thanks for reading!

NaPoWriMo Day 27

 Hello!

So for today's prompt I needed to pick a word from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.  Just scrolling through the first page I saw the word "lilo" and decided to go with it because of what it make me think of.  for reference:

lilo: n. a friendship that can lie dormant for years only to pick right back up instantly, as if no time had passed since you last saw each other. 

Reading this I immediately thought of my childhood best friend.  So I wrote this poem about us.  I kept with free-form style so that I could express my thoughts as I wanted to without worrying about the structure or rhyme.  Enjoy!

Lilo

Best friends forever
Sisters in Christ
We were inseparable
Every day at school from grade 2 until 8
There were good days and bad
Days spent playing on the hill
And days you got angry at me for not speaking my mind
You were there as I figured out who I wanted to be. 

But then the unthinkable
We chose to go to different high schools
No longer inseparable
Each finding our own way now. 
But that was not the end. 
Through church groups and piano lessons we still catch up
And share time together in our lives. 

As time ticks by and years pass
Through university we rarely speak
But when we do I feel we are kids again
Best friends in the school yard. 

Though life has lead us our separate ways
I know you will always be there.
To laugh
To love
To share my story with
Mon Amie

Thanks for reading!

NaPoWriMo Day 26

 Hello, 

Today's prompt is to write a parody.  It suggested writing a parody based on another poem or perhaps a song.  This reminded me of an artist that I really like called A Capella Science. He takes well known songs and creates a science parody where he sings about complex physics or scientific topics.  It's really fun.  

Inspired by A Capella Science I took the song Happier, by Marshmello and Bastille and changed the words to be about my work, seismic data processing.  Enjoy!

Lately I've been, I've been thinking
About seismic squiggly lines, about seismic squiggly lines.

Seismic data is
A type of acoustic data
That we get when we put dynamite and geophones into the ground. 
Explode the dynamite
Its energy travels outwards
And reflects off the places where two rock layers meet. 

Then to the geophones
The energy will go
To be recorded for our use. 
The line looks like a squiggle
Positive and negative
Corresponding to the energy. 

Lately I've been, I've been thinking
About seismic squiggly lines, about seismic squiggly lines.

Seismic data trace
For each geophone per shot
Put the traces together that come from each shot and we'll have now a shot record.
Gather all the shots
Hundreds or thousands of them
And we'll have all the data for our seismic survey. 

And now it's time to process
Our shot record data
Into a form that we can use. 
Remove the noise and stack it
So that we get a view
What's underneath the surface here. 

Lately I've been, I've been thinking
About seismic squiggly lines, about seismic squiggly lines.

Gain recovery
Noise removal
Deconvolution
Normal move-out
And statics
Migrate it all

Lately I've been, I've been thinking
About seismic squiggly lines, about seismic squiggly lines.

Lately I've been, I've been thinking
To see what is under the ground, seismic squiggly lines show. 

Interpreting the data
Avoiding all the faults
To drill into the oil there. 
Extract the hydrocarbons
We use to fuel our lives
This is how the process goes. 

Lately I've been, I've been thinking
About seismic squiggly lines, about seismic squiggly lines.

Hydrocarbons
Hydrocarbons
Oil & gas. 

Thanks for reading!

NaPoWriMo Day 25

 Hello!

Today's prompt is to write a poem for a particular occasion.  I'll admit my mind has been thinking about other things today and as I write this I'd rather be doing other things.  But I still wrote a poem.  It's inspired by the video game I've been playing lately, but I wrote it so that it's vague enough that it can also apply to our current world.  Enjoy!

Age of Calamity

We're living in the age of calamity
and contemplating the gravity
of this new reality
we need a new mentality
with no banality
if we are to find humanity
through this time in its full capacity

In actuality
it's an eventuality
that we will lack the tenacity
the morality
and logically
to save everyone from the brutality
and the depravity
that evil is bringing to this world. 

Thanks for reading!

NaPoWriMo Day 24

 Hello!

I had a lot of fun with today's prompt, though I admit I got it a little reversed.  The prompt was to find a factual article about an animal, then replace the animal's name with something more abstract, and use that as inspiration for a poem.  My first thought at picking an animal was a panda as they are my favourite.  Then for what to replace the animal with, I thought of something with astronomy as that's my other favourite thing.  I then remembered Asteroid 263251 Pandabear which is an asteroid that I discovered and named back when I was in university pursuing my M.Sc. So instead my poem became about pandas in space, rather than writing about asteroids on earth. lol.
For structure I decided to go with the limerick.  I've never really liked the limerick, I'm not very good at writing them.  But I want to use this NaPoWriMo to expand myself and work on my poetry skills so I decided to write this poem using a poetry style that I could use improvement in.  So here is my limerick poem about space pandas.   Enjoy!

Astro Panda

There once was a panda in space
With a helmet to cover its face
Between Jupiter and Mars
He observed the stars
While around the sun he did race. 

This panda did also rotate
Tumbling, never travelling straight
With its irregular shape
He could not escape
Nor deny that this was his fate.

The asteroid named PandaBear
Is not fuzzy for he has no hair
He is made of rocks
With a couple ice blocks
And in space he does life without air. 

Thanks for reading! 

NaPoWriMo Day 23

 Hello!

So I read the poetry prompt for today, but I'm in a really crabby mood so I don't have the patience to try and figure it out.  Instead I'm going to write a poem to let out some of my rage.  I feel so much like Aggretsuko, so she's the inspiration for my poem today.  Also I'm writing in Sijo structure because I like it. 

I go into work, mild mannered and polite
Working quietly here, I accomplish my tasks
But after work it's all rage! Down with capitalism!

Thanks for reading. 

NaPoWriMo Day 22

 Hello!

Today's prompt was a fun one.  The challenge was to write a poem that invokes a specific object as a symbol of a particular time, era, or place.  Lately my mind has been thinking about steampunk as I'm working on some cosplays from that fictional time period, and one of my favourite book series The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences is celebrating it's 20th anniversary next week.  I decided to use steampunk as the "time period" for my poem.  For those who aren't aware, steampunk takes place during our historical Victorian era, but during this time steam as become a main source of power and is used to create grand airships and other "modern day" technology but using steam instead of burring coal, gas, oil, or using our modern day batteries.  It's a unique mix of sci-fi with a retro feel. 

As for the object to represent this time period, when I think of steampunk I always think of polished metal gears, usually brass or gold. So a brass gear became the theme for my poem.  As for structure I wanted to use common meter again, because of what I mentioned in my earlier poem.  I hope you enjoy this look into steampunk. Enjoy!

The Brass Gear

The era of the polished gear
An age of invention
A time of new enlightenment
Technology with steam.

A polished brass gear gleams anew
In an automaton
While airships float up in the sky
Bright civilization.

The tinkerers and engineers
Creating inventions
To bring us into a new world
Modern yet still retro.

Victorian era England
With new techonology
Brass and steam now power the world
The era of the gear. 

Thanks for reading!

NaPoWriMo Day 21

 Hello!

For today's poetry prompt the challenge is to write a poem that uses lines that have a repetitive setup.  At first I had to decide what repetitive setup I wanted to use for my poem.  That would help determine what the poem would be about.  I decided on the word "obviously".  When repeated over and over it takes on a belittling or bullying tone, that you're better than the person you're talking to.  I thought it would be interesting to use this as a feeling for a poem.  As for what to write about, at first I wanted to pick something geeky, but then the poem took on a tone of the "geek gatekeepers" and that was a little too much for me to want to convey in this poem.  Instead I went with more of a science idea.  In particular I started with the idea that I studied astronomy in university and used that as a launching point.  The poem takes on the voice of someone talking to me about that, and I use this poem to explore the mindset of someone not very well educated.  It's become a major issue, all the people that don't "believe" in scientific facts.  This poem brings that to light. 

To anyone who is well educated you'll be able to tell which parts are exaggerations, which are just plain wrong, and which could be true.  To anyone who knows me you'll know which ones are true for me personally.  There is a mix of all of these in there.   

It's so obvious that each step comes from the previous... perhaps in the future you'll re-think some of the things that you find obvious when making assumptions or conclusions. 

Obviously

So you studied astronomy?
Obviously you know all about the moon and can name all the planets. 
Obviously you are an expert in all the constellations. 
Obviously you even discovered and named a constellation. 
Obviously you know where the planets are in the sky and which constellation they are in. 
Obviously you can tell me my horoscope.
Obviously you already know which sign I am. 
Obviously you write the horoscopes for the local newspaper. 
Obviously you also predict the weather, it's about as accurate as writing horoscopes. 
Obviously you know the weather around the world at any given time. 
Obviously you are a world traveler and have been everywhere. 
Obviously you have seen and experienced so much. 
Obviously you are super smart. 

Thanks for reading, obviously.