Category Archives: Prompt

NaPoWriMo, 2013, #30

LONGFELLOW AT HIS SHORTEST (PROMPT)

Another Longfellow distortion of facts. Our prompt was to take a poem and write the opposite. I chose “The Arrow and the Song”, which, out of respect for Longfellow because I’m about to ruin his name, I will put first.

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

My version “The Song and The Arrow”:

I shot my arrow to the ground,
I knew right then where it was bound;
So slowly did it move away,
I could see precisely where it lay.

I belted out a song to earth,
The arrow entered to its girth;
Anyone with ears could hear,
My song, and run in fear!

Soon, quite soon, stuck in the clay
The arrow, broken, where it lay;
Parts of my song that I had sung,
Stolen by enemies one by one.

NaPoWriMo, 2013, #28, Pretty in Pink

Pretty In Pink

My lady calmly crests the hill.

She wears the pink colors of innocence,

     her steed white enough to blind your eyes.

The battle stops as if every man has turned to stone.

Holding, with caution, her delicate pink parasol

     above her steed’s handsome, nodding head.

 She tilts her rose-tinted face as she comes slowly down the hill

     Smiling as if seeing not the insanity that has taken place.

  She sees not the dark red blood and gore running in rivulets,

     limbs now belonging to no one, strewn about recklessly

     as if they had dropped from the sky.

My lady smiles as she meets the eyes of the frozen fighters

     knowing that this battle has everything to do with her.

Knowing that with one word she can stop the carnage.

She takes no notice of the breezes bringing to her the

     overwhelming smell of warm fresh blood.

Her steed tiptoes through the entrails of men no longer men

     and moves its ears forward to the sounds of moaning.

Both steed and lady proudly walk onward

     and over the next hill.

The battle resumes its ferocity.