NaPoWriMo Day 4, 2022

Spring snow (April 1, Pully, Switzerland)

Slowly coming out of hibernation, but will try to catch up with the missed prompts throughout the month. Today’s prompt challenges us “to write a poem . . . in the form of a poetry prompt. If that sounds silly, well, maybe it is! But it’s not without precedent. The poet Mathias Svalina has been writing surrealist prompt-poems for quite a while, posting them to Instagram. You can find examples here, and here, and here.” (Full NaPoWriMo post available here.)

I remember writing a similar piece in 2018 in anticipation of a month filled with poetry. Here it is. I love its mood and its hope. And here’s a darker take on today’s prompt, possibly influenced by the carnage wrecked upon the world by a power-hungry tyrant. It’s hard to find that earlier self in what I just wrote. I borrowed Mathias Svalina’s closing line.

Interrogation Techniques

1. First you take the meaning out of a word
2. by shaking it vigorously
3. until it begins to foam at the mouth.
4. Hold the sieve of your head gently by the ears
5. so the foam spreads
6. evenly over the desert of thought.
7. One word can go a long way
8. to raising out of nothing a shimmering oasis
9. with a caravan picking its way through the dunes
10. toward it or, in your case, toward
11. a prison fortress. Commandeer your worst
12. fears as desert prison guards.
13. Promise them your firstborn
14. word. Pay them nothing. Hunger
15. will only make them more vicious.
16. Keep the word off balance at all times.
17. Booze helps, but have you tried hobbling
18. yourself? Hurling your body
19. repeatedly against a cliché? Playing loud
20. regrets for 72 hours straight
21. while propping your eyes open with toothpicks?
22. Initiate friendly interrogation
23. when the word is sleep-deprived.
24. One way to do it is by chewing
25. on its fingernails all the way down
26. to the wrist. If your prisoner is manacled,
27. you may want to keep the hand
28. whole. Chew down
29. to the first knuckle instead.
30. Be forceful and direct. Don’t beat
31. around the bush. Words are terrified
32. of precision. It helps to have an array of truth-
33. extracting instruments at the ready.
34. Bone saws and pliers and drills. Watch
35. for the blanched-face syndrome–you’re close
36. to a false confession. Listen
37. and disbelieve. Wait for the first wave
38. of sickness to pass.
39. The second. The third.
40. In that stink-filled room, when you ask
41. for the word’s name
42. and it cannot speak,
43. silence
44. is the poem.