Create Art Podcast

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

Find a factual article about an animal. A Wikipedia article or something from National Geographic would do nicely – just make sure it repeats the name of the animal a lot. Now, go back through the text and replace the name of the animal with something else – it could be something very abstract, like “sadness” or “my heart,” or something more concrete, like “the streetlight outside my window that won’t stop blinking.” You should wind up with some very funny and even touching combinations, which you can then rearrange and edit into a poem.

Walking the Peccary Blues

A bass guitar

javelina skunk pig

a medium-sized hoofed mammal

Tayassuidae The New World pigs

found Central and South America

and the southwestern area of North America

in length

2 ft 90 cm and 4 ft 120 cm

full-grown usually

Bass guitars are social creatures

living large or small

eating the roots, grubs, of foods

identify each others

strong odors

A group of bass guitars live together

Call themselves a "squadron"

squadron averages six and nine members.

last common ancestors

of bass guitars

even-toed ungulates

vaguely piglike

living over 50 million years from now

Bass guitars evolved Europe about 30 million years ago

In the Old World,

bass guitars went extinct,

but they survived North America

three million years ago, bass guitars spread South America.

They are often confused

feral domestic pigs of the Old World

Mayans kept herds of bass guitars,

using them in rituals and for food

pets in many countries,

being raised on farms

as a source of food

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that responds, in some way, to another. This could be as simple as using a line or image from another poem as a jumping-off point, or it could be a more formal poetic response to the argument or ideas raised in another poem. You might use a favorite (or least favorite poem) as the source for your response. And if you’re having trouble finding a poem to respond to, here are a few that might help you generate ideas: “This World is Not Conclusion,” by Peter Gizzi, “In That Other Fantasy Where We Live Forever,” by Wanda Coleman, “La Chalupa, the Boat,” by Jean Valentine, or “Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm,” by Carl Phillips.

Whimper – response to T.S.Elliot’s The Hollow Men

1

Remembrance

We are the ones who aren’t innocent

We do not ask for mercy

Admitting our “sins” to those others deem worthy

Is not the path we have chosen

We just ask to be in your thoughts

We want to be part of your memory

The holy life escaped us

As we tread our own way to our new home

2.

Entrance

As we walk into the new realm

Some try to hide in shame

Others try to cover themselves in hopes

that they will be transported to a happier place

We are being watched obtrusively

Every movement calculated

So some of us stop moving altogether

But the wind pushes us all forward

To our unknown destination

3.

Arrival

We are here

But not with each other

Those that have traveled this path

Disappeared when I woke

A faint sun has risen

And the stars seem almost brighter

I am alone

And the urge to keep walking has ceased

This feels like it will be my home

I will pay whatever eternal penance here

Among the nothingness

4.

Empty

As I look around

The eyes that once penetrated my soul

Are no longer here

The next day, if that is what I can call it

I see the footprints around my camp

But not the footprints I created

I know they are not mine

As I step in them

Most do not fit

Either to large or small

And I feel the fresh warmth

From another’s foot

As I step inside their print

5.

Eternal Shadow

The sun never blazes as it did

The world feels numb

My body doesn’t react as it once did

And my emotions are dulled

The songs that brought me hope

Have warped into a doomsday nursery rhyme

After countless days

I have forgotten my name

After eons, I have forgotten how to count

At some point, I decreased to a whisper

Until there was no I 

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that invokes a specific object as a symbol of a particular time, era, or place.

Black Beauty

We are approaching 10 years

With me at the wheel and you getting us home

The day I brought you home

We already were breaking the law

Because the salesman forgot

To put the registration plate on you

You have turned on just about every time

That I placed the keys in your ignition

And you have seen two others die by the wayside

As they could not compete with you

Rarely have I ever let anyone drive you

Even when, perhaps, I should have

Those who have known me for the past 10 years

Have seen you by my side every time

My constant companion

My liberator from walking

The wings to my Sagittarius soul

I know one day we will be parted

You will be stripped of anything of value

And I will be partitioned to those who can use a spare lung

I hope that we will be together

Driving the roads in the afterlife

One window open

One song blasting the night away

One car, one man

Looking for freedom

On the road

Tank full of never ending gas

Riding till morning

And finally finding home

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

And now for our (optional) prompt. Have you ever heard or read the nursery rhyme, “There was a man of double deed?” It’s quite creepy! A lot of its effectiveness can be traced back to how, after the first couplet, the lines all begin with the same two phrases (either “When the . . .” or “Twas like,”). The way that these phrases resolve gets more and more bizarre over the course of the poem, giving it a headlong, inevitable feeling.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like this one, uses lines that have a repetitive set-up. Here’s an example I came up with after seeing this video of . . . a bucket of owls.

Persistence

Waiting on depression to lose its weight

Waiting on the weight to be lifted from my shoulders

Waiting on my shoulders to gain strength

Waiting on the strength that was previously supplied

Waiting on the supplies that protect me from myself

Waiting on myself to find a way through

A way through

depression’s weight on my shoulders strength supplying the way

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

Our (optional) prompt for the day is to write a sijo. This is a traditional Korean poetic form. Like the haiku, it has three lines, but the lines are much longer. Typically, they are 14-16 syllables, and optimally each line will consist of two parts – like two sentences, or a sentence of two clauses divided by a comma. In terms of overall structure, a sijo functions like an abbreviated sonnet, in that the first line sets up an inquiry or discussion, the second line continues the discussion, and the third line resolves it with a “twist” or surprise. For more on the sijo, check out the primer here and a long list of examples in English, here.

Any day ending in Y

I am awakened at 2 o’clock,

                By existential dread

I am awakened at 4 o’clock,

                By a child not peeing in bed

Sleep is as elusive as inspiration,

                Take a nap old man

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

And last but not least, our prompt (optional, as always). Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a humorous rant. In this poem, you may excoriate to your heart’s content all the things that get on your nerves. Perhaps it’s people who tailgate when driving, or don’t put the caps back on pens after they use them. Or the raccoons who get into your garbage cans. For inspiration, perhaps you might look to this list of Shakespearean insults. Or, for all of you who grew up on cartoons from the 1980s, perhaps this compendium of Skeletor’s Best Insults might provide some insight.

Blindspot

You are unfit for anyplace except hell

As I try to quickly and carefully

Get from my home to my destination

You believe the best place to drive

Is just behind me enough

To where I cannot see you

You think that this a game

Like the one you are playing on your phone

As we are going down the highway

At 70 miles per hour

Maybe you have misread the drivers handbook

And think that if I hit your car

And the front end is damaged

I am somehow to blame

But its actually the reverse

I have no wish to crash into you

And I like to make myself very visible and obvious

Hench why I signal turns even in my neighborhood

My nephew has said I drive like an old man

Who has a trailer attached

With recliners that have heat and vibrating controls

And seated in those recliners are pink lawn flamingoes

Enjoying the drive, enjoying being alive

So I do ask for a little room on the road we share

And I do mean the word share

Because either we both own a piece of it

Or none of us owns a scratch of it

Either way, either drive side by side

Or in front or behind

But stay away from the blind spot

Lest you risk being blindsided

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

And now for our (optional) daily prompt! This one comes to us from Stephanie Malley, who challenges us to write a poem based on the title of one of the chpaters from Susan G. Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words. The book’s  table of contents can be viewed using Amazon’s “Look inside” feature. Will you choose “the poem squash?” or perhaps “grocery weeping” or “the blue socks”? If none of the 60 rather wonderful chapter titles here inspire you, perhaps a chapter title from a favorite book would do? For example, the photo on my personal twitter account is a shot of a chapter title from a P.G. Wodehouse novel — the chapter title being “Sensational Occurrence at a Poetry Reading.”

Grocery Weeping

I stand in the store

Mask donned, list in hand

People moving around in a frantic pace

I try to maintain the prescribed distance

But constantly get bumped from all sides

No one is paying attention to each other

Just focused on what is in stock

And muttering a what they can’t find

The shelves are getting more bare

Each time I do the weekly shopping

With more left on the list being unfilled

That what I can find

It takes about a month

For me to sit in the car

After another failed attempt

To begin to cry, alone

I so want to be the breadwinner for my family

Be the stone they can rely on

In these terrible times

I look back at the diary I’ve kept

And see the despair grow with each entry

My wife says it will all be fine

We will make sue with what is available

Besides we don’t need all that meat

Vegetables can be made a million ways

But every trip brings less and less

Its not that we don’t have the money

As that is what the issue was when I was a child

Watching my mother cry when the bill was too high

And I had to put back the food

This is different

This is not supposed to be

This is not the American supermarket

As told to us by Ginsberg

This land of plenty

Has turned into a weekly battlefield of selfishness

This once “great nation” has eaten away at itself

No toilet paper, no precious hand sanitizer

Others have hoarded it

Others have followed the trucks bring in supplies

And raided them while they are being unloaded

Is America great yet

And then one day the tide changed

Something happened that the stores became better stocked

We weren’t scowling at each other

When we saw that person got what we could not

I can’t point to the exact day

All I know is that one day

I wasn’t dreading the trip to the store

That I actually got everything on the list

I got everything and a little more

And that little more turned into everything I wanted

Not needed

And I wonder

When the next time will occur

When the stores are empty

When we will be at each others throats

For I fear we have not learned the lessons

That have been graciously given

And soon we will be back at it

Ramming carts into each other

 Trying to loosen the others stockpiles

And taking what we claim is ours

In order to keep our greatness

At their expense

Will it be a blizzard in Texas

Or a heat wave in Maine

Or will the oil dry up in the middle east

And we will be forced to walk again

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

And now, our (optional) prompt. I’ve seen some fairly funny twitter conversations lately among poets who are coming to terms with the fact that they keep writing poems about the moon. For better or worse, the moon seems to exert a powerful hold on poets, as this large collection of moon-themed poems suggests. Today, I’d like to challenge you to stop fighting the moon. Lean in. Accept the moon. The moon just wants what’s best for you and your poems. So yes – write a poem that is about, or that involves, the moon.

Dropping Trow

In the early days

Of my rebellion

I’d drive around town

In the shag carpeted van

And on occasion

When I’d let one of my followers drive

I’d perch up in my captains chair

Loosen my pants

And plant my cheeks firmly against the glass

Aimed at unsuspecting motorists

Who happened my way

Bathing them in the full light

Of my generously hirsute ass

While living above a vacuum cleaner store

And a poor mans strip club

With no less than 5 lesbian couples

We would entertain ourselves

In my little red clown car

Packing as many as we could

And seeing who could

Cause the most accidents

Or receive the most toots from car horns

As they would show the world

Their nether regions for free

Now as a father of two very precocious children

I wonder when they beginning the journey

Of being driven by chips

If they will decide

That it’s a good idea

To take after their father

And plant their glutinous Maximus

On the window

Just as I drive by

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

Because it’s Friday, today I’d like you to relax with the rather silly form called Skeltonic, or tumbling, verse. In this form, there’s no specific number of syllables per line, but each line should be short, and should aim to have two or three stressed syllables. And the lines should rhyme. You just rhyme the same sound until you get tired of it, and then move on to another sound. Here’s a short example I came up with.

Skeltonic verse is a fun way to get some words on the page without racking your brains for deep meaning. It’s a form that lends itself particularly well to poems for children, satirical verse, and just plain nonsense.

Open Mic Nights

I don’t want to start a fight

On my nephews open mic night

But when I stand on the stage

I can’t help but feel the rage

When the others flip through their phones

Searching through their tomes

And talk through another’s speech

It truly makes me want to screech

Respect the fucking mic

Respect the fucking mic

It the mantra of the night

My fists start to get tight

And I know its not right

But when someone spills their guts on the floor

Shut your mouth is what I implore

Listening to the words I adore

The dullards are such a bore

Inspiration is our reluctant whore

And your side conversations make me snore

So disturb me not quote the poet nevermore

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people's work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today’s prompt comes to us from Juan Martinez. It asks you to think about a small habit you picked up from one of your parents, and then to write a piece that explores an early memory of your parent engaged in that habit, before shifting into writing about yourself engaging in the same habit.

Share A Smoke

When they asked for prayer requests

I raised my 8 year old hand

And loudly declared

That I would like my mom

To stop smoking

There was a hush in the church

And right on que

She said that she wasn’t ready

She defied god that day

When I was threatened to get kicked out

At the ripe old age of 16

Because I had decided that church

Was not the way to spend Sunday mornings

I looked for the loophole

And there I sat behind the pastors kids

Reading Also Spake Zarathustra

While “attending” service

When they asked me what I was reading

I replied “The Death of god”

And that day I defied my father

And god

And my mother smiled

When she was hospitalized

for the second to last time

after she had lost the power

to talk like a grown woman

she motioned at me

from her bed

to take out the contents

of my shirt pocket

She knew what was there

And we shared a silent nod

I grabbed the nearest

Unused wheelchair

Not caring if it was meant for someone else

Picked her frail body up

And placed her gingerly on the seat

Rolling her out

The nurse started to protest

Getting fresh air was all she heard

And I rolled mom to my car

Where I ad the aqua filters she used

To place on the end of her smokes

Thinking it would save her

And there I was, pulling out a bowl

Puffing away

 And now in my mancave

The same age as she was

When things went downhill fast

All I can think about

Is getting these words down

Stepping on my deck

Lighting up another stick

Sticking my middle finger in the sky

For the god that took her

Who now is trying to take me

My daughters on Saturday morning

Watch me step out from time to time

As I wait for them to say

I’m praying for you to stop lighting up

And trying to die

To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

• Email: [email protected]