April 4th 2022, Poems

Welcome to Cosmos’ annual April Poetry Madness. Last year I wrote 300 poems in one month, this year I will write less as that was just way too much to deal with.

today’s poems will be April 4, to April 7th poems in separate postings, one per day.

I will post them as I write them, and try to update them every day or so. I will finish May 1 US time, as that will still be April 30 KST (Korea, where I currently reside.) Most will be G rated but a few may not be. I will try to label those or not post them. The topics will be wherever my mad muse takes me, and I usually don’t have a clue until I write them.

I will post here the poems I wrote based on prompts from NaPoWriMo, (the poetry’s world’s equivalence to the annual NaNoWriMo novel competition which I will enter again in November). Writers’ com’s Dew Drop-in, Poetry Super-highway, Writers Digest, and occasionally other prompts. I will write a few more each day, but not post them, as I need to build up more “unpublished poems” for future submissions.

Daily posting All poetry, Anchor, this blog, FB, Medium, PSH, Wattpad, Writing com, and Writer’s Digest.

I will post each poem, followed by the prompt, occasional author and notes, and photos. I will convert it to a podcast later, available on anchor, radio public, blog radio, Spotify, and elsewhere under the name “The World According to Cosmos: or Jake Cosmos Aller. See the following for more information on the podcasts.

Podcast update

At the end of the month I will add up the total poems written this month, total posted, total not-posted, and total YTD.

I have found that this annual exercise has been a big help in helping me hone my craft as I am entirely self-taught except for having taken the Mod Po class several times. It helps me stretch my poetic muscles. It has been a lot of fun but a challenge.

here are links to my previous April poems

Ten Best April 2021 Poems

April 25 to April 30 2021 Poems

April 16 to April 20 2021 Poems

April 10 to April 14 2021 Poems

April 1 to April 5 Poems

April 6 to April 9 Cosmos’s Poetry

Cosmos’s 2020 April Poetry Part One

April 2019 Poems

April 20 to April 25th 2021 Poems

2022 April Poetry Madness April 1 to 3 poems

April 4th Poems

April Poetry Prompts NaPoWriMo

April Poetry Madness Prompts
Daily to do in April
Take poetry prompts
From NaPoWriMo, Writers Digest, Writing com Dew Drop-in,
And elsewhere
Throw it all out there
See where your muse takes you

Then write, write, write
Two-three hours later
Emerge with the poems for the day

In the end, you have met
Your poetry quota for the day
Perhaps for the week
Or even the year

It is all good.
more poetry for all
is the spirit
of April Poetry Madness.

Finally, here’s our optional prompt! Today, I’d like to challenge you 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.

Happy writing!

When I First Saw You Dew Drop-in

When I First Saw You There
When I first saw you there
You came to me

In a dream
And disappeared,
Haunting me
For eight long years.

When I First Saw You In Person

I was overwhelmed
This fairy tale dream of mine
This impossible quest
To find the girl in the dream
Was finally over.

She was real,
And she was here.
In front of me.

When I First Spoke With You

I knew that this was it
We would be together
From then on

You were the one,
I proposed three days later.

When I First Kissed You

When I first kissed you
Erotic desires came out
And that was the beginning
Of a 40-year love affair.

When I Married You

That was the beginning
Of my life
From that moment

I had no doubt
Whatever life brought my way,
You would be there

In the end
That is all that matters.

April 4—List poem w/repetition—write a poem that lists things, using some (not necessarily constant) repetition and variation of an initial phrase (Examples: When I was six…, Remember that time…*, Layers of…., etc.)

*Regina Spektor, “That Time” https://g.co/kgs/BvpjTj

Finding Love while Emptying the Trash

Close up image of a litter bin full up so that the trash is overflowing on a city street. Room for copy space.

Finding Love while Emptying the Trash, April 4, 2022: Poetry Dream 2038 Writing Prompt – LB Sedlacek PSH

I often found
Throughout my married life
That we fall in love with each other
At the oddest times and places.

For example, yesterday
While emptying the trash
In our suburban housing estate

In Korea,
I looked at her
And once again
Fell in love.

It has been that way
Every day for 40 years
The love continues to deepen
And grow,

That is just the way
Love happened with us.

Composed while emptying the trash

This poetry writing prompt submitted by LB Sedlacek:
Rewrite where you write! Write where you (or maybe anyone) normally wouldn’t write. That’s right. Take your pen, paper, smartphone, or whatever with you to a school sporting event, or while you’re waiting in line at the drugstore, maybe sitting in the car rider line, or at the doctor’s office, and be ready to write. Jot down a quick poem – whatever comes to mind from what’s happening around you, what you see, hear, smell, feel and think. Then when you’re back in your usual writing spot at your desk or sitting in your favorite chair, you can edit it.

If you write a poem from this prompt, post it as a comment underneath the prompt in the Poetry Superhighway Facebook Group.
#napowrimo #poetry

Catch Up Poem Writer Digest

For today’s prompt, write a catch-up poem. This is not to be confused with a ketchup (or catsup) poem, but hey, write one of those if the poetic spirit moves you! But I’m thinking of catching up on work, catching up on a race, or catching up on some popular TV or streaming series.

Doing the April Poetry challenge
Has been a challenge
Keeping it up to date.

I posted my April 1-3 poems
April 4th
My April 4th poems April 5th etc

But in my defense
The prompts come out
In U.S. time

And I am a day behind
Living in Korea.
I write every day

Takes an hour to write them.
But it takes too much time
To post the poems.

There is still there a lot
Of catching up to do.

You can’t fix stupid something unfixable local gems

Don’t Believe the Lie There is No COVID

To this day
There are some people
Who believes that COVID
Never really existed.

That it was all a horrid libtard plot
To lock down the economy
Imposed draconian controls
On everyone.

That vaccine mandates
Are the equivalent of
Sending Jews to the death camps

That the unvaccinated
Will be rounded up
And forced to get vaccines

Which are the equivalent
Of Nazi medical experiments.
That the vaccines were created
To track people

Invented by Bill Gates
Or were the mark of the beast.
Some speculated that

everyone who got the vaccine
Would die in one year
Or become sterile.

Part of the nefarious plot
To depopulate the world
By the global one-world government
UN black helicopter conspiracy.

The nonsense about vaccines
Mask wearing
And COVID in general

Reveal a fundamental flaw
With many human beings.
No matter how hard one might try
To convince people who believe
This nonsense,

It is beyond any ability
To reason with them.
At the end of the day
You can’t fix stupid.

Weekly challenge (Post)

Shout out to Favorite Poets Meta Poetry

charles bukowski

I have over the years read
A lot of poetry
And written a lot of poetry
My favorite poets include

WD Auden
John Ashbury walking around poems
Blake mystical poetry
Charles Bukowski anything of his
Emily Dickinson
Emerson’s classic poetry of the American romantic period
Allen Ginzburg classic poetry of the beatnik eraLon
Latin Poetry in translation
Jack Kerouac
Korean poetry (in translation but I can read some of it)
KIm Seowol
Japanese Poetry(in translation)
Pablo Neruda (in translation but I can read some of it)
Edgar Allen Poe, alone, the bells, the raven
Robert Jeffries
Henry Longfellow
Rod McKeun
Walt Whitman all of his work
Williams Carlos Williams