Promptly Written

Welcome back, poetry people!

I’ve been dealing with some health issues, or to be more accurate, I have been dealing with doctor and pharmacy problems that have been negatively impacting my health. This past week, it finally caught up with me when things reached critical mass. I am slowly getting back on track, but I won’t lie; this newsletter has gotten away from me a bit.

The medication I had disrupted affects the function of my muscles and brain, and I am not sure this will be strictly up to par with my previous work, but it takes a minute to recover, and life continues to roll on. So we keep plugging away, don’t we? I hope things are going more smoothly for you, but even if they aren’t, I hope you have the assistance you need and can keep pushing forward with your goals.

Prompting yourself

What if you’re not feeling particularly creative or inspired, or your life is spinning out of control because the doctor is ignoring your prescription refill requests, but making art is your livelihood, or it’s your best therapy tool? Shall you skip it for that day? EHHHH, wrong; I say you grab a prompting tool. Frankly, there are almost infinite prompting tools because nearly anything could inspire you, but we are going for direct prompts here, not just sparks of inspiration; we’re looking for solid directions to take our art.

When I am in a real mind block, one of my main prompting tools is a random word generator. I have found two I like for my work that give more than just words.

The first Random Word generator has forty different generators. Not all will be useful for your creative endeavors, but you never know what will be handy until it comes up. I didn’t think I would need a two-sided die or a coin flipper until I made up one of my favorite gaming characters turned Serial story characters, Francine.

I found another I like a lot. It bills itself as a name generator, and it is; it has every sort of name generation style or variation you could want, then double or triple that. It also has a few other things I found pretty cool. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the home page, you will find “Other Generators” and “Description Generators.” I haven’t tried the description generators yet, but I can see some real potential there.

Under the “other generators” section are gems like army formation generator, calendar creator, and map creator. These are indeed going to be most handy for someone creating an entire role-playing game from the ground up. That’s what these resources were collected for, but I see a lot of various applications, especially for someone building an entire fantasy or sci-fi world to write in.

Laugh Through Your Tears

This first piece was created during the month of prompts I participated in writing up for the Arts O’ Magazine on Medium. August 2023 was an extremely productive month with a constant flow of curated prompts to inspire and a group of fellow writers to hold me accountable. All 31 days of prompts centered around and were taken from the words of Alice Walker. This particular piece was written off the prompt:

HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous.

I had been considering writing a pantoum poem for several weeks. A pantoum was originally a Malay poetry form adapted to suit English writers. It’s a series of interwoven quatrains. The second and fourth lines are repeated as the first and third lines of the next stanza. You can build up as many stanzas as you like, though I think you would need at least four to make this structure work properly.

To finish, in the last stanza, the writer takes the second and fourth lines of the previous stanza for lines one and three, repeating the very first and third lines of the poem as the second and fourth lines of their final stanza. If you thought my explanation was confusing, you can look at the handy stanza construction chart provided by Masterclass.

Generally, I’m not particularly eager to follow a specific rhyme scheme, so I didn’t conform to the traditional rhyme scheme in this. I have only recently even started rhyming my poetry at all. The beautiful thing about poetry is that it’s perfect for experimentation and play. The line constraints were enough for me. What can I say? I am a rebel like that.

Laugh Through Your Tears

I might put up many fronts
choose which me you may please
sweet and dainty, stern and gruff
I even have several curated sneeze

Choose which of me you may please
It’s a laugh-a-minute or down in the dumps
I even have several curated sneeze
maybe you would like to throw a few pies?

It’s a laugh-a-minute or down in the dumps 
I hate to laugh when I find nothing funny
maybe you would like to throw a few pies? 
sometimes I’m crying when nothing is sad

I hate to laugh when I find nothing funny
laughter brings in the fans
sometimes I’m crying when nothing is sad
tears bring in the trolls

laughter brings in the fans
So laugh through your fears
tears bring in the trolls
beware crying wolf

So, laugh through your fears
I might put up many fronts
beware crying wolf
sweet and dainty stern and gruff

A Poets Self-Portrait

This is a poem made of provided concepts. While I would usually draw a randomized set of my own to use, this was a challenge of sorts on Medium, the first platform I started writing on. I thoroughly enjoyed writing my poem with the same grouping of phrases a number of my fellows were also using. When we were finished, we tagged each other and enjoyed the variety our minds conceived, and no two pieces were alike.

I had a great time looking at how seemingly unrelated concepts could be strung together in a series of words to make them connect. Getting from point A to point B without ever having to touch down, floating on nothing but your own words, it’s like magic.

precious metals, poets, man’s best friend

In fact, if you are so inclined, I encourage you to try your hand at it; if this set doesn’t particularly inspire you, give a random word generator a spin, or pick some objects out of your junk drawer and sketch them in words, in pencil, in musical notes. Whatever gets you out of your head and into your best creative space.

A Poet’s Self-Portrait

If the sensation is there
hanging in the air
the spark will catch 
igniting the cloud 

It looks pure and clear 
but trace elements
precious metals
exist
in the atmosphere
surrounding us all
resources, paints
seemingly only available 
to a select few

poets, weavers of alchemy 
tellers of tales
interspersed amongst the masses
seeking out scenes of 
striking beauty
indelible pain 
and absolute truth

man’s best friend
until the light it sheds 
falls upon himself
most only deigning
maybe only able 
to shy away

yet people crave a look 
at a heart
transformed into gold 
alchemizing fluid
administered 
with a feather-tipped quill
formula tattooed 
on the right ventricle
the alchemist’s art 
turned self-portrait of a poet

Safety in Numbers

This is another piece I wrote during the challenge month of August 2023. The thoughts and words of Alice Walker have won awards and been transformed into various media formats to widen their reach; they’re taught in schools and cherished by millions. So it’s no wonder they were the perfect foundation for an entire month of prompts and ones that brought up deep, meaty subjects, not just frivolous, dainty fluff.

Racism, Nationalism, and clanism are destroying civilization. I didn’t throw in as we know it because these are all part of civilization as we know it, but we are seeing a parabolic arc and are very clearly on a downturn at this point. We have to extricate ourselves from the vicious cycles of fear, hate, and the forever-lasting blood feuds perpetuated worldwide, no matter how many laws, treaties, borders, walls, etc… are erected to try and stop it. These are just bandaids that keep being ripped off and placed in new spots on the earth. It is imperative we surgically remove the cancer that is systemic racism from our communities, or it will never end.

HELPED are those who are enemies of their own racism; they shall live in harmony with the citizens of this world, and not with those of their ancestors, which has passed away, and which they shall never see again

Safety in Numbers

I lost myself
floundering in my struggles
against the raging sea
of ancestral evils
that washed over the world
before my existence
right through
my tender being
as I struggled against the tide
kicking and screaming
spitting out
the foamy spray as I
reached the sandy
shoreline
exhausted I collapsed
though I knew it would
not be a prolonged reprieve
the tide only retreats so long
so I headed inland
searching for
the safety of
the mixing throng

Private Eyes

Point of view, tone, voice, and accent are all enjoyable to play with when writing as long as you don’t get too eager and start losing track, which I admit is easy, especially if you have multiple characters and start switching points of view. Or you are gradually shifting your tone.

This sort of writing is all about keeping myself in the headspace of the person or “place” I’m writing from. I think it can create something exciting, entertaining, or extraordinary. In this case, something atmospheric, I guess I would call it. I hope that you can hear the accent and maybe even hear the wooshing brakes of the train as you read along.

Private Eyes

Steppin’ off the car 
behind the suspicious 
chubby fella’ from seat 3A
I had to listen to ‘im snore 
the whole GD way
Now I can barely off-board
this blasted transport
without being crushed to death by
his hoggish physique
I’ll saunter back on 
without so much as a blink
from the other dozy mopes
cluelessly think no one has 
a thing to gain 
watchin’ people 
get on and off 
their mornin’ train
That’s where you’d be 
wrong, though, wouldn’t ya
There’s a sense of trust 
an implicit safety 
in the public fealty
People always thinkin’ 
they can get away 
with damned near murder 
ifin they do it with a smile 
and a tip of the hat
Well, there’s eyes 
always upon ya

Dog Pile

I’ve always found it particularly terrifying how simply screaming is considered a disturbance of the peace. Fear, being terrorized, being harassed and attacked, and calling for help can get a victim into further trouble. It has never mattered what the problem was. There is no excuse to show emotion in public, from the slightest infraction to the vilest of crimes committed against you. There is no excuse to “lose control.”

I clearly have never had any control over even a minute detail of my life, or none of this would have been allowed.

Every time I tried to get help. Every time I called foul, every time I screamed rape, I was just fed a new cocktail of pills and told I was disturbing everyone else’s peace. What peace? How was anyone living in peace? Even small things, like my brother hitting me or destroying my homework or toys. I got in trouble for crying and demanding remuneration; he rarely got in trouble for destroying my things.

Of course, I realize now these are conditioning tactics meant to keep me from getting help, but they don’t hurt any less, especially when the world has taught me there is no help available. The constant threats were that if I told doctors what was really happening, my grandfather would lose his job, and my grandmother would not get her medication and die. Or my brother would be taken away and sent to foster care, and I would be taken away and locked up forever because every one of my Autistic traits was characterized as criminally insane by my mother. Traits like stimming, describing my thoughts as being voiced in my own head and my mind as walls of drawers that can be organized and locked. These were the secrets I had to keep or be locked up forever.

Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell was all I ever heard; well, I am never going to stop telling now; I will never stop screaming, like a broken steam whistle screaming in the night. Whether there is anyone behind me or the mindless mob is heading in my direction now, with their torches and their pitchforks. I will never stop.

HELPED are those who do not join mobs; theirs shall be the understanding that to attack in anger is to murder in confusion.

Dog Pile

Like a broken siren
I wail out a warning
Long past due
On an ill-fated morning

All around, walk past 
Merely annoyed at the sound
It is obvious from the daggers 
Of neon disdain
Flying from angered
Eyes entirely unveiled
They would rather 
I dispense with the dramatics

The note holds indefinitely
Though it waxes and wanes
It continues 
Now supporting me

I will not cease my
Gut seated cry
Allowing the oxygen
To flow in and back out 
In through my nostrils
Out through my mouth 
As I force the endless wail to 
Alert a heedless crowd
Attempting to flock by invisibly

No amount of distaste can 
Extinguish the flames 
Boiling in my heart, nor 
Deflate the rising pressure 
As it reverberates around 
My cranium keeping
Anxiety levels steadily
Rising, pressing on my heart

Until I vaguely resemble 
A cartoon whistle red-faced
And endlessly putting off steam
Under so much internal tension
I wish I could simply burst 
At my spot-welded seams

No explosion is forthcoming
Only a high-pitched 
Bloodcurdling shriek

Finally sending all about 
Into fits of bottled
Hysterics leading them 
To start attacking with lips 
Tongue and teeth

Black and blue
A few chunks missing, too
I crawl away, still hissing 
A sorry display
So I hide
Covering my painful shame 
Until my fit of speechifying
Subsides with a 
Drip, Drip, Drip

This was a small glimpse into one aspect of how I generate sparks of inspiration. The following newsletter will be entirely dedicated to the Muse. I have dozens of pieces written to the Muse and several thoughts on how to nudge yourself back into that golden light when you feel yourself sliding into darkness.

Until Next week,

K.B. Silver