Napowrimo prompt 5

5th April

[Our (optional) prompt for today is one that we have used in past years, but which I love to come back to, because it so often takes me to new and unusual places, and results in fantastic poems. It’s called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course, if you can’t fit all twenty projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!

Begin the poem with a metaphor.
Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
Use a phrase from a language other than English.
Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem. ]

A love story nipped in the bud

The golden eye in the east
hung precariously against the mountain peak –
a golden attired clown crowned by a conical hat.
It could have sent anyone into a poetic frenzy,
but, it sent me back to that greenroom in my alma mater
where I was getting ready for my role of a witch,
 but alas, my hat, though conical, was all a wobble.
The cat sat outside the kitchen, waiting for its glass of milk,
as the tantalizing smell of Roganjosh*1 emanating from there
attacked her olfactory senses and she sneezed.
A sneeze! 
A sneeze in the present despairing times
would have made anyone scurry for cover,
but in those peaceful times, no one scurried,
but Baby, just hurried to get that glass of milk.
The cat smiled a smile of grateful feline grace,
as she licked the platter dry as Baby chatted ceaselessly to the cat. 

“Baby is a chatterbox
how she talks, how she talks”, her siblings chanted.
“Don’t worry”, said Kitty, the cat,
and in between her chats, Baby panted out a heartfelt thank you.
“This Baby is obstinate, incorrigible too!” Mom moaned
“Kukras kuni zang*2 Dad, who was forever brimming
with Kashmiri proverbs, intoned.   
“She is indeed so stubborn”, Granny groaned.

All these chunks of memory flashed in my mind that day,
when I saw a sun -drenched cat in that quaint little coffee shop,
next to the pine tree In Srinagar, where I sat with that handsome stranger.
Ah, his vibrant charm, how could my heart remain calm?

Der Abend, der war
wie ein Traum eigentlich
Ich Konnt’s gar nicht glauben
and he smiled, a lopsided grin, *
“It is German, he said, and they call me Stefan .

He suffixed this with a lopsided grin,  
 reminding me of the sun rays playing tantalizingly
with the snow on the peaks of the Zabarwan Hills.
 
“You are the ginchiest”*4, he said, with a merry twinkle in his eyes,
and that lopsided grin.
“Gin………how dare you call me that?” I stood up and screamed.
Like a fool, I thought the handsome one was bad- mouthing me in German.
 He looked befuddled, as a muddled up me, left the coffee shop in a huff.
 The handsome man’s pain was a sea in his limpid eyes, but I refused to see it.
Thud – thud – thud – went my shoes as a love story was nipped in the bud.

Hang on there friends, in a flash of eerie clarity,
I just recalled that what I then thought was a cat, was actually a dog,
 our furry friend, Nipper. 
 The golden eye in the east blushed red,
 reflecting the doused fire in my heart, perhaps?

* 1 A Kashmiri mutton delicacy
*2 the fowl has only one leg
*3 the evening was like a dream actually. I   couldn’t believe it.
*4 Cool [ obsolete slang]