~NaPoWriMo~

Chatterbox: Pudding's Place

~NaPoWriMo~

~NaPoWriMo~

Tomorrow is the first day of April, and you know what that means... it's the start of NaPoWriMo! NaPoWriMo, short for National Poetry Writing Month, is a challenge where you're encouraged to write one poem a day for the entire month of April.

Don't worry if one poem a day sounds like too much -- you certainly don't have to do that! You can participate and aim for one poem a week, or a poem every other day, or whatever feels right for you. No pressure!

There's a semi-official site for NaPoWriMo where they post prompts each day (you can find it pretty easily by Googling), but, speaking from past experience, not all of those prompts are the most inspiring. There are lots of other prompt lists out there, such as the Escapril prompts (below), but you can also just write whatever you're inspired by without abiding to a prompt list!

1. Ego
2. The exact middle
3. Empty, except for ___
4. Ghost
5. Here’s what I remember:
6. (l)on(e)ly
7. Naked
8. Tessellation
9. Paradox
10. I’m worried about her
11. Eureka!
12. Comfortable
13. After the afterlife
14. Wishbone
15. Planes/trains/automobiles
16. Bird of paradise
17. Power
18. Nightmare
19. Mirror
20. Stranger than fiction
21. Glitch
22. In the distance, a small shape
23. Clock
24. Crossroads
25. Pareidolia
26. Nothing more beautiful
27. Ink
28. Extreme dissonance
29. Goodbye
30. Even now, after everything?

NaPoWriMo has a wonderful history on the CB! I'll link some of the past
threads if anyone's interested in going back and reading some old poetry, or seeing past prompts for inspiration.

2020 - http://www.cricketmagkids.com/chatterbox/puddingsplace/node/432996

2019 - http://www.cricketmagkids.com/chatterbox/puddingsplace/node/405290

2018 - http://www.cricketmagkids.com/chatterbox/puddingsplace/node/362224

Feel free to post your poems here if you'd like! I'm excited to see everyone's. :)

submitted by Kitten, age too young, to vote, she/her
(March 31, 2021 - 5:17 pm)

Yay! Let's do this!

submitted by Jaybells, age Obscure, Lost in the Universe
(March 31, 2021 - 6:45 pm)
submitted by Top!
(March 31, 2021 - 7:51 pm)

Yay! Let's go!

submitted by Wreeboo, age Immortal, Castle Araluen
(March 31, 2021 - 8:33 pm)

I'm going to try to do this! I've never written poetry except for an unfinished limerick and a few acrostics (I think that's what they're called?)

submitted by Tealeaf
(April 1, 2021 - 7:00 am)

Ego

Like a seesaw of glass

constantly in flux

one day I'm flying high

I'm the best

I can do anything

except fly too high,

and like Icarus I'll come crashing down

crying on the dirt floor

I'm the worst

I can't do anything right

but it's okay-

just as long as

neither side

tips too far

'lest I shatter. 

submitted by Azalea, age 14, Somewhere only we know
(April 1, 2021 - 7:51 am)

I wish you could see your own ego

How it leaks out of your body 

forming slimy green puddles beneath your feet 

How it leaves a trail everywhere you go

How it stinks up the air around you

and makes us plug our noses

I wish I could see my own ego

I imagine it as a dark purple balloon sitting in my stomach

Soft and pokeable

Growing and shrinking from day to day

Shimmering softly 

Emitting a faint aroma of old books

I wonder what it actually looks like

You wish you could describe it to me

You say I’m on the right track, but not exactly

You can’t quite describe it

It’s not a balloon, you say, but a pool throughout my body

Purple, yes, but also silver? And gold? And sometimes it gets green?

You shake your head

You apologize

It’s hard to quantify egos

submitted by Kitten, age too young, to vote, she/her
(April 1, 2021 - 1:30 pm)

Here's mine for "ego";

The Plague

The plague has come

It has devoured

So many.

It is labeled in big,

Red,

Fearful

Letters;

“THE BIG EGO”

It consumes teenagers

And presidents

And people young and old.

Hide in your houses,

Run far away.

Resist, resist!

Feel it crawling up your spine,

Like a big

Hairy

Spider,

But resist!

Hear the sting

Of it’s blackened

Fingernails

On the chalkboard,

Still, resist!

So many have fallen,

They’re dropping like flies,

I don’t think we can last

Much longer

If people stop resisting.

How can you resist?

Good question.

Help,

You could do it.

Or be kind,

Regardless of people’s

Race,

Gender identity,

Weight,

Anything.

Be kind;

That is the antidote and the vaccine.

Be kind,

 

And destroy the plague.

submitted by Writing_in_the_dark, age 11, they/them
(April 1, 2021 - 2:32 pm)

untitled

You are nothing.

Nothing but a speck of dust in a universe too

large for your tiny mind to comprehend.

Does that realization hurt? Or

can it not even puncture the protective layer of 

self-importance we’ve all built up around the 

insecurities and lack of confidence and fear that we

all act like isn’t there.

Does that truth sting, like a slap to the face, or

is it not hot enough to melt the walls we’ve built

concentric circles of pride and masks and illusions

like white-hot lava, trickling at first,

flowing, rushing, flooding.

Does that scare you, that your confidence could come

crashing, collapsing, folding in on itself

in a moment, if you let those words slip through

your almost impenetrable shield?

(After all, you are luckier than most

your armor has only a few chinks in it.)

But even if it doesn’t, even if the hardest truths aren’t enough

to make it past your defenses, don’t you ever forget that you

are but a speck of dust in a universe bigger than any of us 

could ever know. 

~~

um.

that was a little depressing.

sorry.

it's also unedited 'cause i wrote it in literally the last thirty minutes XD 

submitted by Luminescence, age 12, Atlantis
(April 1, 2021 - 9:26 pm)

hm. I really don't like the ending.

I think it might be better if I deleted the last part (everything after the parentheses, starting at "But even if it doesn't,") and replaced it with simply, "You are nothing."

Does anyone else have ideas? 

submitted by Luminescence, age 12, Atlantis
(April 2, 2021 - 11:03 am)

Ego~

It's almost like I'm seeing you for the first time

through a filter tinted dark and harsh

turning your fluid motions rigid and sharp.

You're not who I used to know,

not the person I viewed through 

sunlit-sprayed lenses 

and summer-filled eyes.

No,

you're a stranger,

the way you talk and move

chin up

eyes down

like you deserve a twisted metal crown

and I should be bowing

with my knees in the dirt. 

Every piece of who you were,

who i loved,

lost in the rapids 

of always being the best.

Don't you see the way you've changed?

The way you went from humble

and soft 

with flowers circling your head,

to cold and distant

and a circlet of iron.

I wish I could go back

to the person you were

before your ego

stole it all. 

submitted by Silver Crystal, age Infinity, Milky Way
(April 1, 2021 - 9:48 pm)

*displays 2 fingers in almost Anime-esque way* Day 2!! "the exact middle"!!! I present...

UNTITLED, a poem representing nonbinary people!!!!!!

(no the title is N O T "UNTITLED". I just couldn't think of one yet) 

Screenshot 2021-04-02 10.38.47 AM.png
submitted by Writing_in_the_dark, age 11, NY but not NYC
(April 2, 2021 - 9:45 am)

^-^ awww that's great Writing! :)

submitted by jubilee
(April 6, 2021 - 12:01 pm)

April 2nd~ the exact middle

Hey, remember me?

I’m the friend you used to have, way back

when everything was simpler, when

everything was easier, when everything

was like a single beautiful moment, frozen in time, was

a picture from a children’s story where nothing ever changed and

the hate didn’t exist but

things are different now, aren’t they.

Now we’re in the in-betweens, it’s even what they

call us- 

the tweenagers-

the kids in between small childhood and teenagerdom.

We’re right in the middle and everything’s changing, the

picture in the children’s story is slowly fading, disappearing

replaced with rows of finely printed words, small and black

the lines of age, the lines of

too much information at once and

too much stress and too much responsibility.

Everything’s changing, you and me too.

Remember me?

I’m different than when we last talked

older, taller, maybe wiser-

or maybe just smarter-

and you are, too. I remember 

being friends with you but that was a different

you, a different

me, and a different

day, time, year. Neither of us are who

we were and yet neither of us are who we’re meant to be

yet. I’m not the me you remember so

it’s okay if you’ve moved on but

I’m still the friend you had, when we

weren’t right here,

smack-dab in the middle of life.

~~

Starting now, I'm just going to put the prompt and date as the title so this doesn't get confusing. 

submitted by Luminescence, age 12, Atlantis
(April 2, 2021 - 7:19 pm)

April 3rd~ empty, except for ____

If you could look into my heart

you’d see a porcelain jar, covered in hard plastic-

I’m not sure what the breaking point is but

none of the blows have been hard enough to shatter

thousands of millions of shards of hurt and broken love

If you could look into my heart 

and if you could see the porcelain jar, spiderwebbed with cracks,

veins, I know you’d open it. If 

you opened my heart, my porcelain jar

and you saw smaller jars, jars of the blood that runs through my body 

rose-gold, waiting for the right person to love and

silvery-blue, screaming for oxygen, screaming for the right person

to love me, too.

Don’t you know I’d give them-

all of them-

to you in a heartbeat?

But if you twisted the lid of my porcelain heart

you wouldn’t find the jars of gold

just the silvery-blue blood, begging for air

and jars full of scraps of paper, each with three words

infinite handwritings, but only three words:

owe 

you

~~

Meh. I rushed, I think. 

submitted by Luminescence, age 12, Atlantis
(April 3, 2021 - 5:56 pm)

Wow, oh my stars. This is painfully good. So are all your poems, really. I- wow. I don't know how else I can say that your words pierce my heart and expose the aching hole that I try to cover up and if this is you rushing I don't know what your poetry would be like on a good day. (oop, I guess I did figure out how to say it)

submitted by Kitten, age too young, to vote, she/her
(April 3, 2021 - 9:25 pm)