NaNoWriMo - A Writer's Lament
Microsoft Word, your hollow stillness is confounding.
The weary blink of the cursor against an etiolated background
counterpoints perfectly, like the ticking away of thirty days
on the skin of November.
Don’t hold out this temptation: A journey of thoughts and boundless creation,
seeded in the proverbial minefield of purple prose, carpal tunnel and
differently-gendered Sues,
all for a daily price of one thousand, six hundred and sixty seven words.
You won’t? You must.
I’ve lived out years carrying the burden of stories unwritten.
Just for this month, help me lighten the load by one.
Reach forth, and grace the moping keyboard with
the rhythmic clack of fingers contacting painted letters, a sound
not unlike the rattling hail of bullet fire.
Write on empty, if absolutely necessary, blatantly abusing estranged
contractions and em dashes;
fill this imploring absence of vowels and consonants
with a slash of virtual atrament,
and torture it into characters and kingdoms.
Hope with earnest optimism that this malediction never transpires:
Mind blanks inexplicably. Sentences dissolve into ash.
Ideas are euthanized peacefully and humanely in a
sepulchre littered with ambitiously titled almost-novels and the splintered
bones of broken typewriter keys.
And so here’s to more sleepless nights,
dog-eared dictionaries and the musk of cold coffee,
awaiting the last sunset when slowly creeping blue fills into a battery of
light violet like a metamorphosis.
.
More poetry (which I have no talent for) written for Non Sequitur. Needless to say, I won't be taking part in NaNoWriMo this year.