For today's prompt, write a self-portrait poem. Other artists study themselves to create compositions (not all of them exactly flattering either), so it is only natural that poets, who are word artists, write self-portrait poems from time to time. In fact, some poets make self-portrait poetry "their main thing." For at least today, make it yours.
Every day of this challenge, I have thought, "Wow, this one's difficult. I don't know if I can come up with something." But then I went ahead and wrote something. However, this one was really hard. I sat staring at the page, and I swear I could hear a ringing in my ears, like I was standing too close to the place where a bomb had been detonated. In the end, I chose a symbol dear and familiar to me. Hopefully, it works.
Compart(mental)izeMe
A shadowbox
A motley collection
Of oddments:
One quill
(careworn)
An apple
(slightly bruised)
Passport
(expired)
Carnet des tickets
(from Paris)
smooth round stone
(from the river in Otto)
pine cone
(from Denali)
Spanish coin
(from Scotland)
pink baby shoe
(scuffed)
Gigi’s brooch
(like a starlit eye)
Houstene’s stole
(mink)
white gold band
(2-karat diamond)
Radiator clamp
(worn as a pinky ring)
letters from Kenya
(missionary penpal)
Avonne’s ceramic cats
(held together with
love and glue)
blue ribbon
(faded)
bronze medal
(dim)
rhinestone tiara
(cracked)
bones of a cat
(we lost her
on the driveway)
Each remnant
compartmentalized
In the spiraling chambers
Of my heart
Safely walled away,
each successive
chamber
smaller,
smaller
until you reach
the seed
inside my heart.
After hearing a story, as a child in church, of a little boys box of treasures, I, too, have collected oddments and pieces of experience. One day I will collect them all, bury them in a big chest and write a fiction for each in a treasure hunt book.
ReplyDeleteObjects become symbols, don't they.