I intended this month to write a poem inspired by Taylor Mali’s metaphor dice that would be suitable for submission to The Golden Die Contest, the deadline for which is two days away. This isn’t it. This isn’t the one, neither is the earlier one I wrote this month. But I’ve been sitting on this roll for some time (I am, well worn, thunderstorm), and I was intrigued by today’s prompt at NaPoWriMo to write a concrete poem, a poem that has a shape that represents its subject matter. If you know anything about the word processing software that is part of the WordPress blog toolkit, you would know that it’s nigh impossible, outside of simply centering text, to manipulate words on the “page” into any kind of shape. So–the concrete poem, if I were to write one, would have to be done the old fashioned way–with pen and paper. I did not have time today to make it pretty–so here is the image of my sloppy composition on notebook paper, and below I will include the text of the poem, woefully, formatted in the way of a traditional poem–very unlike concrete.
A Well-worn Thunderstorm
I am a well-worn thunderstorm,
tossing
my
lightning
bolts
gently
to the expectant earth, already
bored with my fireworks.
michael jarmer 