NaPoWriMo Day 20: "Friendship: A Dialogue"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that “talks.” What does that mean? . . . While it isn’t a monologue, it’s largely based in spoken language, interspersed with the speaker/narrator’s own responses and thoughts. Try to write a poem grounded in language as it is spoken – not necessarily the grand, dramatic speech of a monologue or play, but the messy, fractured, slangy way people speak in real life. You might incorporate overheard speech or a turn of phrase you heard once that stood out to you – the idea here is to get away from formally 'poetic' speech and into the way language tends to work out loud."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt:  "For today’s prompt, write a dark poem. Cave poems, poems at night, and no electricity poems–these are all appropriate for today’s prompt. Of course, dark has several other connotations as well. An underdog is often known as a dark horse, a villain may have a dark heart, and Batman is known as the Dark Knight."

I've taken an hour out from the the wall-to-wall NAR Conference to write a weird little dialogue that probably isn't a poem, except in the most extended sense. It's a fictive conversation with my best friend, trying to get at the real way we talk to one another. She's going through something hard right now and is very much on my mind. The first exchange (about the saying I wrote on earlier this month) is based on one I actually had, though I can't remember if it was with the friend I'm imagining here or another specific person. The friend here is also a literature professor and loves poetry, so we do have these discussions with poets (especially Victorian ones) cropping up on a regular basis.

Friendship: A Dialogue

--It’s cold as a witch’s tit out there.

--That’s such a weird saying. I bet witches have very nice tits. 

--Yeah, I know it’s misogynist, the sound play is just so good, it’s a pleasure to say the  words.

--We could come up with new sayings. It’s dark as a frog’s bumhole out too.

--Oh good one. Down in the lake, in the muck. Their bumholes would be extra dark. Did you know I had pet frogs as a child? We caught them in the lake and kept them in a terrarium. One day my father came home from work and I said all excited, “Dad, Dad, the frogs croaked!” and he thought I meant they died.

--You could write a poem about all the metaphors for it being cold or dark.

--What are some famous poems about the dark? I am blocked all of a sudden.There must be tons.

--There’s that Hopkins sonnet, “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”

--Oh good one. But I’d need to google, is he talking about real dark or spiritual darkness, there? Surely there must be a Dickinson one too.

--I’ll look. Here you go-- “We grow accustomed to the Dark -- / When Light is put away --”

--It’s got that mixed quality too, doesn’t it? Poor darkness, everyone makes it a bad thing. Like witches’ tits. And that gets all wrapped up with racism too.

--The dark, dark soul of Donald Trump. 

--Yeah. Though what did darkness do to deserve that. It’s like I always think, what did a horse’s innocent ass ever do to anyone?

--I wonder if his soul is dark, or only empty? I wonder which member of his administration truly has the darkest? If you had to choose, to rank them.

--Hard to decide. But I’m pretty sure women like Betsy DeVos have witches’ tits too.

 --Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, cite or quote without permission.