NaPoWriMo #8: Tonight I can sing the saddest tune (after Neruda)

Day 8's prompt is to rewrite a famous poem. Okay, challenge accepted!This is like me preparing a meal (which is indeed disastrous as I'm culinary challenged). I'm going to rewrite one of Pablo Neruda's poems, Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Line. This is Neruda's poem:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

-Pablo Neruda-


This is my version:

Tonight I can sing the saddest tune.

I hold my pen and croon,
Tonight I can sing the saddest tune.

With my shattered hope and the pale moonlight,
I croon in the somber night.

The immense night is without the shivering stars,
and there is nothing but my bleeding scars.

Sometimes, Hope can tear you apart,
Just what it did to my fragile heart.

The man I love is distant and cold,
And indeed I am not his precious gold.

He fills my intricate void, my remedy, my salve,
How can you love and miss someone you never have?

Yet, I still pray for his well-being
and I never stop praying.

I still love him, I do
By protecting her too.

Tonight I can sing the saddest tune.
I hold my pen and croon.

With my shattered hope and the pale moonlight,
I croon in the somber night.

Perhaps, this is not my last time
I sing for him with my broken rhyme.

-Nuruljannah-

NaPoWriMo #7 Books

Day 7's prompt is to write a love poem but the target object must be inanimate. Here goes:

Books

You take me to the world

where actuality tastes like

cotton candy

and play me the music

of words

to annihilate my pain.

You make me forget

the loneliness' footprints 

on my heart.

Sometimes, I do feel like

burning you

but most of the time

you fill my world

with your spectacular colours and magic.

How can I live without 

my painter?

I carry you

in my soul,

as you are

my loyal companion

my amorous lover

my home.

-Nuruljannah-

NaPoWriMo #6: Through my window

Day 6's prompt is to write what you see outside your window. Here is my lousy poem. I wish there were a hunky bloke out there. Perhaps I can write like Shakespeare when I see one?

Through My Window
Birds chirp like
a composer
and trees rustle
in the wind
and dance
to a mellifluous song.
Clouds swim in the cerulean pool,
creating its own art.
A middle-aged man,
in faded shirt is
cleaning the rain gutters
and downspouts
(I wish he were my distant wonder-wall
or Nico Mirallegro),
while I am looking
through my window,
like a distressed princess
confined in a tower,
and composing a poem
instead of writing
my never-ending
thesis.

-Nuruljannah-

Day 5:The Golden Shovel

I used these ending words from Thom Gunn and Edna St. Vincent Millay's poems to compose my poem. Here are their poems:

Jamesian
Their relationship consisted
In discussing if it existed.

-Thom Gunn

First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

And here's mine:

True Love
True love is consisted
of Divine Light, it existed
in the purest soul, no ends
and it gleams in the darkest night
Like loyal friends
It emanates the brightest light.
-Nuruljannah-

NaPoWriMo #4:Peace

Day four's prompt is to write a lune, an English language variation on the haiku. I'm going to follow the version developed by Jack Collum that consists of three-line stanza, 3-5-3 format. Here goes:

Peace wraps me

like a lost lover, when

I feel You.

-Nuruljannah-

NaPoWriMo # 3:A Charm against Writer's block

Day 3 NaPoWriMo: The prompt for day 3 is to write a charm poetry. Here goes:

A Charm against Writer's Block

Those skylarks fly,

In the cerulean sky,

Smell the fresh grass,

And play the brass,

Let the ideas flow

Let the stars glow.

-Nuruljannah-

NaPoWriMo #2: The Devious Amanojaku

For day 2, the prompt is to write a poem based on a non-Greco-Roman myth. Here goes:

The Devious Amanojaku 
No one can hear
these malevolent
voices
and see the glint of its
spiteful eyes
if we let it conquer
our fickle heart.

It is fed on our greed,
our selfishness,
our destruction.
Some of us blame it
for our nefariousness,
condemn it
for our vile actions
without realizing
we let it become
our beating heart.
-Nuruljannah-

P.S. Amanojaku is "a demon-like creature in Japanese folklore. It is usually depicted as a kind of small oni, and is thought to be able to provoke a person's darkest desires and thus instigate him into perpetrating wicked deeds" (Wikipedia).

NaPoWriMo #1: Forget it, and don’t ask about the rest—nor for whom—

Oh, shoot!An ekphrastic poem is actually for the early-birds and I thought it was for the first day of NaPoWriMo. My,bad! I'm going to write a poem anyway based on the given prompt. We have to go to Reb Livingston’s Bibliomancy Oracle and compose a poem based on that quotation. I hope I'm not too late. Here goes:

"Forget it, and don’t ask about the rest—nor for whom—"

Perhaps, we are meant to taste these tears,

and take the wrong routes,

sometimes, it's cul-de-sac.

Sometimes, we encounter into people

who gnaw on our

soul,

most of the time,

we listen to the inevitable music

of heartbreaks.

Sometimes, we are shrouded

by hopelessness,

sometimes our dreams are ground into dust

and our efforts

flowing in the drain,

sometimes, we tend to doubt

the Wisest One,

"Forget it, and don’t ask about the rest—nor for whom—"

don't ask but to endure

as every despondency or catastrophe

will shed your unwanted layers

 and unveil the invaluable gold.

-Nuruljannah-

P.S. I got this excerpt "Forget it, and don’t ask about the rest—nor for whom—"

from “Don’t Ask” by Alexander Xaver Gwerder (translated by Marc Vincenz).

NaPoWriMo: Mindscape

Yeah, I know I've to focus on my thesis but I've to exercise my creativity and let my imagination roam freely, aite? One of my panaceas for distress is indeed composing  crappy poems. So, I decided to join NaPoWriMo (www.napowrimo.net).What's NaPoWriMo? It's National Poetry Writing Month. Woot!

Since I was born in April, I'm really thrilled NaPoWriMo is celebrated this month. Well, I will be more thrilled if there were NaTheWriMo (National Thesis Writing Month) so I could finish my thesis for a month. Yeah, right.

Okay, let's get back to business, shall we? This is my first NaPoWriMo poem for this month entitled "Mindscape". That title is actually based on one of Latiff Mohidin's paintings, a prominent Malaysian artist. Our prompt for today is to write an ekphrastic poem, a poem inspired by a work of art. Since I'm Malaysian, that's why I chose his painting. Here goes:

                             

 Mindscape
Can you see a galaxy
in my mind?
Oh, how beautiful
those stars bind!
Scintillating like a beacon,
where there is a flying chicken
dancing through the starlight
with an enormous delight.
With no impossibility
as a boundary,
no noises or
malicious voices,
your mind can be free
to create its own galaxy.

-Nuruljannah-