Category: Writing

Poem–“First Time Rock Star”

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

A piece of white blue lined notebook paper with a shimmer of rainbow crossing it.You’re almost done with terrible poetry for National Poetry Month. Feel the burn!

Last year’s Day 19 theme was a persona poem. My understanding was to write a poem from a particular person’s point of view.

I ended up doing a simple abab rhyming quatrain from the POV of a friend of mine playing his first show after joining a band. He said it helped his stage fright that the lights were bright enough he couldn’t see the audience.

First Time Rock Star

I can’t see the audience beyond the lights,
which I think works in my favor.
Can’t get dizzy if I don’t see the heights.
So, I’m left with the feeling to savor.

Poem–“Take a Chance”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A piece of white blue lined notebook paper with a shimmer of rainbow crossing it.We’re at the half-way point of terrible poetry for National Poetry Month. Way to hang in there! You can do it!

This was last year’s Day 12 theme, a risky poem. It could be about taking a risk or avoiding a risk or being risky. Anything involving or about risk. I decided to write a poem about falling in love because what’s a bigger risk than that?

This poetic form is a chant, which requires a repeated line.

Take a Chance

Your heart is delicate, but it’s not made of glass.
What do you have to lose?

Just think of your balls. They’re made of brass.
What do you have to lose?

The height is an illusion. It only feels too tall.
What do you have to lose?

No matter what you think, you’ll survive the fall.
What do you have to lose?

Poem–“Tension”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A piece of white blue lined notebook paper with a shimmer of rainbow crossing it.National Poetry Month and the terrible poetry continues!

Last year’s Day 7 theme was tense. This could be tense situations or muscle conditions or verb presentations.

I decided to use a little free verse to write about the meaning I was most familiar with.

Tension

It’s an invisible wire
pulling on points
so subtly that
when the wire

releases

muscles fall like
marionette limbs,
and in the relief
you realize that
all this time
you weren’t ready.
You were just

tense.

Poem–“Daylight Savings Swindle”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A piece of white blue lined notebook paper with a shimmer of rainbow crossing it.It’s National Poetry Month, which means the return of weekly terrible poetry.

This year’s selection of poems were written last year during the National Poetry Month Poem-a-Day challenge. So, let’s kick it off with last year’s Day Three theme, a short poem. The poem could be short, but the poem could also be about something short or being short on something.

Here’s a short free verse poem about how I am always short on time.

Daylight Savings Swindle

Time
is a con
by Big Clock
to sell minutes
at prices I
can’t afford. That’s
why I’m so
short on
time.

Poem–“A Proposal”

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

A piece of white blue lined notebook paper with a shimmer of rainbow crossing it.Let’s have a terrible love-ish poem for Valentine’s Day.

I wrote this during the 2024 November Poem-A-Day challenge, but I think it definitely fits the current vibe. I might just use this in my dating app profiles.

It’s free verse because of course. When in doubt, I go free verse.

A Proposal

Do you want to hold hands
while we wait to die?
Spend nights deciding on dinner
while the world burns?
Go to the post office together
while we wait for the final straw?
Spend forever together
while forever gets shorter every day?

I Wrote Myself a Fairy Tale

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A light brown and light red pen lying on a sheet of lined notebook paper.Almost 30 years ago at my first legit paycheck job, I entertained my coworker’s toddler daughter by telling her a story. I told her to pick five words and I’d make a story out of them. And I did. I told her a wild fairy tale using all of her words, which kept her preoccupied while her mom was able to finish what she needed to do without worrying about her kid. All I remember about that story is that it had a gasoline fairy in it. My coworker at the time was impressed with my talent to come up with a story on the fly, but honestly, for me it wasn’t hard. I’d been telling myself stories all my life.

Decades later, I’m still telling myself stories.

I have insomnia. I had it bad when I was a teenager. It got better in my twenties and thirties. It has returned in my forties, thanks in part to perimenopause. Sleeping through the night without getting up to pee at least once is now a luxury that I’m not often afforded. Getting back to sleep after that bathroom trip is also no longer a given. It’s not uncommon for me to toss and turn for an hour or two before falling back to sleep, if I’m lucky. Some nights, there is no more sleep. Even though my brain and body are tired, it’s like I’ve forgotten how to sleep, never mind that I was just doing it before I got up to pee.

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in the familiar situation of trying to get back to sleep after a middle of the night bathroom trip and I was failing. I’d already been awake for an hour and I was starting to get frustrated. For whatever reason, the memory of telling my coworker’s daughter a story came back to me. I found myself thinking about what kind of story I’d tell my current coworker’s daughter, who is about the same age as the old coworker’s little girl was then.

So, I started telling myself the story I thought she might like.

I fell asleep telling myself a fairy tale.

When I woke up the next morning, I still had much of the story lodged in my brain and I thought, “You know, I’m on vacation. I have time. I should write this down.” So, I did. For the first time in months, I wrote the first draft of a short story. It took a few days over the course of a week because things happened, but I got it done. It clocked in at a little over 3,000 words and it’s actually pretty decent for a first draft, especially when you consider I’ve never written anything like this before. Well, if you don’t count that first story I told, which I don’t since I didn’t write it down.

Aside from revising it, I have no real plan for what I’m going to do with it. It was just a fun thing that I did, a reminder of how much I can enjoy writing. I think not writing with any expectation of what I’m writing helped me get it written. There was no objective here, no goal in mind. It wasn’t a have to. It was just a story that I wanted to write.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done that. Since I’ve allowed myself to do that.

Maybe that’s how I get back into writing regularly again. Find my way back to the joy and desire I’ve lost. I take off the pressure and the have, the need to be published, to try to make it into a career.

Maybe it’s time to just go back to telling myself stories.

I can always tell them to other people later.

Poem: “Drug Problem”

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

A piece of white blue lined notebook paper with a shimmer of rainbow crossing it.The return of terrible poetry coincides with the continuation of terrible times.

There is a tightrope that I feel like many of us walk when it comes to being well-informed, being aware, being current, and also protecting our mental health, our psychological well-being, and our hearts. It’s so easy to become overwhelmed by the constant influx of badness, so easy to feel helpless in the face of it, while also succumbing to the guilt of looking away, indulging in a moment or two of self-care and/or happiness. It feels selfish.

However, it’s not. It’s not turning a blind eye. It’s self-preservation for the duration. Even when you’re waist deep in it, you have to find some speck of joy to sustain yourself. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Take care of yourself.

A little couplet free verse on the subject.

Drug Problem

We were not meant to mainline the horrors.
It’s too easy to OD on uncut trauma.

Have a bump of joy, for god’s sake;
achieve a wholesome high

to stave off the jones
of needing to bear all the witness.

Detoxing on the reg
is the only way to survive

the oppressive addiction
of the powerful.

A Chapbook of Grief

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A light brown and light red pen lying on a sheet of lined notebook paper.Instead of torturing you with yet another poem this month, I’m going to tell you about a chapbook I’ve been working on with the goal of having the first draft done by the end of the year.

First of all, a poetry chapbook is about 20-40 pages long. The number of poems depends on how long the poems are. I’m a short poem writer. Most of my poems can be contained on one page. So, in my chapbook writing endeavor, I’m looking at about twenty poems just to be safe.

After my friend and roommate Carrie unexpectedly passed away last December, I ended up using poetry to channel a lot of my grief. In the immediate aftermath, scribbling my feelings down let me keep functioning. It was like a release valve. It kept me from exploding into a useless ball of guilt, tears, and snotty Kleenex (but trust me, there was still a lot of all three).

Early in 2025, I decided it would be a good idea to focus this grief and poetry into a chapbook. Purposely write my pain as a way to process and cope. In a way, somewhere in my grief-addled brain, I thought it would be a good way to honor and memorialize Carrie. She always thought she’d be discarded and forgotten, and I didn’t want that to happen. In retrospect, maybe centering an entire chapbook on my own grief wasn’t the best way to do that, but it gave me something to do.

I do believe that it helped quite a bit. I do think I ended up processing more of my grief than I thought I would. However, I also reached a point where I didn’t want to write about it anymore. I was tired of poking at that wound. I didn’t want to pick at that scab anymore. I wanted it to heal. I was afraid to touch it. I could lie and say that I was worried that repeatedly touching it might cause it to get infected, but the truth was that I was tired of the sting and I was afraid it might hurt as badly as it first did if I prodded hard enough. Honestly, it probably would.

So, I stopped thinking about it, stopped writing about it, and kind of ignored it.

I didn’t look at the poems I had written for months. I flinched just thinking about it. And I put off finishing the chapbook so I wouldn’t have to deal with the discomfort of revisiting that intense grief.

So here I am at the end of the year and the first draft of that chapbook is still unfinished. It’s looming on my To Do List and I’m more uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the chapbook unfinished than I am with making myself finish it. Because by not finishing this first draft -even if I never revise it, even if nothing comes of it- feels like I’m letting Carrie down once again.

I’ve got a few weeks until 2026 and I’m going to finish it. I’ve only got a couple more poems left to write. I can do it.

For Carrie, I’ll get it done.

Poem: “Maybe My Request Is Too Abstract”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A piece of white blue lined notebook paper with a shimmer of rainbow crossing it.I’ve been participating in a poem-a-day challenge this month. The goal is to create a chapbook worthy of submission, but my personal goal is to do some healing via poetry. I picked a specific theme, a healing focus if you will, and I’ve been using the daily prompts to write to it.

Have I healed any? Probably not. But I have analyzed and examined the wound I’m working on and I’ve concluded that it’s made for some decent poetry. However, because this topic is so personal, it hasn’t been poetry that I’ve wanted to share. I’d feel too exposed to put it out there for other eyeballs.

However, there is one poem that’s figurative enough that it feels safe to share. It comes from the Day 19 prompt of Six Words. The words were submitted by folks and the guy running the poem-a-day challenge picked six of them -bubble, dandelion, gibberish, gnarled, roiling, and squint. The goal was to use at least three of them in a poem.

I’m an overachiever. I used all six. Utilizing my usual free verse style made it easy.

Maybe My Request Is Too Abstract

a dandelion fluff wish in a bubble
squint and the hope flashes iridescent
pop it and it sounds like gibberish
a gnarled love prayer
roiling into the ether
blown away and ignored

No Words November

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A light brown and light red pen lying on a sheet of lined notebook paper.I admit that the title is a bit of a lie. It’s not that I’m not going to write any words in November. I am participating in the November Poem-A-Day challenge and poems usually do require words. What I mean is that this year, this month, I’m not participating in a big word count endeavor.

2023 was my last official NaNo and last year, instead of participating officially, I used November to incarnate Stateline into a novel form. This will be my first November in a couple of decades that I’m not spending my days stressing about making word counts and trying to cross a finish line.

There’s a list of reasons why I decided to opt out this year. I think the number one reason, the main reason, the only reason that I really need is that this year, I’m all tapped out. I just don’t have the energy to sit down and write at least 1,700 words a day. I’m juggling too many things right now and having trouble keeping all of the balls in the air. I’ve taken on more at the library -namely the two new monthly programs that I started in October- which has required me to bring more of my work home until I get things into a rhythm. I’ve also got more podcast stuff going on this November than I have previous Novembers. And, of course, there’s my role as caregiver for my father, which has lessened in recent months because he’s been doing better (knock all of the wood), but still demands time and energy. (I’m actually writing this blogs post while waiting for him at his latest PET scan).

Last year, in the midst of my father’s rapidly worsening health, his hospitalizations and doctor appointments and ER visits, Carrie’s fall and her doctor appointments and ER visits, I managed to keep up with my daily word count. I managed to write my poem-a-day, too. It was a distraction, a little bit of normalcy in the midst of a swirling storm of chaos. Looking back, I realize that’s the only reason why I did it. Well, that and stubbornness, I suppose. Looking back, I can’t believe that I didn’t give myself a break.

This year, I’m giving myself that break, even if I am dealing with far less chaos and emotional turmoil.

Do I feel guilty about that? Oh yeah. Do I look at other people with busy lives and lists of obligations who still get their writing goals met and feel like an absolute failure? You better believe it. But this year, I’m giving myself permission to give less of a shit about it. Will I actually give less of a shit about it? Probably not. But I have permission.

Even if I did decide to add 50,000 words to my November, I’m not sure I have a story idea in my head that I’d want to spend the month and the words investing in right now. I’ve got one idea that I’ve been kicking around off and on for years now, but it’s still so uncertain of itself that I feel like I’d spend 30 days spewing words that ultimately wouldn’t do me any good. You could argue that writing 50,000 words of yuck could help me develop that story, and you’d have a good argument, but I’d just refer you back to the first point that I made. I don’t have the time or energy right now for that sort of endeavor.

Does that bum me out? Yes. I miss having the spark that would lead me to explore that idea. It reminds me of when writing was hard and I don’t want writing to be hard again. But honestly, it kind of is.

So, this November, I’m going to let writing be a little hard and I’m not going to worry about the number of words I write.

I’ll just let them rhyme.