This year, I'm getting back to basics: for the next thirty days I will write and post a new poem determined by the following randomizing system: I have a deck of playing cards and a twenty sided die. Each card is assigned a prompt and each side a form. In the morning I will draw a card and roll the die, and then, using the randomly selected topic and form, write and post the poem here before I go to sleep.
The list of prompts is as follows:
| 2c | Minimum Wage |
| 2d | Gong Farming |
| 2h | Small Victories |
| 2s | Palate Cleansers |
| 3c | Blurred Lines |
| 3d | Slow Television |
| 3h | School Photos |
| 3s | Spirit Animals |
| 4c | Heroin Chic |
| 4d | Stars Without Makeup |
| 4h | Stage Kisses |
| 4s | Cold Feet |
| 5c | Easter Island |
| 5d | Flightless Birds |
| 5h | Constellations |
| 5s | Koala Attacks |
| 6c | Armchair Quarterbacks |
| 6d | Armchair Suicides |
| 6h | Dead Grandfathers |
| 6s | The War on Christmas |
| 7c | Bloodless Coups |
| 7d | Sleeper Cells |
| 7h | Strategic Losses |
| 7s | Pyrrhic Victories |
| 8c | Saffron |
| 8d | Lotus Eaters |
| 8h | William Blake References |
| 8s | Circular Logic |
| 9c | Reality TV Villains |
| 9d | Horrible Bosses |
| 9h | The Westboro Baptist Church |
| 9s | Tea Parties |
| 10c | Bay State Road |
| 10d | The Western Wall |
| 10h | Espresso Royale Caffe (sic) |
| 10s | The Moana Surfrider Hotel |
| jc | Catharism |
| jd | Second Chances |
| jh | Errant Knights |
| js | Being Older than James Dean |
| qc | Miscarriages |
| qd | Amelia Earhart |
| qh | Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe |
| qs | Killing Two Birds With One Stone |
| kc | Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain * |
| kd | Elvis Impersonators |
| kh | Henry IV Part 1 |
| ks | Divine Right |
| ac | Survivor Guilt |
| ad | Unfinished Screenplays |
| ah | Failed Actors |
| as | Poetry Blogs |
And forms:
| 1 | Prose |
| 2 | Shakesperian Sonnet |
| 3 | Tweet Length |
| 4 | Rubai |
| 5 | Writer's Choice |
| 6 | Limerick |
| 7 | Folk Song |
| 8 | Free Verse |
| 9 | Haiku |
| 10 | Acrostic |
| 11 | Tweet Length |
| 12 | Blank Verse |
| 13 | Hip Hopera (detail) |
| 14 | Writer's Choice |
| 15 | Free Verse |
| 16 | Tanka |
| 17 | Rondeau |
| 18 | Tweet Length |
| 19 | Alexandrine Couplets |
| 20 | Writer's Choice |
Ground Rules:
- I will follow the system every day even if it means I have to write a Haiku about 'Blurred Lines'.
- Once a topic is used, it will not be put back in the deck.
- Jokers are wild (explanations to come)
Check out previous years here:
2010
2011
2012
2013
Enjoy and thanks for reading!
* To commemorate Confederate History Month
