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Poetry Writing Month Day 7 2024: "Domestication vs. rewilding"

Where is the line between an act of love, and an act of violence? Our understandings of love are so often tied to concepts of possession. To love something is to have some level of control over its very way of being. Over the course of a relationship, we are expected to acclimate. To become the familiar of those who are familiar with us.

You saw me like a feral cat, left too long away from civilising influences. The kind of creature that needs to be gentled into discipline and understanding of its new place. I was to be taken from my forests and my freedom, and brought into a sterile world of straight lines. A world with no room for error. No room for difference.

But you were wrong. I was not merely the cat, who never belonged in the first place. I was the tree you cut down to find it. I was the river that wound around its roots. I was the dew drops on the shrubbery and the great exhalation of life that filled the space. I was the world of my own self.

The only way for an ecosystem to truly grow is to tend it. But for that you must view it with respect. As an equal and a partner in the great dance of live. You could never have brought me fully into that sterile world. Straight lines could not describe or contain me. I have returned to the wild. I never really left.

And I continued to grow away from you. In symbiosis with others, I sprouted new growth. I sustained them, and they helped me mature in my own time and way. Mutualism provided the fertile soil needed for me to become myself. And you were left staring at a plaster wall, wondering where it went wrong.

#adventurerswrite #shyprompts #amwriting #poetry

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Poetry Writing Month Day 6 2024: "Etymology"

I love you can mean a world of different things. Even if I mean it, it is not always in the way it is heard. It can emerge from my mouth, tumbling like bubbles from a child's toy, shining and fragile and temporary. It can be a promise of goodbye, one day.

Words evolve in my mouth, developing their own forms of twisting, mutating consciousness. As a life is lived and a mind grows, the ways words can be meant or used to lie expand. No matter where it came from, the words continue to blossom.

Words become almost alive in their changeability. Sometimes it is not until I have heard the response that I realise the meaning they have rustled away from other ideas in the night. Sometimes I know from the start. I love you can mean a world of different things. It can ring out from my mouth like a trumpet call, triumphant and defiant. It can be a declaration of my will to survive.

#adventurerswrite #shyprompts #amwriting #poetry

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Poetry Writing Month Day 5 2024: "Friendship bracelet"

There is a particular fragility In making something for those you love Pouring yourself and your knowledge Into something you give away The delicate ringing of a bell Right on the tip of a tongue Being held still in anticipation Is in a way its own kind of gift Nothing can truly prepare you For how they will respond To this work of your own hands This piece of your own self But if you're the right kind of lucky They will see the truth of it The truth you put in every stitch And they will love you back

#adventurerswrite #amwriting #poetry #shyprompts

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Poetry Writing Month Day 4 2024: "This stuff's medieval"

I inhale the crisp air of a spring morning Dewdrops dancing across my eyelashes And a bell rings out through my soul

The resonance of it blows away the cobwebs Built up around the crevices of my mind And leaves me with fresh eyes for the world

The sun rises over me, and I am in awe The burning light that sustains us Washes over the grass up to my feet

And in this moment I am united with Faces throughout history turned Towards the beauty of the sunrise.

#adventurerswrite #shyprompts #amwriting #poetry

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Poetry Writing Month Day 3 2024: Hand/god/knife

My hand becomes that which shapes my self I place my previous constructed concepts Of the constraints upon my being Upon the bench before me

And I begin to make them into Something that does not resemble the past

With the power of a sharpened knife And tensely, fervently held breath I carve away at the shape of what was And find the shapes of what will become

Here, the only constraints are my own I decide the nature of the spectacle I construct

I defy the order that was handed down From a seat I cannot see or reach I chisel and engrave, but I do not just subtract I form new shapes from that which was discarded

I have chosen my own path forward I have become my own creator

#adventurerswrite #shyprompts #poetry #amwriting

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Poetry Writing Month Day 2 2024: A feeling of iridescence

Time has ceased to feel Like it has any sort of linearity There is no straightforward way Through the forest of life

The meandering, intersecting paths Which wander through hills and trees Make curlicues around the plans You once might have thought simple

But at times, there are moments of rest A clearing amidst the endless shrubs In which dewdrops sit on chilled grass And the surface refracts the morning light

The pearlescent sheen on these Most ephemeral of decorations Can only be seen from up close When you take the chance to look

And in this way, time itself Takes on a refractive sheen A technicolor arrangement Of interlocking experiences

And when you look up from that dewdrop Into the forest ahead of yourself You might just find a path That comes to meet your own

#adventurerswrite #shyprompts #poetry #amwriting

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Poetry Writing Month Day 1 2024: Peace

My mouth is filled with sharp points Teeth filed against determination Made to tear strips off reality

I will work to fashion what I rend From the meat of the universe itself Into a heavy blackout curtain

I will draw it about my mind itself And it will act as a shield against All that would seek to disturb me

I will know peace in my near future I am no longer asking I will be making my own

#AdventurersWrite #ShyPrompts #Poetry #amwriting

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🦋 Happy #NaPoWriMo Adventurers! 🦋 This year, we've put together a special prompt list for our community + any curious passersby. Prompts were made by me, Maria @shylovrs so feel free to tag the guild + moi! Use the #AdventurersWrite or #ShyPrompts to share your work!

And if you'd like to join a community of dedicated writers and creatives this April, the guild's doors are open! Check the link in bio or click here to gain access to our discord!

#looking forward to these prompts

[penfull-of-venom]

Hi, I'm Drys Vernalis, and I use he/they/it pronouns. I aim to upload a poem every two weeks at least. I hope you enjoy!

Please be aware that much of my poetry deals with themes of death, grief, loss, and other heavy subjects. I trigger warn where I can but bear in mind that these themes will recur in my work.

Almost all poems posted here are cross posted from my website