A Good Night's Sleep

Today is the last day of NaPoWriMo 2024! For my final poem this month, I followed the prompt to compare or identify the speaker of my poem with someone from myth. I compared my speaker with a goddess of the day, who I considered in my mind to be Hemera (Greek mythology) or even Eos (goddess of the dawn). I hope you enjoy my last poem of NaPoWriMo 2024!

A Good Night's Sleep
By Candace Shultz

Oh, Hypnos, god of slumber,
Come carry me off into the deep
Embrace of Mother Nature's umber
Earth and verdant greenery.
Allow me the deep dark abyss of sleep.

Goddess Nyx has brought the night.
Morpheus waits to bring me a dream.
Let me bask in the heavenly starlight
And rest like a sleeping beauty
Until kissed by a morning sunbeam.

Then the sleepy dust will leave my eyes
As I awake with a yawn.
From my slumber I will rise
Like a goddess of the day,
Shining bright as I greet the dawn.

Let the beauty of the night
Give way to morning's light.

Incandescent

You can find today's NaPoWriMo prompt here, but basically I had to choose one word out of a list of ten words to use as the title for my poem. I chose the word incandescent. My poem is a haiku.

Incandescent
By Candace Shultz

At the end of day
when the sun's incandescence
disappears, I sleep

Sun-Kissed

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a sijo, which is a Korean verse form with three lines consisting of 14-16 syllables each. The following poem is my attempt at writing a sijo.

Sun-Kissed
By Candace Shultz

The sun beats down on her skin and smothers her with its heat.
Her bare skin reddens and burns under the glare of harsh yellow rays.
She rolls onto her stomach and sighs. For beauty she would die.

A Mother's Love

The NaPoWriMo prompt for today is to write an American sonnet, which has 14 lines likes a traditional sonnet, but doesn't have a rhyme scheme or meter. Here is my attempt at writing an American sonnet.

 

A Mother's Love
By Candace Shultz

A picture on the wall of fragmented flowers
With purple petals and dark green leaves
Stuck together one sticker at a time,
A purple painting with smiling clouds
Placed beside a poem written with love,
Purple thistles and red dandelions drawn
Next to red roses painted with celery ends:
A collage of art created by youthful exuberance
Embraced and displayed by a mother's love
For her children, a love with no limits.
If the sky were a canvas, she would fill it
With pictures and paintings and poetry
And all the creations of her children
To show her love and joy for them to the world.

I Am a Poet

For today's NaPoWriMo prompt, we were challenged to include alliteration, consonance, and assonance in our poems. I enjoy using alliteration (repetition of a consonant at the beginning of words), so my poem uses that technique a lot, but I did try to use consonance (repetition of consonant sound elsewhere in words) and assonance (repetition of vowel sounds) as well. I hope you enjoy my poem.

I Am a Poet

By Candace Shultz

I do not know what to write.

Why would you wish this on me?

You being myself as I stare at the screen,

Sullen and cross, cursing myself for promising

Poetry for all of April, even if I promised myself

And no one else. Yet I yearn to do better.

To write better. Write more. For I can't succeed

If I don't even try. I need these days of poetry

To remind myself that I am a writer even if

Some days my words drown with the dirty dishes

And months melt away in the summer heat

Where not a single sentence meets pen or paper

And winter wreaks havoc on my hurting hands.

They crack and bleed burying my need to create

Until springtime thaws my thoughts and I want

To write words again, to put them to pencil.

In the month of April, poetry pours forth

From my mind until I have nothing left.

A Shy Introvert

For Day 25 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt talked about answering questions on a Proust Questionnaire. I decided to respond to only one question in my poem. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I sometimes wish I was more of an extrovert. I'd like to be more outgoing and more comfortable in crowds and talking with lots of people. However, I understand myself enough to know I feel much more comfortable talking to only one or two people at a time, and that it's perfectly fine to be a shy introvert. I hope you enjoy my poem.
 

A Shy Introvert
By Candace Shultz

In a sea of faces
Your heart races.
Everything's just a blur.
Your mind is a saboteur:
It fills you with doubt,
Urging you to get out.
You will be fine.
You just need to realign.

Breathe as you move through the crowd.
Stay calm even though it's loud.
Withdraw to a quieter place.
Find peace in a different space.
When there's less people all around,
When your heart has finally calmed down,
Relax and give yourself grace.
Allow a mental embrace.

You don't have to change who you are.
You don't have to carry shyness like a scar.
Be true to yourself, and you'll be a star.

Love Will Always Win

The NaPoWriMo prompt today challenged me to start my poem with a line from another poem. I chose the line "I think I know enough of hate" from Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice."

 

Love Will Always Win
By Candace Shultz

I think I know enough of hate
To show it to the door.
Hate is no longer welcome here.
It won't hurt me anymore.
Goodbye to all the harsh words.
Goodbye to its disdain.
Goodbye to all the violence.
Goodbye to all the pain.
I close the door to hatred.
I close the door to sin.
No matter how hard it knocks,
I won't let it in.

But when I hear a knock of peace,
A gentle call of love,
I know to let the caller in
For He is sent from God above.
I open the door to Jesus.
He enters through my soul.
He sits with me at my table,
And again I am made whole.
Love heals hatred's wounds.
Love smooths scars from skin.
Love is always welcome.
Love will always win.