Poetry Superhighway April 2023 Poems

dangerous mountains of madness

Dangerous unusual events

Dangerous unusual event
The burly royal family
Enchanted Memories

Mountainous Magenta
Visions overwhelming people
Hysterical Acid trips

Adjoining flimsy
scare wilderness
subdued history

the mood of society
disturbed by events
currency disruptions

grandmother
decides fate
of humanity

she has a beer
at midnight
Drama her priority


took much to drink
spent time in the bathroom
contemplating reality

she has an appointment
with a doctor
in the morning


1. erect
2.
3. unusual
4.
5. royal
6.
7. dangerous
8.
9. acid
10.
11. enchanted
12.
13. magenta
14.
15. mountainous
16.
17. hysterical
18.
19. adjoining
20.
21. technical
22.
23. burly
24.
25. scarce
26.
27. flimsy
28.
29. subdued
30.
31. math
32.
33. history
34. distribution
35. mood
36. society
37. grandmother
38. currency
39. beer
40. midnight
41. priority
42. bathroom
43. drama
44. appointment
45. hat
46. promotion



April 23, 2023: Poetry Writing Prompt from Richard-Yves Sitoski
This poetry writing prompt submitted by Richard-Yves Sitoski:
Imagery Prompts: Avoiding Cliché Through “Juxatives”
The best poetry avoids cliché using cognitive leaps. I don’t want red roses signifying love; rather, love may be a set of curtains that shuts out the outside world and keeps you and your dear ones together, or perhaps it’s molten lava that first burns all it touches but later cools into something solid you can build a house on.
How do we make these creative leaps? My fellow poet Kristan Anderson and I came up with the term “juxative,” for juxtapositions of terms that normally wouldn’t frequent each other. These juxatives can be expanded into full images.
To do it, create lists of adjectives and lists of nouns, verbs, and adverbs, or adjectives and adverbs. Then jumble them up so that random adjectives get applied to random nouns, etc.
SILLY + RIVER = What does that give us? Something better than a babbling brook, I’ll wager.
ANGRY + CHRISTMAS GIFT = Suddenly the holidays take on whole new implications.
CRYING + PILLOW = More forceful than crying into your pillow—you’re so down that your pillow itself is crying along with you.
The next step is to see how you can expand these.
LIMPING + MOUTH = “After the dentist, I spoke with a limp”
FLOWERY + KEY = “I practiced the piano till the keys turned to flowers”
HAPPY + THUNDER = “My childhood was a thunderstorm of happiness”
These images are often so striking and effective that they can spawn entire poems!
If you write a poem from this prompt, post it as a comment underneath the prompt in the Poetry Super Highway Facebook Group.
#napowrimo #poetry
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