NaNo Congrats, Writing Advice from a 12-year-old, And Poem #3

I’m pleased to announce that all the friends I’m spying — er, cheering — on at NaNoWriMo now have words to their names. Yay!! The public guilting shall abate for a time.

This morning I programmed this article to run on the homepage of NewMoon.com. Check it out — this 12-year-old will cut through all your wimpy excuses for not writing (I don’t have time, I’m not a good speller, my grammar sucks, etc.)!

And, here’s my poetry attempt from last night, using the help of my picto-journal:

Religious though he is, even he can see the

hyporcrisy of praying to the Lord Almighty

when no one has a prayer

left anyway. They mostly all

turned away the summer the

war tanks rolled over the

many fields so pains-takingly planted that spring,

taking away the one thing that had

always made them trust in the

Goodness of the Lord,

from whom came the soil, the rain, the growth.

“Too much sin,” proclaimed the preacher.

“God has his reasons,” the old women’s voices murmur

as they rock on front porches

just as they’d said when Baby Dawn was born

with her parts all in the wrong places

when Mary’s husband left for groceries

and never came back

when Nyla’s son got so drunk

that he didn’t think to check for the train.

This is bigger, perhaps, but no different

makes no more sense,

so they clack rosary beads between their fingers

which tremble from palsy

or explosions.

The image was from some religious publication — a pic of an old preacher in a black robe with a massive cross spreading his arms in prayer while a tank rolled over a field in the background and with an explosion in the distance. The caption said, “Religious hypocrisy has turned many away from God.” I used the words from the caption as the original “spine” of the poem, although I think the poem would be better off without them in later drafts.