Na/GloPoWriMo 2020, Day 5 is Palm Sunday! Challenging, really challenging prompt today.  20 separate components:

“Our (optional) prompt for today is one that we have used in past years, but which I love to come back to, because it so often takes me to new and unusual places, and results in fantastic poems. It’s called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course,  if you can’t fit all twenty projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.”

After talking a completely separate direction to try to tackle this prompt, my love was a bit downhearted at the fact the sermon we attended today didn’t not make more than a passing reference to Palm Sunday.  So, as promised, I am going to do my best to touch on this day and also put to rest this project from the poetry folks:

Triumphal Entry (For Palm Sunday 2020)
by Michael Doyle

The world cries for help
Hosana, Hosana
Dear Lord Jesus deliver us
Hoshiya Na
Jerusalem
Becomes a metaphor for the world

Me lost in my urbanism
   I take communion
While grimacing that its symbolism
   Might be taken as sacral cannibalism
Me, modern day sinner called out as Tarzan
   Talking to you on our beach, I take flight

The king of the Jews rides astride
A donkey proclaiming His victory
For the sins of humanity
As the donkey laughs at the absurdity
"You cannot live eternal by dying!!"
Degrees of separation brought together

The brutality to be dealt
   Tortured to tears beautiful
I am redeemed; we are saved
   Conf0rming to human form
You died for the sake of us all
   For three days you are lost that we might find

How humanity can be so blind
How bittersweet this victory tastes
I shudder at your wounded cries
The ripped flesh has its smell of death
I touch the hole in your side to find belief
There is an overwhelming pouring out of my senses

Jesus' work here in Jerusalem
   Is the beginning of the end
I await your return in an age that has lost its grace
   Mine is the casted lot of obedience
To defeat the Deceiver, the Truth must die
Religious people often seek to be more spiritual than God

             ...The Gate is narrow that provides salvation....

(c) April 5, 2020  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved