NaPoWriMo - April 11th, 12th and 13th

April 11th

Prompt: What is your future state of mind?

Now and Then

now, my mind is an orchestra

without a conductor

a race car without pedals

it hopes

for the most grandiose of

symphonies

it hopes to make it across

the finish line

April 12th

Prompt: A haibun

My Neighborhood

My street is like a picture of a neighborhood in sepia. No one speaks to anyone here. The mosque across my home has always been there. The muezzin calls to prayer five times a day with the same anguished note he has used year after year. People rush to the mosque like addicts drawn to their opium dealer – looking for a solution for all of life’s uncertainties. School children are herded into the bus – the same bus that took me to the abattoir for most of my life.

round the street corner

a mazdoor shovels

in the desert sun

April 13th

Prompt: words or meaning of a familiar phrase get up-ended.

Mistakes

“Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” - Sylvia Plath

I once made a list

of all the proverbs you taught me.

But now the bush is overflowing with birds,

and there are none in my hands.

Scientists say there is no free will –

that all our actions are determined by

prior states of the universe,

like dominos falling from the beginning of time.

But 40 years of making the same mistakes

still says a lot about you.