SECRET GALLERY (WITH PICTURES)

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Day 12. Still feeling slightly guilty for missing one day, but I expect I'll get over it. Today I am spending time with The Computer. After three months away it has various upgrades that need to be attended to, which inexorably lead to other upgrades, which inevitably lead to trying to load something that then doesn't work which means more trouble-shooting. Gah!

So, for a quick change of pace, I shall attempt today's poem prompt, brought to you by NaPoWriMo. (I know some of my poet friends are doing several daily challenges. Hats off! I can barely manage one!)

The Prompt:

"Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form.

Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.

Cut the lines where you see fit and, VOILA! A poem!"

Well, okay. I can write about a space that is a current obsession with me.

The Prose:

SECRET GALLERY

At first I don't think I can go in. The yard, overgrown with cacti, palm trees of various sizes, low creeping ground cover looks like a haven for snakes and scorpions, to say nothing of other unfriendly fauna. There is a path from the north-south road that leads to where you can see the eye hanging in a window. The doorway, open to the the elements, is mine if I skirt down the lightly trodden path beside the brick wall. I run. Inside, I see the art someone has inflicted on the walls.  A long, red arm reaches from doorway to window. And on the dirt floor, a brave green attempt at life by something. There are circles on the floor, formed by brick or stone. Black stick figures straddle canyons in the mind. Whose mind? Why? A secret. But this only tells what it looks like. This can't impart the low rising of back-of-neck hairs, the total silence in this ever-noisy town, the strange mask on the wall beneath the stairs that lead nowhere. 

The Poem:

SECRET GALLERY

At first, I can't go in.

Overgrown with cacti, 

palm trees, low creeping ground cover,

the yard a haven for snakes and scorpions. 

Path from the north-south road 

leads to the  always-open eye hanging in a window. 

The always-open doorway is mine 

if I skirt the path beside the brick wall. 

I run. 

Inside, someone has inflicted art upon the walls. 

A long, red arm stretches from doorway to window. 

On the dirt floor, a brave green attempt at life 

by something. 

Circles on the floor, 

sketched in brick and stone. 

Black stick figures straddle canyons in the mind,

somehow hopeful, somehow out of place.

Whose mind? 

And why this strange, foreboding mask 

on the wall beneath stairs to nowhere?

How to explain the profound and utter 

silence in this ever-noisy town?

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