NaPoWriMo 2013: Day 4

Our prompt for today (again — totally optional!) is a little odd, but here goes. Recently, I read an articleabout the Scottish science fiction writer Iain M. Banks. His books often have spaceships in them. And those spaceships have extremely odd, poetic names. Like:

Prosthetic Conscience

Irregular Apocalypse

Unfortunate Conflict of Interest

Gunboat Diplomat

Very Little Gravitas Indeed

A Series of Unlikely Explanations

Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality

Jaundiced Outlook

Frank Exchange of Views

Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill

Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints

Abundance of Onslaught

Refreshingly Unconcerned With the Vulgar Exigencies of Veracity

A Fine Disregard For Awkward Facts

There’s a whole twitter account devoted to tweeting Iain-M-Banks-like names for spaceships. So your challenge for today is to write a poem with a title drawn from one of these spaceship names. Feel free to pick a genuine Banks, like the ones listed above, or to take one from the twitter. And if you think of your own Banks-like spaceship name title, feel free to use that! The poet Barbara Guest wrote an essay warning poets about starting from the title, but while I’ve found that a wonderful poem usually finds its right title, I’ve also found that the right title can easily lead to a wonderful poem!

Happy writing!

Ok... My poem :

Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill

by: Keith Dozier

We don't stay in the kitchen long

Anymore.

We've learned to absorb,

Analyze, deal,

much faster than before.

So much coverage--

Of every bad thing,

We've become numb,

To all but the worst of things.

It might seem sad,

To become this way.

Dealing with reality

Awful events day after day.

Surviving emotionally..

We shut down to deal,

We'll take our days,

Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill