Day 27 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2021

Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion is this month's “final Two-for-Tuesday ... prompt:  1. Write a believe poem and/or ... 2. Write a don't believe poem.” It seems that the NaPoWriMo website was hacked yesterday! Maureen Thorson announced the hack on facebook and on Twitter, saying that her hosting company shut down the website "to prevent further damage." The website has since been brought back up but with no new material after Day 26. Instead Maureen issued the prompt on Facebook and twitter: “Today's prompt asks you to get in touch with some minor, haunting feelings.” I wrote that (above) at 6:30 this morning. It is now a little after 9:00am and NaPoWriMo seems to be back to normal. Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo full prompt today is “I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by an entry from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. The entries are very vivid – maybe too vivid! But perhaps one of the sorrows will strike a chord with you, or even get you thinking about defining an in-between, minor, haunting feeling that you have, and that does not yet have a name.” Mashing up all three prompts, with some tanka prose, where the ending tanka is an acrostic poem spelling out a word from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, "wytai," which means, "a feature of modern society that suddenly strikes you as absurd and grotesque." Real Lives? I can’t believe someone would actually take the time to hack a poetry website like NaPoWriMo.net. There’s no money in it. No adventure, like hackers in Neuromancer wearing a haptic suit with virtual goggles and storming websites imaged as castles in cyberspace. Don’t hackers have real lives? At the same time, I do believe it, and I just shake my head. It’s a sign of our times that there are people for whom conspiracy theories literally are real life, like the QAnon Shaman, in his buffalo-horn headdress and leather chaps, shirtless, leading the Capitol invasion in January. Is that how a hacker sees themselves, as some kind of Messiah? As Moses in the wilderness, with a burning bush telling them, go take down Poetry . . . it’s a Democrat sex-trafficking scheme that's threatening the life-blood of the nation.                               W hy do hackers do it?                                Y ou would think                                T hey’d be cooking chili                                A nd walking the dog.                                 I t’s weirder than QAnon. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] QAnon Shaman at the Capitol riots, January 2021. Alan did the NaPoWriMo prompt today, drawing a word from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. P O E M   R E M O V E D while being submitted for publication.   Please come back later. The poem may return at some time in the future. Thank you!   Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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