2024 April PAD Challenge: Day 24
Well, we’ve only got a week of April remaining, so let’s poem the heck out of the rest of this month.
For today’s prompt, write a maximum poem. Some people may recall that we wrote a minimum poem back on day 6; this takes that concept and brings it back the other way. In fact, one possible way into today’s poem would be to see what you did on day 6 and turn it on its head. Or go somewhere completely new. Whatever you do, take it to the max.
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
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Later this month, be sure to check out the 3rd annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Writing Virtual Conference with four great presentations put on by award-winning poets covering a variety of topics, including how to put together poetry collections and bring fresh insight to familiar ideas.
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Here’s my attempt at a Maximum Poem:
“When It Comes to Philosophy”
Everything is on the table
(including the table): love,
fear, dreams, math, concepts
of reality, the meaning of life,
the meaning of death, why
we exist, why we don’t.
And then, with faith, we move
one direction or another,
always questioning and probing
and pondering until everything
becomes nothing and nothing
becomes everything and
the maximum is the minimum
of everything we’ll never know.
Our hearts (that may or may not
exist) beat steadily in our real
or unreal chests as we may
or may not think about time,
which itself may not exist
in the ways we tell ourselves
time must exist, and still, we
find ourselves caught up in
paying the bills and worrying
about the crime that could
possibly impact us somewhere
down the road and everything
that is on the table may not
be on the table, because
the table may not exist, nor
even the person who built
(or didn’t) it and sold it.
And this is why I couldn’t
become a philosopher,
because one rabbit hole
begets another and I’ve never
had trouble asking questions:
What I really want
are some answers.