Hey there everyone.
It gives me the greatest pleasure to let you know that I have signed up to do poetry every day all throughout the month of April for NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo 2018.
Last time I did this back in 2016, I recorded a series of Live videos on Facebook of me reading all of the poems and I intend to do this throughout this month too but I will be reading two poems every couple of days to give myself some more breathing room to write them this time round.
So, here is my first effort for the month, it is inspired by the Day 1 prompt over at www.napowrimo.net – Day 1 – Here We Go which talks about secret shames and/or secret pleasures.
I decided to write about guilty pleasures that are common with many of us but from the perspective of somebody with no shame 🙂
Hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think in the comments.
Photo by anlyu0 at Pixabay
“Guilty Pleasures” by David Ellis
Singing in the shower at the top of my lungs until my whole body turns into a wrinkly prune
How dare the neighbours bang on the walls demanding I use autotune, that’s just plain rude!
It’s not often they get to hear the voice of an angel through these walls, so vibrant, so melodic
Wait, are they dialling for the police? Yikes, guess I’m heading back to my room and playing dead
My bed is my best friend, come rain or shine, I will make out with it, a passionate relationship
If I answer the door to the postman in my pyjamas, he knows that I got lucky last night
Still, can’t spend my whole life in bed, might as well get up early, since it just turned midday
Got to look my best for the restaurant to hide that I’ve just rolled out from under the covers wearing slippers
I think I will play it cool, have a small mains today, and then just go straight to the dessert
That extra scoop of ice cream or slice of cake is never a mistake, shut up hips, it’s delicious!
Yes, I know that was naughty and we all dream of having abs like slabs of concrete molehills
But to invest that kind of commitment into the gym and cut out treats takes the fun out of everything
We have barely enough time to procrastinate all day on the internet as it is
Just thinking about all this exercise makes me tired
Forgot the restaurant, I’ll have a takeaway at home instead
It’s my third this weekend but then who’s got time to wash dishes? Not this cat!
Back to back Netflix binges prove you’ve got skills of focus, stamina and endurance
It’s not our fault if the storylines of our favourite shows are so compelling
That we have to skip work, school, church, chores and eat cereal for dinner to get to the end of them
To do anything less is an insult to the writers and producers
Yes, I know I’ve phoned in twenty-seven consecutive sick days all by myself
I’m not the boss though, that’s his job to figure it all out
Oh and before I forget, I’d better call him and tell him I’ve got three weeks of holiday booked
“Sorry, what? You’re breaking up boss, stick my what up my what? Oh, you got cut off.”
Guess the boss doesn’t have a problem with me heading to the airport for my holiday in Barbados
Airport drinking is fine because it’s always happy hour in another timezone
No, I am not too drunk to get on the plane, except why is it swimming, I thought we were flying?
Also, I hate the inflight movie, so instead I’m going to watch Disney
Cartoons are not for adults? There’s nothing more childish than being told to grow up!
Now hand me those crayons and that colouring book too and don’t disturb me, I’ve got a lot of work to do
Still got a hankering for even more poetry? Well, it is my intention to link up to as many poems written for today as possible, so for your viewing pleasure, here are some more poems written for Day 1 of NaPoWriMo by a variety of very talented people:-
1. Arash’s Poetry – This River
2. ORDINARY AVERAGE THOUGHTS – My secret day
3. Unassorted stories – Things Facebook doesn’t know about me
4. Ladyleemanila – A is for Alouette
5. Z for short – Don’t try to write like Shakespeare
6. April’s Thirty – NaPoWriMo – 1
7. SMOKE WORDS EVERY DAY. – [135] #NaPoWriMo [1/30] {Book of Shame}
8. this and other poems – 1/4
9. Writing and Reflections – Spring
10. LILLIAN THE HOME POET – Last Breath
11. CLAIREVETICA – BLURS
12. Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food – NaPoWriMo: Day 1 – Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food
13. Zouxzoux – Sweet Solitude
14. RIVRVLOGR – streetlight dim rival
15. Ileea – Aprillyrik dag 1 – Dagen är ny (Swedish)
16. Audacity: Acrostic poem inspired by “Stop Acid Attacks” – NamySaysSo – Perspectives, Inspirations & LifeHacks For Women
17. Yesterday and today: Merril’s historical musings – Secret Joys: NaPoWriMo, Day 1
18. EAT ALL THE WORDS – this is
19. Flutterby’s NaPoWriMo – 2018 DAY 1 – I’LL DO IT LATER
20. 1st Non-Manuscript – Charlene Delfin’s second blog – Day 1: Secret Pleasure
21. Z for short – THE POET’S REALM
22. RIVRVLOGR – to be coffee
23. WHAT LIFE SAID TO ME – NaPoWriMo 2018 : Secret Pleasure
24. CREATIVELY UNDEAD MINDS – GloPoWriMo 1/30 [Poetic Justice?]
25. fresh poetry – lindi-ann hewitt-coleman – exchanging pleasantries
26. grapeling – birthday / 1
27. Thoughts of Words – Town
28. Scrambled, Not Fried – Love, Still (An Inverted Tanka)
29. Playing with words – Unclogging my mind… – My secret shame
30. HOSKING’S BLOG – #NaPoWriMo 2018 Day One
31. QUEST FOR WHIRLED PEAS – NAPOWRIMO 2018 – DAY 1
32. inktuition – NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 1: my secret rainy pleasure
33. Rhyme and Reason – Poetry Meets Film Reviews – The Greatest Showman (2017)
34. Raven Redux – This is Just to Confess
35. SOUL STRUCTURED LINES – NAPOWRIMO DAY 1
36. Summer Blues – A Poetry Blog – Truth or Dare
37. ARHtistic License – Summer Darkness
38. Purple Mountain Poetry – Skinny Dipping With My Mother at Purdy’s Point
39. TAROT PROSE – Without Shame
40. Audrey Haney’s poetry page – Tacky
41. KATIE STATEN – NaPoWriMo #1 – Effigy
42. Poetry by Hasen – Voice Within A Box
43. Poetry by Hasen – Staying Up To Late
44. she’s taking notes – Panorama
45. The Product Poet – From Homies to Brony
46. VOYAGE CITIES – poetry blog of m.j.smith – A Nice Pair
47. JIM’S LITTLE PHOTO AND POEM PLACE – NaPoWriMo 2018-01 — Pick
48. MY FEELINGS MY FREEDOM – NaPoWriMo Day 1:Quadrille- A Poetic Journey
49. method two madness – Multiples
50. ORIENTATION::QUILTER – Day 1 NaPoWriMo 2018
51. Anaïs Chartschenko – NaPoWriMo?! Day 1
52. Sounds of Time – The Battle
53. Poetry Jukebox – An Advice from a Lonesome So-And-So
54. From the Northside – Colored Section
55. WONDERING AND WANDERING – A vernal pool list with a twist!
56. Leonas Lines – Poetry Plus – April Fool
57. Res Wonderland – Letter to Bose (early bird prompt)
58. Poetic Pixels – This Is Home
59. PGArtistry – Day 1: Write a poem to your favorite letter of the alphabet
60. MARILYN RAUCH CAVICCHIA – One Door
61. Charmed Chaos – Let Me
62. Eileen Xu – action-romeo-in-shining-armour (alternatively: poem for a boy)
63. NakitaJay’s Soap Box – Queen Speech
64. A READING WRITER – again (an aubade)
65. Tom Allsopp’s blog – NaPoWriMo18 Day 1
66. POETRY IS – SECRETS
67. TALES OF A WANDERING… – Ritual and Recognition
68. L’Angolo Polveroso – #GloPoWriMo 2018 1 – Bravo
69. Wendy Amanda – midday curfue
70. Ghazal – A Love Poem
71. UnclePhilsblog – A vinyl daze
72. Sarah’s Poetry – Nightmare
73. Callahan Connor – Lit Beacon
74. Mercedes Fonseca – CedeRed Poetry – Surge and Swell
75. KhudKhushi Jain – Mirror Mirror on the wall
76. A lil black phone with my poems in – Prompt – A Guilty Secret Poem
toofulltowrite (I've started so I'll finish) 
Reblogged this on Writing and Reflections and commented:
Another poet taking part in NaPoWriMo. Take a look!
Hey there Michele, TY for the share of my poem on your blog, I appreciate that very much 🙂 I look forward to reading more of your work throughout NaPoWriMo, I hope we all have plenty of inspiration to keep us going to the finish line 🙂
Just writing a poem a day for a whole month is work! Looking forward to 29 more poems, David.
Hey there Lori. It is extremely hard work because I always fret about coming up with something that people really want to read! 🙂 The is a lot of other maintenance work that I do with links in the background, along with carefully choosing appropriate pictures to compliment the pieces and I also want to perform them in live videos too. November was a good training ground, so I would imagine I will be doing a similar thing soon here, so stay tuned and keep ’em peeled 😀
I’m around one or two (short) poems a year. Nice going!
I often wonder if I am going to make it through the month alive and kicking but I’ve done it before, so I might as well enjoy the journey. I can’t guarantee all of them will be gems but I’m usually confident about 98% of them 😉
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What a fun write! You are sooo proud of your guilty pleasures, arent you?
Lol it was a lot of fun to write Namratha, I like to think of some of those guilty pleasure being mine but then I cranked a lot of them up to extremely silly levels and then we all have fun in the end 🙂
I enjoyed this one putting so many guilty pleasures in one poem! It’s an interesting feel, the idea of a life built only of guilty pleasures. Sort of seems not so special anymore. And then they’d have to get guiltier and guiltier. Great perspective!
Lol TY Christie, I thought about some guilty pleasures that we could all relate to and then built it up for there. It is fun to escalate this kind of situation but I also did not want to portray this person as being mean, they just have guilty pleasures that might rub others the wrong way. I couldn’t resist having the notion that even after pulling multiple consecutive ‘sick days’ that the person has the gumption to remind their boss that they have holiday booked too, that concept was just screaming hilarity at me 🙂
What? Singing in the shower is a guilty pleasure? Now, why did no one tell me that? 😉
Lol I was thinking that maybe singing in the shower for too long and too loudly was a guilty pleasure. I like singing in the shower but only if people cannot hear me or at the very least are not annoyed by me 😉
Thanks for sharing! The cat looks a bit like mine–they are good role models for sleeping. 🙂
You’ve very welcome for the share Merril, I look forward to reading and sharing more of your poems as we progress through NaPoWriMo 🙂 The cat is this picture is quite cheeky, I couldn’t resist including him since I mention the word cat in my poem 😉
Hahaha: “Back to back Netflix binges prove you’ve got skills of focus, stamina and endurance”.
I am confused about this line: “There’s nothing more childish than being told to grow up!” My head keeps changing it to “There’s nothing more childish than telling people to grow up!”. But I guess that’s not what you mean 🙂
I can’t believe you’re doing all the linking up again. You’re the hardest working poet in town!
Your first contribution to NaPoWriMo is really relaxing to read 🙂 Is it okay to share it on my Procrastination Coach Facebook page, introduced by that Netflix line?
Hey there Angela. I’m glad you love this poem, I did wonder whether I should start on a serious or humorous note but sometimes I just can help myself and the comedy has to take over 🙂
By all means, I would be happy for you to share it. I’m going to be hunting for a lot more links too over the course of the month, I think I only just scratched the tip of the iceberg with the handful that I just linked to now. I will probably link to everything throughout the course of the month and then read all the poetry in the subsequent month, there is only so much time to write, publish and link to everyone within the same day 😉
Also that line that you mention about growing up. I think we are both coming at it from the same angle. However, I think I wanted the focus of the line to be the world against the person, so that he may be encountering people that are telling him to grow up, which he finds childish (and yet he is indulging in “guilty pleasures” by embracing things that are deemed to be childish for adults (like coloring, cartoons, etc).
So I agree with your version of the line, I think I just picked my version for narrative purposes, as for example I would reword your version of the line to say “There’s nothing more childish than people telling you to grow up!” I get the feeling that I did not want to confuse the reader that they are telling someone something when they are the one on the receiving end and are being made to feel guilty because of their love of “childish” things. Hope that make some sort of sense 🙂
I don’t like the notion of being told to grow up because childish things can often be the most fun. Also there is a time and place for being an adult too but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying things that children like too, like cartoons, foods, drinks, games, etc 😉
I’m with you on all that!
Shared it. I wanted to link to the specific post, but I can’t find out how. Hope you can find it anyway: https://www.facebook.com/ProcrastinationCoach/ I’m especially happy that I managed to add a call to action to the post 🙂
TY so much Angela, you are so kind to do that 🙂 And I really appreciate you buying me a tea/coffee too. I am definitely going to have to repay the favour in person and hop on a short break over to your neck of the woods in the summer 🙂
omg I love this!! The unabashed joy in pleasure and comfort and happiness… the hanging on to childishness, the monologue with self…. So wonderful!! 💜
TY so much for the comment Dainy, I’m glad you had fun with this one, I do enjoy exploring the playful nature of characters in my poetry and then amping their antics up to crazy degrees. I appreciate you taking the time to comment too, cheers 🙂
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Woooo hoooooo!
Easy there, tiger! 🙂
But that was Grrrrrrrrreat! Ha… see what I did there?
Yes I did, and I’m sure Tony did too and is heading over to your house to tear you to shreds for appropriating his only catchphrase
Another trademark scandal!
At least with you at the heart of scandals, things can only get more entertaining rather than terrifying
So far… so good!
Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
TY for the share, appreciate it very much 🙂