NaPo 2022 Poetry as Peaceful Protest Prompt Comp

Only active NaPo 2022 participants are allowed to enter this comp, non-qualifying entries will be removed !

FOUNDERS: Ahavati & JohnnyBlaze
HOSTS: Eerie & PoetsRevenge

TEAM NAPO: JohnnyBlaze, Founder/Director Emeritus, Eerie, PoetsRevenge, DaisyGrace, Josh, SummerRain75, wallyroo92, Honoria, Eerie, cabcool, LunaGreyhawk, Ahavati

Dedicated to JohnnyBlaze, Founder & Director Emeritus, for his leadership, dedication, and commitment to Deep underground Poetry’s longest consecutive and most successful event in its history!

NOTICE: Off Topic, Banter, Drama, and non-registrant Posts will be removed by a moderator. Only poem entries are to be posted to the NaPo challenge thread and NaPo Prompt Comp thread. Please visit the NaPo Discussion thread in the Speakeasy forum for comments, suggestions, frustrations, assistance, and/or general banter at the link below:

https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/forum/speakeasy/read/12191/225/

Kind regards,  Team NaPo'22


The RULES!

1) NaPo 2022 participants may enter as many of their Prompt inspired poems here as possible by either linking to or copy/pasting.  Any prompt number can be used on any day of the month and in any order.

2) Base your entry on either on your own interpretation of the quoted lines in the prompt, if there is any, or the prompt idea or both. It can range from comical to serious.

3) After your poem (at the bottom of your post), Hashtag your entry with the corresponding prompt you used. For example: #22

4) You are not required to post these poems in the Official DU NaPoWriMo 2022 Challenge ( but if you do, be certain they adhere to the Rules of that comp ).

5) No erotica or extreme content allowed

Winner of the Tropheee will be decided by a panel of Team NaPo 2020 judges whose entries won't count in judging.

May the Most Entertaining Prompt Inspired Poem Win!


Napo 2022 Prompts:

1) "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."     - Soren Kierkegaard
Write about a time that you spoke without thinking. What was the outcome?

2) "It is easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we agree."
   - Leo McKern
Write about bias experienced fin regard to your personal beliefs; theological, political, philosophical, etc.

3) We should silence anyone who opposes the right to freedom of speech."
   - Boyle Roche
Write a poem explaining why this is an oxymoron.

4) "Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable."
   - Stefan Molyneux
Write about the effects of silencing the opinion of dissenters.

5) "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."        - Noam Chomsky
Write about the hypocrisy of this unless it could be about oneself.

6) "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
      - Salman Rushdie
Write about the freedom to offend.

7) "Freedom is the option of one"
    (a family saying about having clarity. When you are totally clear, the course of action you need to take reveals itself as the only course -- see also Mary Oliver's poem "The Journey")

8) "None of us is free if one of us is in chains"
    (a line from an old blues song).
Write about what responsibilities we might have in relation to the oppressed or silenced.

9) Describe an ancient civilization of writers and readers benefitting from a great lake of free expression fed with poetic tributaries flowing from each household; you could focus on the civilization's collapse resulting from various (perhaps discovered through archeology) - politics, the lake being polluted with hazardous waste writings, poor schooling leading to next generations of uninspired poets, etc.

10) Describe a dystopian society in which writers are exploited, such as being confined to hallucinogenic "virtual reality" plant pods while their poetry output nourishes the Overlords in an agri'cultural fashion. Is resistance futile? What would the revolution be like? ( Think Matrix )

11) "A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water."
      - Eleanor Roosevelt

12) "I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living."
     - Dr. Seuss
Write a fantastical story having grains of truth

13) "Here's to the crazy ones....they change things..we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
.     - Rob Siltanen

14) "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
    - Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

15) "The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for."
    - Bob Marley

16) "Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."
    - Charles Bukowski
Write something crazy, or about going crazy

17) "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
    - Ernest Hemingway
Write about bleeding to tell a story whether literal injury or a bleeding heart

18) "You can't pick and choose which types of freedom you want to defend. You must defend all of it or be against all of it."
    - Scott Howard Phillips
Write about different types of freedom

19) "Censors never go after books unless kids already like them...children are interested in reading this book, therefore there must be something in it that's wrong."
   - Judy Blume
Write about a taboo or tough subject

20) "Genuine bravery for a writer...is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced...for the sake of the truth, and the writer's conscience."
    - Murong Xuecun
Write about truths people avoid

21) "Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry."
    - Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
Write something influential

22) "During the 1960s, we protested with non-violent methods. There is something peaceful, cleansing, and wholesome about being orderly and not threatening."
   - John Lewis, Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation
Write about peaceful protest

23) "Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
    - Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Write about a fantasy or dream of freedom

24) "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
    - Elie Wiesel

25) "This is what you shall do; Love...stand up for the stupid and crazy..re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem."
     - Walt Whitman

26) "I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."
     - Malcolm X

27) "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
     - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods
Write about overcoming evil

28) "They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds."
      - Dinos Christianopoulos
Write about resurrection

29) "Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."
      - Jim Morrison

30) "To go where no one else has ever gone before is the secret of heroism."
      - Dejan Stojanovic
Write about heroism or an 'underdog story'

31) 'the fists that broke my ribs also wanted me to live'
     - Danez Smith, from 'Jumped'
Write about bullying

32)  "War is what happens when language fails.”
    ― Margaret Atwood
Write about war

What's Free?

Still believe that this is the Land of The Free?
If so, you obviously ain't been seeing in H.D.
To be free, to me, means having a choice
Without society attempting to quell our voice

If we ain't P.C. or we disagree with A to the Z
Many will attempt to cancel us and our J-O-B
And refusing the J-A-B, puts us in the crosshairs
All eyes on we with their dagger death stares

I declare the art of war on your indoctrination
Take my words and place them all in quotations
The solution to the equation is always free thought
Protect & defend the Constitution for what we fought

Don't be bought by selling your soul to any devils
We're submerged in excrement and need some shovels
Evil is evil no matter who's performing the deed
We can't believe everything we see or what we read

Prompt #2

Topic # 4

Out Spoken

Speak, or be unheard,
open your mind or be confined
You have valid things to say
don't let self doubt take it away
Open minds and hearts are listening
and they can affirm what is humanity
expressing and being itself in you
opinions aren't right or wrong, just unique
it is bravery in action to shout in your
true voice as a lion would roar
and a fearless voice is a blessing
even in the face of dissent
your ideas are so much more

Prompt #6

(a non-entry)

Some powerful pens you've got there, thanks for starting us off in style, da_poetic_edifier and Wallyroo :)

SUFFERING MASOCHISTICALLY

You wanna put a cap on my pen
Want activism to quickly end
Squelching voices via radio silence
At peaceful protest, you respond with violence

Violence begets violence; typically
But we proceed to act peacefully
O' say can you not see our sincerity
Justice is blind so we can't find any

The hypocrisy is so hard to swallow
Misery is a place where we refuse to wallow
We've suffered sorrow since the African shores
Today it continues to knock on our doors

Prompt #22

Prompt # 1

Great momentum going, lighting up the prompt board with insight into humanities condition, well penned !

Inadvertently posted NaPo comp post here.

THE HISTORY OF HIS STORY



At the genesis of our exodus from the history books
Analysis painted all of us as innate crooks
Look close and I believe you'll see the whiteout
Pegasus jacked our school buses then took alternate routes

Awarding clout, via foot & mouth, to other hues
If you choose to, I guess you could call it fake news
Alternative views, to be political, in this P.C. culture
Full of vultures & capitalistic hoarders holding a picture

Check the captions of the factions tagging us as predators
Watch their actions then use deduction; you'll see colonizers
Terminators before Schwarzenegger; kicking us with boots
When our history is a mystery, we're like trees without roots

Garvey told us that we should stand up; rise mighty people
They took off the nose so we wouldn't know that we were once regal
Separate but equal was the prequel of our modern times
Some still see you and will always see you as guilty of crimes

Prompt #25

Prompt # 2

I have to say, guys, I'm so impressed I almost shed a tear at the passion and prescision here so far, so real, I'm loving it !

Gahddess_Worship, don't forget to add a corresponding prompt # at the bottom of your entry for it to qualify in final judging.

Virginia Was A Lone Woolf

A proper lady she was
a damsel of the dark
had purple rage at times
when life became too hard
She could be sweet to gentlemen
who dared to her befriend
but little did they know
her mania would come again.

Alone with her thoughts when
her world would she pine for
and all that surrounded her
was there to remind her
to write of her imaginings
escaping into nicer things
letting words be her guide
a printing press at her side.

But when time wore on
and loved ones faded away
all that freedom was too much
she longed for children again to play
when the planes flew overhead
she felt her past unraveling
the demons in her mind arose
as away from home she was traveling
a river called her home at last
at 41, she waded in fast.

#23

(a non-entry)