I’ve been posting prompts on my Twitter all month long to help folks celebrate NPM 2014. This is a list of all of the prompts from 4/1/14 – 4/21/14…296 prompts so far! With eight more days to go, I think it’s safe to say I’ll hit 400.
So write on, poets, and know that if you can’t get a poem out of 296 random ideas/puns/observations/witticisms, then you’re the problem.
#poetryprompt We’re gonna’ need a bigger float
#poetryprompt Where all of the dragons that used to be on maps have gone
#poetryprompt Why gargoyles hate the cooing of pigeons
#poetryprompt Swatches for a skin suit
#poetryprompt A restless golem
#poetryprompt The Devil on holiday mostly just plays pranks
#poetryprompt Telethon for the damned
#poetryprompt 911 is a knock-knock joke
#poetryprompt My lawyer advised against me writing this poem.
#poetryprompt Haunted house for sale
#poetryprompt An unprofessional hit.
#poetryprompt What you said while you was ‘sleep on me
#poetryprompt Easter Egg hunt gone wrong
#poetryprompt The pastor’s tattoo.
#poetryprompt Natural hair gang signs
#poetryprompt Geocaching in the ‘hood
#poetryprompt God’s not done with me yet, but Thoth is.
#poetryprompt The WORLDSTAR chess championship.
#poetryprompt Sex Tape of the Gods
#poetryprompt You’re not running away fast enough.
#poetryprompt Wasn’t that child just holding the baby?
#poetryprompt The end of the record starts playing backwards by itself.
#poetryprompt The voodoo doll you’ve made of me
#poetryprompt I gave you up for lent.
#poetryprompt The curse is the blessing.
#poetryprompt You have passive-aggressived yourself into invisibility.
#poetryprompt Artisanal bullets
#poetryprompt Godzilla’s shoe size
#poetryprompt I should slap you for making the dish better than my mom.
#poetryprompt Self-helpie
#poetryprompt The day that Johnny from “Johnny Got His Gun” really dies.
#poetryprompt Negromancer
#poetryprompt Government name blacker than my revolutionary name.
#poetryprompt Blooms of rust
#poetryprompt No one is ever going to read that book again. EVER.
#poetryprompt Peter Cottontail knows where Santa’s buried all the bodies.
#poetryprompt My mind’s telling me “no”, but my body is also saying “I’d rather not.”
#poetryprompt Franz Kafka reports for jury duty
#poetryprompt What jazz is planting this summer.
#poetryprompt The Mardi Gras Indian cries over some litter.
#poetryprompt The 5 stages of Relief
#poetryprompt The way-too literal translation of Smokestack Lightnin’
#poetryprompt What he does to stay.
#poetryprompt The Real Housewives Embargo Act of 2018
#poetryprompt I want to marry you, but it’s still legal.
#poetryprompt The Reneging Tree
#poetryprompt The Klingon Sutra for Lovers
#poetryprompt Carry-out confessional
#poetryprompt Never go full poet.
#poetryprompt When you realize your “Darling Nikki” poem at open mic isn’t having the desired effect.
#poetryprompt Traveling with momma to her funeral
#poetryprompt Bukowski drunk dials _________
#poetryprompt I don’t want to lose anyone else.
#poetryprompt The one Bob Ross painting with a man in it.
#poetryprompt Unresolved Mysteries
#poetryprompt Spoken Herd poetry
#poetryprompt Why he will never fix his teeth.
#poetryprompt Don Draper’s dapper discovery
#poetryprompt Your favorite rapper’s favorite theory about True Detective
#poetryprompt Even Odder Lots
#poetryprompt JJ paints a dyn-o-mite nude
#poetryprompt The Secret Life of Project Clotheslines
#poetryprompt The customer is always white
#poetryprompt I’m sorry I couldn’t read your mind yesterday, or ever.
#poetryprompt Weather report from Hell
#poetryprompt List’ner Canal, private ear
#poetryprompt Spanish moss speaks English to the birds but not the trees
#poetryprompt Archangel Gabriel starts a jazz band
#poetryprompt No artificial favors, no preservation
#poetryprompt The canary in your ribcage is dying.
#poetryprompt Man, did you read THAT wrong.
#poetryprompt Your poetry’s so fat…
#poetryprompt She pored over the milk in her cereal
#poetryprompt The receipts for all of my tattoos
#poetryprompt Something odd to notice during something horrible
#poetryprompt Slow Jams for Grandma
#poetryprompt Alone in Mecca
#poetryprompt Cornrows of cotton
#poetryprompt The tsunami spits at the tornado’s feet
#poetryprompt Chest of Drawers
#poetryprompt Pedophile cabinet
#poetryprompt Act like a harpy, think like a sphinx
#poetryprompt A hard hat tour of her exes.
#poetryprompt Lotion alert
#poetryprompt Conflicting muses duel at dawn
#poetryprompt A syringe full of yes
#poetryprompt The invention of the drive-by
#poetryprompt You can leave, but I’m keeping the Prince records.
#poetryprompt Defining ageism by how crotchety old people are
#poetryprompt Judas’ ark
#poetryprompt Father’s model train set had no train
#poetryprompt A boomerang of vices
#poetryprompt Dying as the illusion of a failed magic trick
#poetryprompt An ekphrastic: What Phillis Wheatley is looking at/pondering in this picture. pic.twitter.com/7NpxHWtIsZ
#poetryprompt Why Rudy was the only one with a real instrument in the junkyard band
#poetryprompt Your dog explains crop circles
#poetryprompt The South takes Lincoln’s first deal.
#poetryprompt You are the net
#poetryprompt The Museum of Circus Calamities
#poetryprompt Thyme keeps on slippin’
#poetryprompt Wonder Woman calls tech support for Amazon Prime
#poetryprompt The Captain’s Curses (For all you Neruda fans out there.)
#poetryprompt The Annotated Purple Rain
#poetryprompt Just kidding: I DID shoot the deputy.
#poetryprompt Buddha on a diet
#poetryprompt The Godrain
#poetryprompt Shut up and play your kazoo
#poetryprompt The song playing in your car when the paramedics show up
#poetryprompt I love it and you
#poetryprompt Mail order groom
#poetryprompt Why your third eye isn’t working
#poetryprompt Clinical trials for the subject of my next poem
#poetryprompt We three are one
#poetryprompt Habitat for Inhumanity yard sale
#poetryprompt Machete Loves
#poetryprompt My Navajo lover teaches me their word for “Nigger”
#poetryprompt When your sick bed becomes a death bed.
#poetryprompt Walden’s ‘Hood
#poetryprompt Veni, vidi, Davinci
#poetryprompt What Coyote thinks of Anansi’s Stand-up
#poetryprompt A knife, a ruler, a paintbrush, a Doctor Who button
#poetryprompt Let it be unknown
#poetryprompt The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Ex-Girlfriends
#poetryprompt The Day Every Mixtape in the World Actually Worked
#poetryprompt Dandy Crush
#poetryprompt The ant’s rejoinder to your magnifying glass
#poetryprompt Posthumorous
#poetryprompt The Red-headed Stepchildren of Anarchy
#poetryprompt Pound at the poetry workshop
#poetryprompt Salvaging the relationship out of our scars
#poetryprompt What Anne Bradstreet has to say to the shipwrecked sailor.
#poetryprompt An imagined justice
#poetryprompt Narnian nature preserve
#poetryprompt When sleep is a fine ass woman
#poetryprompt The guy who resets all the clocks for Flavor Flav during Daylight Savings Time
#poetryprompt The Nightmare Before Kwanzaa Holiday Special
#poetryprompt The clockwork baby
#poetryprompt The day the circus came to the ‘hood.
#poetryprompt Prosthetic personality
#poetryprompt The most benign conspiracy theory ever
#poetryprompt The moment you realize that playing hard to get just backfired.
#poetryprompt The argument you can see but can’t hear through the glass.
#poetryprompt Oh, just un-friend me already.
#poetryprompt Scumbags wondering our streets
#poetryprompt The pop quiz of time.
#poetryprompt An amalgamation of swag
#poetryprompt Take your second best shot; I would not survive your best.
#poetryprompt The sex pistils
#poetryprompt You a poet so long as you ain’t got a man.
#poetryprompt Old flame’s smoke signals
#poetryprompt You won’t ever see cotton on my Farmville
#poetryprompt My job is testing me, and I’m failing it miserably.
#poetryprompt I call it heathen prayer
#poetryprompt How the story of Frankenstein changes if Victor just names the monster.
#poetryprompt Prompt and circumstance
#poetryprompt The thing that Green Lantern never forms with his power ring.
#poetryprompt I love/hate your love/love
#poetryprompt The blue wedding, where everyone is given a life.
#poetryprompt “But my beard LIKES sandwiches,” and just like that the crumb disappeared.
#poetryprompt We were making love when the aliens came.
#poetryprompt A Cult of Birthday Wishes
#poetryprompt Never sneak up on that mirror.
#poetryprompt The house isn’t haunted; the baby is.
#poetryprompt When you finally realize that none of your poems are going to have any effect on her. NONE of them.
#poetryprompt I am the cartographer of your scars
#poetryprompt Anti-social network
#poetryprompt You had me at “Give me your money”
#poetryprompt How Shiva makes a living now (or any old god)
#poetryprompt Bill of Wrongs
#poetryprompt The Lego Theory of Babel
#poetryprompt The complete idiot’s guide to my ex-girlfriend
#poetryprompt An interpretation of your dreams by your mother
#poetryprompt Religion for Atheists
#poetryprompt Kitchen Cold War
#poetryprompt The jaws of life. Or, The Jaws of life
#poetryprompt Hooptie Transformers
#poetryprompt When we are the kindling.
#poetryprompt Osamacare
#poetryprompt Trailer park of roses.
#poetryprompt Guilty displeasures.
#poetryprompt Frog and Toad are Friends with Benefits
#poetryprompt Pandora’s DJ rig
#poetryprompt What Atlantis thinks of all your slave dumping
#poetryprompt Davy Jones’ Foot Locker…for all your footwear needs
#poetryprompt Indian burial sound
#poetryprompt The Evel Knievel Memorial Expressway and Loop
#poetryprompt celldrone
#poetryprompt The Sweet Pickles bus blows a tire near Sesame Street.
#poetryprompt H.P. Lovecraft, sommelier
#poetryprompt The Abominable No-Man
#poetryprompt Yard sale in MIddle Earth
#poetryprompt An ekphrastic.. http://doctorlaughter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/483476_444983275563372_891914193_n.jpg …
#poetryprompt He threw his wife up the well.
#poetryprompt Stilettos hanging on a wire.
#poetryprompt The column you – AS YOURSELF – write for the monthly KKK newsletter. (Assuming you don’t self-identify as a white supremacist)
#poetryprompt The house is larger on the inside than the outside. (Make it a love poem.)
#poetryprompt The angel said, “I can’t tell you what Heaven’s like. Never been.”
#poetryprompt I want to meet your therapist.
#poetryprompt You try so hard to stand out that you don’t realize you’re standing outside alone.
#poetryprompt None of your advice works.
#poetryprompt The polygraph test is lying.
#poetryprompt The airplane’s African-American box.
#poetryprompt What the lawn jockey thinks of the lawn gnome
#poetryprompt The lawn gnome graduates to gardens
#poetryprompt God speaks to Tyrone through a burning car
#poetryprompt The owl that asked “why”
#poetryprompt The women who wrist-slaps a neighbor’s child at the community cookout
#poetryprompt The next extinction
#poetryprompt Westboro Baptist Church want ad: vacancy
#poetryprompt Paula Deen’s Next Top Chef
#poetryprompt The one-legged pirate fears not your diabetes
#poetryprompt The black Victorians show up for tea.
#poetryprompt The text message you sent went through.
#poetryprompt Bob Ross paints not-so-happy trees. In fact, they’re downright manic depressive. With a fan brush.
#poetryprompt If “The Outsiders” were black. (I know the temptation will be to list out differences. Just write the story, okay?)
#poetryprompt The Illustrated Man in 3D
#poetryprompt Your collarbone is all the weapon you need
#poetryprompt You have no idea, the women I’ve been turned down by before you.
#poetryprompt How your grandmother busted up your bracket.
#poetryprompt Addicted to your sadness
#poetryprompt Write about what doesn’t come to mind.
#poetryprompt Why “Dark Tower” showed up when I did a search for “Freedom: The Underground Railroad board game.”
#poetryprompt Clash of the Frighteneds
#poetryprompt The acceptance speech by the Grammy winner of the Liner Notes award.
#poetryprompt Why Jermaine shines like that.
#poetryprompt An ekphrastic exercise pic.twitter.com/TXIDg0XpUy
#poetryprompt Would “The Omen” in the hood even stand out?
#poetryprompt The Boy Scout merit badges that didn’t pass muster
#poetryprompt The Arts Festival of the Damned
#poetryprompt Morpheus’ kalimba
#poetryprompt I shouted love at the world and it cried back…….
#poetryprompt A nature special on the habits of missing airplane passengers
#poetryprompt Killed in inaction.
#poetryprompt The Ivy League shiv.
#poetryprompt The Periodic Chair of Elements
#poetryprompt How to haunt a ghost.
#poetryprompt An ekphrastic prompt… pic.twitter.com/ZApm1g6In9
#poetryprompt A misheard yet earnest song lyric (eg. “Excuse me while I kiss this guy”)
#poetryprompt I’ve never heard a train over here before.
#poetryprompt Insert outrage here.
#poetryprompt Gangsta Lien.
#poetryprompt A chess master’s post-game locker room interview.
#poetryprompt Playlist of the “Deliverance” banjo player
#poetryprompt Mamihlapinatapai = look shared between 2 people when both are wishing the other to do something that they both want but won’t
#poetryprompt The 14 saints of barbecue
#poetryprompt The 7 Unnatural Wonders of the World
#poetryprompt What passes for miracles here
#poetryprompt What came before the moment described in your last poem.
#poetryprompt A reverse chronology of sagging pants
#poetryprompt My job in decoupage
#poetryprompt Dr. Heckle and Mr. Hyde
#poetryprompt The dead come back to life and see the one thing that would make them want to be dead again.
#poetryprompt Why National Poetry Month is longer than Black History Month.
#poetryprompt The one Dr. Kevorkian wouldn’t do.
#poetryprompt Teaching a parakeet my poems
#poetryprompt A wolf in chic clothing.
#poetryprompt A game of tag in a cemetery
#poetryprompt What if, instead of taking the red or the blue pill, I just rub your magic 8-ball of a head?
#poetryprompt Two children play “Settlement” instead of “House.”
#poetryprompt Nostradamus predicts all of my girlfriends.
#poetryprompt Beauty secrets of the Sphinx
#poetryprompt Seven times this morning…
#poetryprompt Man, the librarians in this town are serious.
#poetryprompt Here’s an ekphrastic exercise. If you don’t know what that is, google it. You’re already online. pic.twitter.com/CGVKXfDkAJ
#poetryprompt Third eye contact lens
#poetryprompt The I.T. guy in Heaven
#poetryprompt A cabinet of only mildly interesting objects
#poetryprompt The bottle tree keeps the ghosts in, not out.
#poetryprompt Temple Grandin teaches Floridians how to better kill blacks
#poetryprompt Bilingual love-making (in English with Elvish/Klingon/etc.)
#poetryprompt The dog watching the cat kill things all day when you’re not around.
#poetryprompt A closed letter to ____________.
#poetryprompt The Essential Kanye
#poetryprompt Strange Vegetable
#poetryprompt Chest Openings for Beginners
#poetryprompt I’m not drunk; this is a rum-induced fugue state.
#poetryprompt Micro-oppressions
#poetryprompt The first jheri curl speaks.
#poetryprompt Don’t you EVER touch my stereo.
#poetryprompt Death’s hellhounds are dachsunds.
#poetryprompt What’s fat in the city is healthy to your country cousins.
#poetryprompt Breaking the fourth wall, only to discover…
#poetryprompt The Dowager reviews your record collection and finds it wanting.
#poetryprompt The Brothers Grind
#poetryprompt I’m a read that b*tch, except this time it really is a book.
#poetryprompt After the ability to read and write hieroglyphics was lost in 5 BCE two theories prevailed as to how the writing system worked
#poetryprompt If someone attacks you for not being compassionate, kill them.
#poetryprompt Soylent Black.
#poetryprompt Urban farm subsidies
#poetryprompt You need a Kickstarter for your life.
#poetryprompt Your horrorscope for the day.
#poetryprompt The same tree in every nature poem.
#poetryprompt The sommelier for your life.
#poetryprompt A commercial for the product Bill Hicks WOULD star in. Also: Tom Waits.
#poetryprompt Tenets of a religion based on a different class than science. Ergo, instead of Scientology try Bandtology or Woodshoptology
#poetryprompt Removing the mudslide from a local bar menu after the town got hit by a mudslide
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