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#NaPoWriMo: A Poem A Day – Day 24

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Hi everyone! Today is day Twenty-Four of the national poetry month competition and the last Sunday.

Here’s my offering >>>

DAY  TWENTY-FOUR:

[Instructions:] From NaPoWriMo Day Twenty-Four …

Hard-boiled detective novels are known for their use of vivid similes, often with an ironic or sarcastic tone. Novelist Raymond Chandler is particularly adept at these. Here are a few from his novels:

  • A few locks of dry, white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.
  • Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
  • From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
  • She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.
  • He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to channel your inner gumshoe, and write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile. Feel free to use just one, or try to go for broke and stuff your poem with similes till it’s . . . as dense as bread baked by a plumber, as round as the eyes of a girl who wants you to think she’s never heard such language, and as easy to miss as a brass band in a cathedral.

 

He was

In the soup

Right in

The thick

Of it

Trouble was

His middle name

And first

And last

It was

No picnic

Chopping up

This stiff

It might

Have been

Better

We’re he

In a jam

Rather than 

Hot water

It might

Not have

Upset her

Quite so much

As finding

His tooth

On her saucer

Now

We’re both

In a pickle

I don’t read this kind of detective fiction, so I took a “stab in the dark” (if you’ll pardon my pun!) and came up with as many similes as I could for “being in trouble”. My muse decided to then take a rather noir turn, lols.


Have a wonderful day, everyone, and I’ll see you tomorrow with Day Twenty-Five on the NaPoWriMo 30 Day Poetry Challenge 🙂 

 

© Harmony Kent 2022

 

30 Comments on “#NaPoWriMo: A Poem A Day – Day 24”

  6. Oh God, as a kid I had nightmares about finding teeth in my food. It sounds like things didn’t end well for this mysterious gentleman.

  11. Lol, Harmony. This one made me grin, especially the references to food (jam, pickle) then there was the tooth. 🙂 Well done!