Sevena Flores' blog: Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 417

After a month of daily poeming, welcome back to the Wednesday Poetry Prompts! Recently, Dictionary.com dubbed “complicit” the word of the year for 2017. And sometimes, that’s all it takes to prompt a poetry prompt.

For today’s prompt, write a complicit poem. For those who are unsure, complicit is an adjective that basically defines a person who helps commit a crime or some other form of bad activity.

Also, I know I probably don’t need to say it, but here it goes: Let’s all try our best to poem nicely.

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Here’s my attempt at a Complicit Poem:

“Glossing”

Of all the times I let it slide,
the final glossing was the worst.
With each false move, you know, I tried
to say, “This time, I’ll let it slide,
but only once,” because my side,
I felt, needed to finish first.
And every time I let it slide,
the final glossing was the worst.

The other side was after us;
this much each and everyone knew–
so, of course, there was little trust,
with the other side after us,
and their lies were superfluous,
because they failed to trust us too.
The other side was after us;
this much each and everyone knew!

And so we took each other’s eyes
before removing all our teeth–
for we grew tired of hearing lies.
And so we took each other’s eyes
when unable to feign surprise
or find a rock to hide beneath.
And so we took each other’s eyes
before removing all our teeth

for all the times I let it slide–
the final glossing was the worst.

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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). Over the years, he’s discovered that for every “side” there is one or more other “sides,” and that they often get along nicely when they leave their “sides” at home and act like human beings with each other.

Follow him on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.

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