Prompts from Read Write Poem & Poetic Asides:

*Note: This was so much fun to write! I used Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird for inspiration and style. It's almost like I've written a found poem in some ways too.

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at Procrastination

I.
With clear blue skies,
procrastination fell through like heavy rocks
in a still pond.

II.
My mind stared at
the anatomy of work within my lifelines;
procrastination choked those erythrocytes.

III.
Procrastination made cracks along monotony,
swallowing time like earthquakes.

IV.
Man, woman, child.
Procrastination is an innate desire with many facets.

V.
I do not know which to prefer,
the beauty of daydreaming
or the beauty of prioritizing,
procrastinating in the moment
or just whenever I decide to follow
yellow sticky notes.

VI.
Sixes hung like demons
on power lines.
The shadow of procrastination
crossed them back and forth.
The conscientious mood
darkened within the shadow
and became a deadly vice.

VII.
Seven is a perfect number,
but procrastination ain't perfect.
Do you think it could care any less
about setting high standards of living?
Insomnia is its cousin.

VIII.
I know flirty attractions
and inescapable, childlike fantasies;
but I know, too,
that procrastination is involved
in what I know:
guilty pleasures.

IX.
When procrastination flew out of the body,
it marked the end
of spontaneity caught in a butterfly net
(if one is lucky enough).

X.
At the sight of procrastination
floating in blue space,
even the hare saw his swiftness as a good sign
and continued to snore on loudly.

XI.
She wrote a half-finished poem
in an austere room.
Once, when panic seized her hostage,
in that she mistook
the shadow of her blankness on the wall
for procrastination.

XII.
The sky is moving.
Procrastination must be unexplained magic.

XIII.
It was morning all night.
It was sunny
and it was going to get warmer.
Procrastination sat
on the edge of nerves,
walking the plank.