Guilt is the theme of the Writer’s Digest prompt today. As bad as it feels sometimes, guilt is also one of the most wonderful of emotions in its ability to help us be loving, kind people. It’s a regulator of the heart and the head, which is maybe why my micro poems today all used “heart”, though I didn’t set out for that to happen. Did a bit of combining with the NaPoWriMo prompt to use alliteration and assonance too, though not as overtly as I sometimes do.

Guilt

1.

heavy heart

keeps heavy eyelids

wide open

 

2.

gulped down

then bubbling up

like heartburn

 

3.

pacifist heart

patters with pleasure

when the tyrant takes one

to the face

 

4.

sharing the burden

the heart

the mind

 

Jenna Butler is one of my favourite Alberta writers. I was fortunate enough to take a workshop with her last fall, and was amazed at how she seems to speak in poetry, even when she’s just telling a story.  There is some effortless alliteration in her short, stunning poem “This Rain.”