This month Women Writing for (a) Change-Bloomington poets are participating in National Poetry Writing Month.  Every day we will offer up a new  poem by a writer in our community.  Check back after 6:00pm for the Prompt of the Day and the selected resulting poem.

Prompt Day 4: Write your own sad poem, but one that achieves sadness through simplicity. Playing with the sonnet form may help you – its very compactness can compel you to be straightforward, using plain, small words.

Sad Poem–by Carole Clarke

Tomas the brilliant professor forgets his words
What side of the car the gas tank resides on
Month of his brother’s birthday
Becomes angered by buttons at the ATM.
He repeats the phone number from his boyhood home
Not the cell phone he uses these days
If he remembers to power it up or even turn it on.
The various remotes flummox his once scientific brain.
His wife has even started labeling his shoes
Fearful putting right slipper on his left foot would cause a tumble.
He pays the same bill three times so they
Have credits with gas company and the cable one too
His wife gets to the mail first these days.
He put hemorrhoid cream on his toothbrush.
He ate a can of cat food for lunch.
“If you don’t laugh, you start to sob,” his wife sighed.