By Daniel Paiz

Another April and another round of NaPoWriMo is upon us! April is National Poetry Writing Month, also known as NaPoWriMo. If you’ve visited this site before you know 30 poems will arrive in the next 30 days or so, as life happens. There are some folks who follow prompts throughout the month, while others have a central theme, and still others like myself occasionally try different poetic forms.

Poetry has many forms. Once you’ve learned enough of the rules, you can break them. Or, if you’re feeling rather cheeky, you can run amok and plaster words however you desire to see what sticks.

If you’d like an idea of how this went before, check out the NaPoWriMo category as this is one of our older traditions. If you feel inspired to try your hand and writing some poems, do it! If you are unsure of where to start, try writing a haiku; they are concise and yet massive in what they do to you.

Process Things

You ever get sick of the grief,

Now I know it’s important to process feelings,

but after the hours, days, weeks,

how does the processing lead to meaning?

Perhaps that’s a years’ worth answer.

Fuck cancer.

Okay that’s a takeaway that was there

before that final takeaway,

and now it leads to time feeling splayed,

slow days and fast weeks,

weak at times when solo and alone,

outlook momentarily bleak.

But that’s not something bad,

that’s going through the grief,

that’s going through valleys and peaks,

or in this case,

things returning to level footing,

feels like a peak when instead,

it’s a sign of momentary peace.

This writing is a recognition

of the hits, bumps, and collisons,

processed for these first few months of ’26.

Challenges ask one to answer,

to rebound and push past ya,

for some time moving forward,

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

There will be a tone unknown to those

who haven’t withstood what I have in my soul.

I’ll process and recess,

unwind thoughts of regret,

knowing that my efforts were appreciated,

despite few words of such sereness.

BONUS: Here’s the audio of the poem

This will be included as often as possible as part of NaPoWriMo. Check out the sounds below to see how the writer spoke every word you read above. Enjoy!