Happy 9th anniversary!

Not 8th but going on our 9th year, whew!

For today’s Meeting the Bar, we are writing to the First Person Narrative, using  “I am” as part of our poem. The voice, and the specific point of view is you, the poet.

This can be personal about something you would like to share about yourself. Or you could pretend you are another person or some figure throughout history or from fiction. Try to tell the reader what this character sees, feels, wants, illustrating their deepest thoughts within and honing in on what the senses are drawn to, using the First Person voice.

In expressing our “I am” poems, I encourage you to go beyond the usual descriptions of “I am” (a brother, sister, friend, citizen) and go experimental and creative with your “I am” poem. Think inanimate object, animal or groups of animals, planets and inter-galactic travel, streets, cities, plant, tree, or weekday or month or year, or even pandemic terminology.

I came across this description and I was amazed by the use of “dangerous intersection” in Big Bright Sun by Nates Pritts:

…One thing is certain: I am

not one of those stop signs you speed through! I am a dangerous
intersection; you should use caution when approaching me!

Here are some examples to help our creative writing.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,
And sorrel intermixed,
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I’m fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out
Those fair Elysian fields,
With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
Doth make the rabble rout
That waste
The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
Drinking my juices up,
With no root in the land
To keep my branches green,
But stand
In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah! the children will not know,
Till time has withered them,
The woe
With which they’re rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in life’s vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer flowers
Will bear,
While I droop here.

Source here

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I Am the People, the Mob
BY CARL SANDBURG

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

Source here

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On the flip side, you can only use the title or phrase of “I am not ___” in your poem.   Here is one poem:

So for today’s prompt, compose a poem using “I am…” with a First Person narrative in any part of your verse.  Go experimental and creative with your “I am” poem.