"What do you want?"
"It's not that simple!"
"What do you want?"
"...I have to go..."
This scene, from the 2004 film The Notebook (based on Nicholas Sparks' novel of the same name), is apparently a seminal cultural moment - something I didn't know before Google Images kindly informed me of the fact. I'm guessing this is because it taps into one of those fundamental human questions - if my twenties are anything to go by, you spend an awful lot of your youth asking yourself that very same question.
So your poem might address someone else - anyone, really, from your three-year-old who just wants a cookie, to your partner (do you both want the same out of this relationship?) or best friend. Or it could address yourself, as you try and work out what would actually make you happy in life (maybe the three-year-old has it right: as the Cookie Monster will tell you quite readily, cookies are usually the answer). This could be a thing, person, place, or something else entirely.
With a question being inherent in today's prompt, you might want to employ a dialogic format in your poem today. Your questions (and maybe answers, if you consider it pertinent to include them) might be argumentative and stichomythic, or more meandering and contemplative.
Suggested forms
Asking questions repeatedly - whether of yourself or someone else - seems to demand a similarly echoing form. For this reason, you might like to try a palindrome poem, a contrapuntal poem, or a chant poem (all ably explained in these links by Writer's Digest's Robert Lee Brewer).
Word prompts
desire
questioning
search
doubt
fulfil
And to finish, a quotation that might inspire you, today from Charlie Chaplin:
Happy writing!
-- Bianca
In the meantime, read other participants' poems, share the #octpowrimo hashtag on social media, and add your link to your own poem in the comments below.
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