It’s Day 9 of Writing101 Poetry Course and the prompt is Camouflage by Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha
For today’s poem, take inspiration from camouflage — you may apply it in any way you like, whether you write about visual or social dissimulation, or focus on the way we hide our myriad emotions, actions, and reactions. What would be your ultimate smokescreen, concealment, or mask?
Et voilà, here is my interpretation.
Can you really see
What you get
Or what you believe
Hostage of one facet
Camouflaged truth
Bio: Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha thinks of herself as “an enthusiastic Nigerian lady” who loves to read, write, and observe life. Her blog, a cooking pot and twisted tales, offers a nice mix of nonfiction, short fiction, poetry, and inspirational posts.
You may have been speaking of the Paris attacks last month, but your lines “Hostage of one facet
Camouflaged truth” can refer to so man examples. I think poetry is best when the poet writes with just enough ambiguity to spark a myriad of interpretations. I think your poem did just that. I thoroughly enjoyed your work.
Thanks for visiting the blog and reading my poetry.
In fact it wasn’t about Paris. I thought about one’s perception on others, which is never impartial but one never truly admits it, camouflaging, disguising own references as facts and truth.
And I totally agree with you, I like the ambiguity exactly because my perception is not the only truth.
And I love to hear other’s perspectives and learn from them.
I’m grateful for your time and consideration. Truly appreciated.
Also, I love the title for your Comments section! 🙂
Thank you! 😀
“Hostage of one facet
Camouflaged truth” — wow, now that’s quite a statement! What a powerful little poem you wrote. What an absolute gem!
Thank you zillions, Melinda. Serious? I’m thrilled. Huge smile on my face.
You’re welcome 🙂
Seeing is believing or believing is seeing? Potent stuff again Lucile!
Isn’t the truth dependent on what we want to see or know? The choice is yours….
Thank you Gun, the true poet. It means a lot.
hostage of one facet…love that. I often feel misunderstood for that reason.
Don’t we all? Thanks for reading it! I really appreciate it.
With such short words your poem leaves so much room for a creative mind to roam free. I could twist so much imagery into those words from here to seven Sundays. I like the flavour of ambiguity caught within and that phrase camouflaged truth is such a strong one. Nicely done Lucile.
Hi Jacqueline, thank you for reading it and taking the time to comment. I loved that you can twist it ‘from here to seven Sunday’s’! Though ambiguous, you exactly got what I tried to convey, i.e. we ‘see’ things and others, with our particular lens but make snap judgments camouflaged as deep truth…
Loved your prompt. I may add more stanzas to my poem.
Cheers!
It’s quite a pleasure Lucile and thank you too for providing today’s prompt. My regards 🙂