Rules: Write a poem for national poetry month on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month have written 30 poems for National Poetry Month. 


Topic 28: Bedeep would like to see a poem inspired by memory loss.

Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

Questions?

The city of memory and forgetting


How queer it seems, to find the houses changed,
nothing quite what it used to be. Strangers
have replaced family and friends; you can’t
find them in the faces around you. The streets
don’t lead home any more.

The corner store is there, but boarded up.
Is this the playground? You reach
for your sister’s hand, for comfort
and catch sight of your own,
the skinny wrinkled fingers of a crone.

What we Forget
 
I used to think memory was a jar
of bright glass marbles that I would collect:
a binary equation of black and white.
There is a jar but it is filled
with water that I drink, and try to hold
the taste on my tongue. It is here
then gone, a tape recorded over.
I no longer remember the homes
I grew up in. I am four drawing on the wall
with a crayon. Its color is now sepia is now gone.
These pieces of string tied to my fingers
are spider web insubstantial, so few
I am surprised I know myself--another lie.
I’m not an artist. Sharp lines blur.
I use words to remember words to remember
her words, all of their words.
Even that isn’t true. I try to recall
their voices. Grief makes us all
stock photographs, mute
in someone else’s frame. Removed
to make way for something new.

What A Loss

Memory goes down a lane
and gets lost. The folds of the brain
begin to smooth out and memory finds
nothing familiar to follow although
there was a woman who studied
the action of ripples in sand and water.
No one remembers her much
except some historians who store their memories
in books, presumably.

Down the lane are secret folds
inside of which whole worlds are tucked
never to be found except
by the wandering who may be lost
but who can still discover
what they stumble upon.
If it were water instead
nothing at all would remain
unless someone remembered it
and even then

what? Oh.

It is more like shapes in sand.
It looks permanent
but only for a moment or a day
and then a wind blows
every shape away.

She found rules, though.
People use them now
as if they always knew them
like we know how
to open our eyes.
Memory is useless to us
here.

Once there were castles
built in minds who held
long tales of our kind.
That was memory when memory
was king. But who
remembers that time?
Sand blows according
to secret laws
which decree for all ephemera
obliteration in the end.

@bedeep: lovely

Thank you, Todd. And thanks to today's Google doodle for informing me (a tiny bit) about the existence of Hertha Marks Ayrton, who did study ripples in sand and water.

I like to think that an infinite number of poems hides within each of these prompts, if only we had the key, or the map, or the mathematical formula to locate them.

The use of sand and water was really well done. Thank you google for inspiring the arts. Thank you FBI for not arresting all of us for the odd search engine choices we make on a daily basis.

     For No Reason

For no reason I drove into a field
bounded by swatches of cottonwood trees.
This had been a farm site, but meager.
A short weathered run of painted block
bucked against a petty grouping of junk–
spring beds, parts of a metal cabinet,
separated chair legs, and the old wall–
what was left of it - windows, and then
perpendicular to that a doorway
facing east, still so plumb and square.
I looked toward the grove for a spotted mutt
who wasn’t there, barn cats from a barn
now gone, and people I never knew.  
For no reason I stepped through the doorway.

---

doubling up today:


           Don’t Be Here

Perhaps it happens like this  – the air just
thins.  The animals wear suits, vests, colored
cravats or cummerbunds, controlled maybe
by a slide switch, they fade to visible,
talk in hushed tones, the fox and the monkey.
I strain to hear them jostling about.
My buzz grows vibrant, engulfing. Clever
jokes and repartee exchange, I smile more.
I need to get back.  The water is rich,
warm and splashy in the deep end, the lion
and bear cub want my attention, their fur
feels warm, compelling.   I can hear you
but nothing of the words.  Everything now  
happens on my side of my eyelids.

Wow, Teagan. Both of those are wonderful. I love those abandoned, falling-down houses, they are so evocative.

And your second posted one, "I need to get back...." oh my, that is so poignant. Really knocked it out of the park on this one.

Thanks bedeep - very nice of you to read and comment.

The twilight of forgetting

Perhaps it shall fall like this,
the twilight of forgetting,
on the old cupolas blooming
green patina, verdigris
some Michelangelo entombing.
Wipe from view the fading runes
in the long night of forgetting.
Then you'll unsight me all too soon,
in the witching white of clair de lune
and read new poems in the perfect moon
the old ones quite forgetting.

Achebe - I love the sounds, the echoes, rhymes and rhythms - the craft of this is marvelous. When I read 'runes' I thought ruins, which fits too with the narrative, but 'runes' is the perfect word. Nice. You have had a strong NaPo month. I have enjoyed reading your poems although I admit there are many references that went over my head.

(04-29-2016, 01:12 AM)Teagan Wrote:  Achebe - I love the sounds, the echoes, rhymes and rhythms - the craft of this is marvelous.  When I read 'runes' I thought ruins, which fits too with the narrative, but 'runes' is the perfect word.  Nice.  You have had a strong NaPo month.  I have enjoyed reading your poems although I admit there are many references that went over my head.

thanks, Teagan. that's very kind of you 

PS: I made a minor change in L8, to get rid of what I thought was one too many 'forget's

Carol

In these rampant
invasive weed days,
all this technology,

I don’t have a video.

There was her voicemail
that I used to call,
but people do not pay
cellphone accounts
for the dead forever.

She could have gone into radio
they said,
but that opportunity blew by
like a low flying kite and she was afraid
to grab for the string.

Now can’t remember the sound
of such a nice voice,
having only an impression,
melody in tones
like a large silver bell.

I play a tape in my head--
photographed with eyes, my mind
when there was still time,
but all colors fade.

Maybe what I promised myself
to never let go,
her finger grasping mine,
roles reversed, a warm tug--
my memory of the last time
having a mom alive,

I will forget in time.

For now the clapper still rings;
from a cloud an angel sings.

---

Wow!


Mercedes, Todd, Bedeep, Teagan, and Achebe:

Every one of these is simply wonderful in its own way! 

The Knowing
I






was

The Time Traveller’s PA
 
Inches over yellowed pictures
his calloused mechanic’s
ancient finger twitches—
a divining rod.
 
He doesn’t recognize his face at forty;
today he is twelve, asking for his mother
long gone.
 
This morning he woke me
at 4am, asking if I’d seen his watch— I could
have been kinder
but forgot myself.
 
I want to be warm,
a child's blanket
held tight against night and monsters
and new alphabets—
 
There’s a key beneath a Welcome Mat
for a girl eleven years dead—
 
now wild and terrified eyes search for me
but I’m not to be
found 
in photographs,
or tea leaves
or tickle trunks—
not under the couch cushions.
 
I want to be kind,
a soft mirror
held tight against coarse light and mean shadows
to reflect enduring youth—
 
Most days he thinks he’s ninety
or nine,
thinks I’m nine too,
and maybe sees time for what it is.
 
Weren’t you thirteen just yesterday?
I would you were born at my wake.
I’m not OK with this.
I’m not OK.

Innocence returning

There's a cold breeze
coming through the back door
causing it to creak on its hinges,
Grandads gone across the backs
to feed his pigeons.

I find him inside the empty loft
closing derelict cages,
gently I place an arm
around the confusion.
Using soft words we stumble outside
towards real moments.

The overgrown allotment glistens
through droplets, strung out
across gossamer connections
that tremble in the cold morning light.
We hear the rush of racing pigeons
and watch them disappear overhead
like ghosts into field mist.

Grandad stood staring at the sky,
"they're not coming back are they son?"
I put my coat around his shoulders,
'no Grandad they've been gone too long".
We start the slow walk back towards the house,
"someone will have to tell your Nan
she loved those birds"
"She's dead Grandad,
Grandmas dead".

God, Keith, that last stanza is killer. Oof. Beautiful.

(04-29-2016, 07:53 PM)bedeep Wrote:  God, Keith, that last stanza is killer. Oof. Beautiful.

Thank you bedeep its good to know it works i thought it might be a bit OTT

Not OTT at all, at all. (I did note the tense change within the last stanza which should probably be made consistent throughout the poem, past or present, at some point... but it in no way lessened the impact of the piece.)