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 23: Write a poem inspired by a physical law, law of nature, or commonly accepted idea no longer being true.

Line requirements: 8 lines or more

Tallulah, still young and beautiful


Dahlings, I was wonderful.
Once, when I was young. Now
I wish always, always for death.
I’m too old, worn, to attract a lover.
I’ve always wanted death,
sought oblivion in sex, drugs, booze.
Nothing else I want more.
Children? I had four abortions.
There is less to this than meets the eye -
I couldn’t be sure of provenance.
I’m as pure as the driven slush.
Like Nietzsche I link art to frenzy
I’m top of the Hays Doom Book.
A hysterectomy almost killed me.
I’m ambisextrous.
It wasn’t a woman who gave me the clap.
Blanche DuBois immortalized me.


(every unevenly numbered line is a direct quote from Tallulah Bankhead in interviews. The lines in italics are mine)

The world is flat

I know you might think these characters flat,
but they think the world is.

Ships sinking below the horizon,
must be a deadly waterfall
off the edge of the known.

That was a few centuries ago.

Today flat earthers have rediscovered the hidden truth.
The world is flat again!
The the edge is not a waterfall,
rather, a ring of ice!

What is the government hiding?
Why won't it let us see?

The earth doesn't rotate
nor the moon!
Rather, the sun and moon spiral in circles
Just above the flat Earth dome!

What is the government hiding?
Why won't it let us see?

It's like the Truman Show!
Although if I never saw that movie,
I'm not sure which analogy I'd use.

Who is this government anyways?
What is it I want to see?

Mercedes that's an incredible way to show found poetry. Impressive piece on the whole.

Kole, my wife recently had a conversation with a friend who is a flat earther--more of a thing than I thought it was. I'd read on the ring of ice and then had the same question your poem raises (very well done)...What reason would the government have? What is the gain of it all, if true?

Bowling balls and feathers
don't fall to earth equally
in a vacuum
for mass determines gravity.
Distance determines gravity;
the same ball drops faster
the closer its
proximity to earth's center.
------------------------------------------------
Time is relative to velocity
or it wouldn't slow down
as it reaches
the speed of light, right?
Due to earth's constant rotation,
an object on top of a mountain,
travels faster
through space than in a valley.
In theory, if faster travel slows
time, then life along the equator
will last longer
than settled near the poles.
------------------------------------------------
Margaret had to move, they said
Florida would be good for her.
The sun provided,
but the hurricane took her away.

(04-23-2017, 08:26 PM)kolemath Wrote:  It's like the Truman Show!
Although if I never saw that movie,
I'm not sure which analogy I'd use.

Who is this government anyways?
What is it I want to see?

Good food for thought. Especially like the end line.

Thanks Todd, was scratching my head for this one. Seven more to go - I'll be barrel-scraping by the end of the week.

Upend
 
A fifth and a sick remix
of god save the queen,
a treasonous jungle joint
with the amen break rolling out
beneath. Then the coppers roll in,
fucked as well, a drunk piano
gets locked behind bars
'for minor infractions' giggling
filth, the law, they tighten
the drum head till he squeaks,
beat him silly. Police all
nose deep in the evidence
and the taut snare is a masochist,
so there's nowhere but higher,
eventually the cells are all wide
open, it's truncheons and glow
sticks till sun up. Some are dead
and some are still dancing,
a wild hog in the bass bin
squealing seeya next saturday.

Malcolm Forbes Is The Bright Light With the Most Toys

-February 25, 1990,  in a Parking Garage in Far Hills, New Jersey

We were blinded 
by the single headlamp
of Forbes crossing 
from the other side.
He rode on the back 
of a 1966 Velocette Thruxton--
ectoplasm puffing from the exhaust
like an answered question.
Proving that with the pharaohs,
he had been right all along.
You can take it with you.

(04-24-2017, 08:21 AM)Todd Wrote:  Malcolm Forbes Is The Bright Light With the Most Toys


Proving that with the pharaohs,
he had been right all along.
You can take it with you.

                                                        dinosaurs and people
                                                        just floating around

                                                            before we
                                                            believed
                                                            in evolution

                                                            before we
                                                            believed
                                                            in gravity

Albert Eulenspiegel



Till Eulenspiegel, public jester
medieval fool, was questioned by
wise and titled doctors
of his day.  They demanded
that he say where the center
of the universe was located.
Disdaining Rome, Jerusalem, and Eden
“Right where I’m sitting,”
Till replied.  “Prove that it’s not!”
Later, after more disruptive pranks
they hung him.

Shortly after, better-learned men -
Copernicus, Galileo -
made Sol the universe’s center.
In five centuries it moved
to galactic core, then
Big Bang’s detonation point
until one Albert Einstein showed
that no non-accelerating point
is privileged: there is no center,
no true universal frame of reference;
all’s relative, a universal flux.

Despite this discovery
being used to overturn all decency
as merely relative,
they didn’t hang him
this time.

(04-24-2017, 10:21 AM)rayheinrich Wrote:  


                                                        dinosaurs and people
                                                        just floating around

                                                            before we
                                                            believed
                                                            in evolution

                                                            before we
                                                            believed
                                                            in gravity

Love the visual.

An out-of-work poet

reciting her resume
curses the scansion
of her telephone number
she’d kill for
681-3121
expecting their applause --
enjambment of her reference section
fell flat
too many allusions
she exits, thinks
it’s hard to make a living now
that poetry’s popular
everyone vies
for Poet Laureate.
She cries in her berete.
“Next!” they say.

Once dinosaurs


Once dinosaurs had scales
now it seems that they had feathers -
were they big birds after all
and naught of evolution true?
Because dinosaurs flew,
I portend brisk ticket sales
from the Trump card carrying bubbas
at the Museum of Creation's human zoo.
What were they thinking,  paleontologists,
in digging up those fossils
that showed how long the wings of a diplodocus grew?
But stress could make poor Ross ill,
a subject for oncologists,
and so I'll hold off on blaming that bumbling crew.

Blake 2  



((burgis))

We.
Who are we?

We. 
There is no we;
only me and you.

Word.
What I say
you won't get.

Speak.
I don't have
my own voice---
you have it all.

Work.
You have it all.



((revolution))

God.
He exists,
we fucking don't.

Learn.
I know
who you are:
you're my problem.

Love.
All I want
is to fuck you,

Lust.
but he hates fucking.

Lost.
In the end
it's you.

The gravity of having none

They had been predicting a slight shift
and then it happened, I woke on the ceiling
with a droplet of drool floating
in front of my pillow, books and clothes
seemed to have a life of their own.
I was like a child who had just discovered snow
on the last day of school. This is fucking epic
I thought and then I saw the bathroom.

(04-24-2017, 08:21 AM)Todd Wrote:  Malcolm Forbes Is The Bright Light With the Most Toys

-February 25, 1990,  in a Parking Garage in Far Hills, New Jersey

We were blinded 
by the single headlamp
of Forbes crossing 
from the other side.
He rode on the back 
of a 1966 Velocette Thruxton--
ectoplasm puffing from the exhaust
like an answered question.
Proving that with the pharaohs,
he had been right all along.
You can take it with you.

ectoplasm puffing from the exhaust.....sweet

(04-27-2017, 05:31 AM)Keith Wrote:   ectoplasm puffing from the exhaust.....sweet

Maybe something for the next Ghostbusters movie.

Poison Tomatoes

Funny
red and juicy
green felt Jughead hat wearers
who hold flaming swords
to the entry of my Eden

cleverly disguised
as tasty pizza smears,
or pasta's marinara.

Who'd have thought
my mortality is controlled
by plump little cherubs,
sprinkled with cheese?