NaPM, April 4, 2020

[Quixilated]

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. PM me if you have topic ideas/requests!  


Topic: write a poem inspired by a line from a famous poem
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines-ish

Questions?

[Todd]

Midlife Crisis

It’s a sort of leprosy,
a numbness of soul.
Everyone thinks it’s a red car,
or a mistress, but those are pinpricks
to test for feeling. Props that do not explain
why you find yourself alone
in front of the open refrigerator door, when
you aren’t even hungry, haven’t been
hungry in years. The light stares back,
a faint chill breathes
against your skin unnoticed.


~~



Inspired by The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky

[dukealien]

The Principle of Gladness


To keep one’s data secret is a curse
upon a field of science–  what is worse
than knowing something but withholding its
enabling facts and observations?  Fits
to curves, conclusions, laws must rest on true
and replicable data all may view.
Real science cannot hide, but live and preach
that gladly would it learn, so gladly teach.

---

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

- Chaucer, "Canterbury Tales"

[Keith]

You never expect the Spanish Inquisition

It's an evening when you only need a tee shirt,
when one drink would lead to a drowning
and the easily encouraged are searching
for an excuse to swallow chaos with a chaser.

The house sits on a threshold of indecision
and I know a choice must be made, not delayed.
Girlfriends flat? sat quiet in that lap, a fly in a trap,
Out with the lads? binge till I'm sad, wished I hadn't.

There's a fork in the road ahead, but instead
I turn around, walk back over the railway bridge,
past the derelict farm house, up the side of the valley
to look down at myself going our different ways.




I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

[RiverNotch]

XII
What is it then between us?
What is the count of hundreds
of corpses between us? Ladybug
spotted shield hung by a joint
on the upper left corner.
Loose wing of a moth, now bare
the film that held the vivid
scales. The butt of a bee,
desperation the dart
long-since loosed and lost.
A cricket’s half-chewed thigh.
A cockroach’s breast, its arms
crossed in honor or in fear.
A fire ant’s head, glistening
ruby, jaws spread wide--

---

From "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" by Walt Whitman, 
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had receiv’d identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body.