2024 NaPM 09 April

[RiverNotch]

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.

Write about a same-sex friendship.

BONUS, in honour of an old favourite: it must involve a fairy tale.

[TranquillityBase]

In Memory of Jon Garth Murray, 1954-1995

In our elementary school class prophecy
I wrote that you would be a “wealthy ditch digger”
which was somehow hilarious at age 12,
you were the younger son of the most-hated woman in America
who once bought me ice cream 
at a Baskin Robbins in an outdoor mall.

After seeing The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
walking home from school
we took stances at both ends of a footbridge
I was wearing Lee Van Cleef’s cross-belly holster
you laughed at our ritual, but you always drew.

Your stepfather had a steel plate in his head,
and was a right-winger,
but it was Madalyn who called the shots.

Before high school was over,
her obsession had been awkwardly grafted onto you,
before college, we were no longer friends.

The last time I saw you, I praised an ex-Jesuit professor
and you warned me to beware;
too stunned to even respond, I said nothing,
you finally left the table.

A mother’s mania killed you, Garth,
her righteous wrath broadcast against the wrong deadly thug;
the horror of your weeks long death, 
bartering gold to stay alive, believing you would live
forces me back to that bridge and we face-off again
mayhem only in our imaginations.

I confess this is something I wrote long ago, but I've never posted.  So I'm cheating.  What I want to write about is a hetero-sex friendship.  So I will be writing a poem today.

This is it:

we’d seen each other
mostly at a distance, for six years
wandering the dog park with our mutts,
and I always felt this aura
of kindness and an isolation we shared.
I knew she was shy
a rare import these days of shrewd hysteria.

it’s the day of the eclipse
and we came across each other 
in an empty park, and agreed 
to our indifference to the event.

she’d been absent for several weeks
I asked why.

she is moving to Minnesota
to escape Texas heat 
and the crowd of Xtian fascists
in our state govt.

so I told her about the aura
like any awkward lover
(some THC helped)

I could have talked to her
for hours, but knew I must measure my minutes
and did.

The good ones are leaving; 
not many of those auras around.

Salve, Regina

[dukealien]

The Red and the White


The two lived always in each other’s shadows
as if one dual-colored entity–
one scarlet, one clear-white as frosted windows–
formed, with their mother, seamless trinity.

Like roses in their garden these young women
shared each adventure, bear and dwarf alike,
until, good-hearted natures interwoven,
they married their two princes: spare and strike!

What did the two think of each other’s color,
rose-red, snow-white against their mother’s gray?
They did not brood on choler or on pallor–
just lived their lives, impulsive, sweet, and gay.

Snow White and Rose Red, Grimm version.

[Mark A Becker]

A green 14 year old's fairy tale

When my best bud Billy and I
were about 14, we stood below
a 3rd floor balcony, calling,
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair."
Susie,who was about 12, had long
curly, golden locks, and acted
maddeningly aloof. Yet, flattered
by our chants, she smiled and waved.
She advised us to move on,
as the parents of the baby she was sitting
would soon be home, and that no boys
were allowed to visit. We could see
that she had no clothes on, and were
all the more inclined to stick around.
Then, (what!) another girl appeared
also with no clothes on, and we stared
in teen amazement as they shared
a kiss. As almost 14 year olds we had
no idea what lesbians were. Well
now we did. And our beloved Rapunzel
only let her hair down for girls.
So we left to try our luck with another
girl, who we called Little Red, because
of her long, ravenous red hair...

[Quixilated]

Day 1.
She was dazzlingly lovely like a fairy queen 
too cool for a catastrophe like me
with her matching yellow dorm room decor
coordinated outfits and and long golden hair.

Day 2.
I had already been adopted, but when she said
more curse words in one hour than I had heard
in all the years of my life before as she cried
on the phone to her ex, I became a convert.

Day 3.
We danced in a puddle in a parking lot in the rain
then ran laughing, soaked-to-the-bone to our room.
From that day we were kin. Two fairytale believers
with one goal: to find magic in ordinary things.

Day 8,000 (ish)
She texts from one thousand and five miles away,
“I miss sitting in silence with you.”
I miss it too.

[RiverNotch]

Tobias and the Angel


Following fairy tale logic, Tobias
was totally clueless at the start
of his long journey to Ecbatana.

The dog he had gotten to guide his blind father
abandoned her post, as he set out,
following him out of loyalty

unsupplemented by wisdom,
and he didn't realise his other companion
was not quite human until the end.

Azarias, the angel called himself,
like one of the youths condemned to burn
by those who would burn down Nineveh

no long count of years later and,
indeed, no long count of years seemed
to separate Tobias from this newfound friend,

albeit in every other way
the two differed greatly by degree:
not only wiser but taller and more comely

was this supposed distant cousin,
this golden-haired son of black-haired Ananias,
such that even the dog forgot

her original loyalty
except that her master was the one
more strongly drawn to him.

At first, Tobias followed his every word
not really knowing what else to do,
which road to take or when to pause

to eat, to wash one's self, to pray,
but soon the pleasure of following orders
from someone other than mother and father

gave way to the pleasure of having someone
through whom the Psalms sung every Sabbath
finally made sense.

And before the bridge across the Tigris,
when Tobias again was following orders
by seizing the half-whale, by wounding his bare chest

with the thrashing fish's fins and scales
yet still holding on, still dragging it to the bank
and bashing its head against a stone,

Azarias, too, was changed:
why his Lord still listened to the cries
of His stubborn and foolish children

finally made sense.
The fire they used to roast their dinner
and dry out the entrails of the river monster

for the salvation of the most comely
Sarah, Tobias' yet-unknown betrothed,
they would not need to warm themselves
retiring for that night.

[dukealien]

Though it contains no fairy tale element (?) I am desolated not to have thought of Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough for this one.

[RiverNotch]

1712753399[/url]']
Though it contains no fairy tale element (?) I am desolated not to have thought of Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough for this one.

You could always just add that in. Done well, I'm sure it'd be quite the Favourite.

[Wjames]

Skates carve lines in ice.

Entering the zone with speed,
the D puts my shoulder
through the boards
as I move the puck to an area.

The center picks it up in the corner
and feeds the man in the slot
for a one-time goal.

There is no pain
as I rise to join the boys
for a hug.

----
I'm choosing to believe that having 'puck' in there means it involves a fairy tale.