LPiA-25 Nov. 19

[Tiger the Lion]

Let's Pretend it's April - Nov. 19
Rules: Write a poem for LPiA on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a New Reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month, have written 30 poems for the month of November. (or one, or six, or fifteen) Prompts may be revisited at any time. All members are welcome.

Topic : Write a poem inspired by a Classic Novel. 
Form : Any
Line requirements: 8 or more

Feel free to reply with comments or kudos as you wish. 

Questions?

[Todd]

Big Brother Tells Us 

of a tree that split the floor
in Room 101,
and a man who hung on it,
who died to enslave through freedom,
to fill pockets with stones
no one can carry.

So Big Brother carries them.

There was never a tree.

[busker]

Everything she wrote
was a classic. Vials of prussic
acid, toxins with no antidote,
causing death - sudden, spasmodic.

The killer in a respectable coat
cuts cake at the country fair.
At three he plans to take the boat
for Calais, vanish into thin air.

But for the Belgian sitting in his chair
who with cat-like eyesight sees
in the colour of the culprit's hair
his missing puzzle piece.

The high priestess of murder mysteries twisty,
thank goodness for Dame Agatha Christie.

[MidaPoems]

Literary in contempt 

a mind scattered
on paper.

Fighting against himself,
always losing,
slivers win.

Could he be whole?
He should still reside -
within.

Based on Fernando Pessoa's book of disquiet

[rowens]

Bookhouse

In a dream storage room,
all the books never written
are as potent as those that are and were.

Everything is novel,
with the fascination with love,
Queen Eros is a man-eating plant,
not natural in ages.

I cling to the newness of Dulcinea
as she jumps bodies,
the newest more alluring than before.

Like that, a world publishes,
records bloodflow in letters
sent like angels possessing
a soul that exists in time.

This is the classic consciousness.
Unconscious doesn't exist.
Aware keeps the tab
of the things already consumed.

My record collection is my medication. 
The prisonbricks are freedom for a while,
while prisonlife, another rhythm, 
ends in another slant rhyme.

[dukealien]

Compare-Contrast


Mikhail Bulgakov
was one of Josef Stalin’s
favorite authors.
He loved - everyone loved -
the Turbins’ Kiev of
The White Guard,
laughed at Heart of a Dog
and perhaps read stories like
The Fatal Eggs
with amusement.

But in Master and Margarita
Bulgakov toured the Moscow horizon
from literary collective
to insane asylum
to the NKVD and
of course, the housing crisis
through the eyes of an author
and a doctor skating
very, very close to the edge
of Christianity...

inter alia implicitly
comparing Hell with Moscow
of the Stalin era
to the latter’s disadvantage
and Satan therefore
with its General Secretary.

[brynmawr1]

Prescience

What would I do burdened
(or enlightened) knowing
my singular purpose?

Could I work tireless
as the devotee, accepting
without any nagging doubt

with a conviction infectious
enough to enlist and inspire
the unwitting, but happily naive

when I am not sure if I believe.

A Prayer for Owen Meeny

[Mostly Holy]

"Pale Fire"

Shade forged his truth from pale mothlight,
revised his life in the quiet of night.
Wrote meaning to his untold ache,
and laid ghosts to rest in soft iambic.
He chased butterflies on bent paths,
taper fluttering in grief's draught.

Kinbote sought his kingdom there,
in footnotes manic he scrawled a realm on air.
Conjured king, killer, glass crown,
and anoited himself upon an exile's throne.
Now Zembla gleams, absurd and dire,
her heraldic towers lit by stolen fire.

Across the parchment battleground they roam;
A dead man’s soul, a madman’s fevered tone.
The poet built a pale reliquary;
The madman took it for commentary.
The poem moves through both, defies their visions,
and finds its own truth between revisions.

Two voices built their truth from rhyme,
Both chasing ghosts, both out of time.

I am so sorry, please forgive me Nabokov ::pray::