NaPM April 13 2015

[milo]

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 13: Write a poem inspired by something that happened that is impossible.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

Questions?

[just mercedes]

Today is Tuesday
 
 
 
this should be Switzerland
but I’m trapped in the Mumbai Oberoi
with a half-done heroin deal

luxurious until the air-conditioning
broke down; even free fruit stinks
as it rots

that crackling sound could be
gunfire, or resin in the pipe

it’s tough not knowing
what’s happening outside

it’s the Dutch dealer who knows too much
it’s the impossible pile of smack
the impossible packet of cash

it matters not how much I call you
"Mother, Mother"
you hear me, but you will not listen

nodding off
while Shiva and Kali
dance

[Tiger the Lion]

Quick Question?

Could you please define impossible first
before we profane its name with verse?
 
Are you asking our words to paradox
themselves into an ornate box?
 
Nothing never fits.
 
We've had our pieces accelerated,
collided in copper tubes and waited...
 
but nothing never fits.
 
If I'm lying then it's got to be true;
nothing is ever bigger than you
 
and nothing never fits.

[Todd]

When Idioms Attack
We're all plain-spoken these days,
like an Amish at a barn raising.
There’s no place anymore
for Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill.
Spoken words are lit firecrackers.
No one wants them to blow up in their hand.
It started on hump day, that’s what we used to call
Wednesday, except everyone was going at it 
like cats yowling for each other at midnight.
You can guess the birthrate. I won’t say baby boom
can’t have that on my conscience.
Sure, it’s fun to watch pigs swoop through the air.
Hell might even be a glacier. But when you’re having sex—
making love is too complicated to say—and you tell her
she’s built like a brick shithouse, Well, ya gotta have
rocks in your head.

[billy]

stretching it i know but fuck it, now one can get six wooden legs up their arse.

We had some billiard balls for tea
calorie free I just ate three.
a red, a black, a lovely green
and a cue; the finest treen
the chalk got stuck behind my ear
the table legs went up my rear
the last one really hurt a lot
all blue and white and made of pot.

[jasmine.m.wardiya]

He dies in the night.
I know.
I sign him off:
pretty signature, pretty date.
And then I come home and shower and sleep
because life must go on.

He comes in the night.
Wakes me from my fitful doze.
Asks for some coffee
and maybe a bite or three.
I humour this ghost:
tea for two, since I
have a shift tomorrow too.
And some biscuits.
He dips them into his tea.
I do too.

We chat. He asks how he died.
I tell him. All fancy words
he doesn't get, then in layman's terms
and he nods, and thinks, and nods again
and drains his cup half-full.
I wonder why he's here;
he's not the first I've seen, and signed
nor the last I guess
but across me he sits
and we talk until my pager calls
and then he smiles and leaves.

At the hospital again
I check. Part of me wonders
if that guest of mine was real
but no. His body is still there,
waiting for the burial services,
or the family. I don't know.
It's my job to sign, not to say.

When I get home later, that evening,
I wonder who the other cup was really for.
One cup is empty. Another full
and I can't remember
if, the night before, I'd drunk my tea.

[Erthona]

The Porous Mind
(With apologies to Keats – "La Belle Dame sans Merci")  

I wandered to a fairy glen
and sitting down inside,
visions passed before my mind,
my eyes still open wide.
A fairy maid did come to me
and taught me fairy law,
she said to share with everyone
of everything I saw.
I roused myself and cast about,
no pen found I at hand,
as memory fading, quickly fleeing,
of that fairy land.
So just as Dawn erases night,
and chases dreams away;
what I learned within that glade,
no longer can I say.


Erthona

©2015

[rayheinrich]

                              < moving the sun >
                                   
                                just this morning
                                i saw them
                                sled dogs
                                panting
                                barking
                                pulling the sun
                                across the lawn
                               
                                no wonder
                                the grass
                                needs watering
                                   
                                        - - -

[milo]

Jennifer's Body

We pulled her body from the lake
like Lazarus was pulled from dreams
and set her free.
She shambles through the town
now, showing too much sand-rimed skin.
Her once-yellow sun dress
rots away from carp-grey breasts.
 
Lu Pei from the Chinese Laundry
scrubs the sidewalk where she stands
with a corn husk broom
pretending not to notice
while shooing her away.
 
Down at Maddy’s Village Diner
no one orders peach cobbler for dessert
while she’s pressed
against the window,
her hollow eyes stare in from the outside.
 
She’s one of us now
like she never was before.
We've grown accustomed to her
smell, like old tires, intruding picnics 
at the Veteran's Memorial Park.

And if she comes pawing at the door
after the dinner dishes are washed
and the family is settled in to watch TV,
attracted by the light pushing away the dark,
we let her in, as welcome as old guilt.

[ellajam]

A Scheme, A Dream Come True

A moonlight trail across the lake
is winding like a water snake;
it rides from shore to lunar glow
with blackness running deep below
and shimmers with each passing wake.

My dreaming done, at last I make
my move, it's surface doesn't break
but holds me like a smooth plateau:
A moonlight trail.

I reach the moon, each step I take
sinks down as into angel's cake,
its swirling light a bright tableau
as if Van Gogh just read Thoreau.
I leave before the dawn can shake
a moonlight trail.

[cidermaid]

Playing catch up (Managed to impress myself by writing 6 poems in three hours...I say poems perhaps this is stretching it, but at least six rough drafts)

Come Home with me.
.
There is a law for everything.
How high I can jump,
How tall a bean will grow.
How far underground a corpse should go.

Just this once, it would be nice,
if you would defy the rules
and take another breath,
to cancel your contract with death.

[bena]

I've been playing ketchup since the very start...this piece is awesome!

[Keith]

Billy McGuinty's Ghost

Old Billy McGuinty was the local toast
he filled up his pub with stories of ghosts.
A lonely lover that roamed the moors
and followed you home after doors.

But Billy's punters grew tired of his tales
and started to drink in the Prince of Wales.
His pub was empty sept ugly Jack Strand
it was then that Billy thought of his plan.

He rang up the brewer ordered extra beer
His days were over trading on fear.
He needed a miracle something real good
and that was the night Virgin Mary wept blood.