NaPM April 24 2016

[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 24: Write a poem inspired by a movie

Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

Questions?

[just mercedes]

Matrices


Oceans that were friendly fall apart
into a night growing ever darker.
Quiet green columns hide from sight.
You lift your eyes from the keyboard.

Intense youth, sober seduction,
close beside a road where few pass.
Still your gaze, childhood in blue
chides a garden’s dreaming face.

Deploying eyelashes like scimitars,
code in hand, you cleave the portal.
Kingdoms of penitence press against the sea
and from the highest, water over-brims.

[Achebe]

Rashomon

Atop the wooden gate, a carved beam,
rain  beating down on slate
roofs and cobblestone. A mountain stream,
trees twirling black  on a white sky,
the comforting lie of fixity mocked.
In the forest's moral universe
there is no centre. Though the stream still purls
it keeps its secret, and the oyster is shucked
of your comforting world.

[Tracy Mitchell]

Traveling Lady

Smoke splashes the air with alarm.  
Presbyters come alive in panic, chase
to the church. Snow and fire replace rain.

Not in her cockney accent, not with a nod
or shake of her brown curls, and not with
blood or otherwise, but Mrs. Miller is all in.

Salvation comes as it does, or not, as a shot
in the back, or in the arm.  White-bound
evergreens hang boughs in silence.

Smoke and gold and breathing are all
part of the wager.  She is the prize.
The night grows colder.

[Leanne]

No Redemption

Behind the woman is a wall
upon which she, two-dimensional, must abide
in silence. Men see flesh and are moved
to covet, but will not challenge he who
already possesses her. But he
is not those men. He uses her for misdirection,
discards her when she has served her time,
moves on to the next. Gradually, the wall
and the women erode beneath his hand.
On the day he leaves, she remains:
hollow, torn by the hands of angry men.

[Keith]

Tiptoed in my spats

The shipping lane is sand-banked
a starched collar feels sharp
against a Captains weathered skin
stepping out into traffic.

I should be double bagged,
still I tear under the weight
spilling each day at the front door,
on my knees for apples and tin cans.

The letters slide from the page,
perhaps words hide away
afraid of what others would read
I could write a murder
to bring them back.

My tap dance routine
is well rehearsed, no mistakes
from these frail chair legs,
a top hat above the tales.

The plasters soft and falls away,
an epitaph to harder days
the beam is aged oak,
stronger than a simple life.

[Leanne]

Poor Brooks

[Keith]

Poor Brooks

I know, it still gets to me even though I've seen the film a hundred times and read the book twice.

[bedeep]

Take Me To the Movies

I want to get lost in the silver screen,
disappear from real life for a time.
I want to go wandering in stories and dreams,
to follow a fantasy's chime.

Show me an epic with battles and blood
and add in a romance's magical gleam.
Lift me with images out of the mud
of these tick-tocking days all so mean.

Turn on that beam, light the tale to the end.
As I sit in the dark with my heart yours to turn
all the world disappears but the scenes that descend
and land in my gut where they simmer and burn.

I'll willingly go, you can have of my life
a full two hours or three for what's on.
As long as the drama has plenty of strife's
happy endings, I'm yours until dawn.

[REW]

The World’s Heart

Some say the last unexplored frontier
is the sea.
Maybe there really is a whale
with a soulful eye
giant and vengeful over destruction
of its kind
and we would call him Moby Dick.

Perhaps each ecosystem has its heart
and we,
are the ones who break it.

We might never know,
what has never been seen,
some already gone
that which no longer beats.




Inspired by The Heart of the Sea

---

No Redemption

 
On the day he leaves, she remains:
hollow, torn by the hands of angry men.

Leanne,

I really like this one, especially your ending.

[Tiger the Lion]

Apes
 
They’d come nearly 700 years
and still no microwave popcorn—
so we got comfy on the couch
with cheese puffs and no-name cola.
 
It took a rare film to wrestle
the remote from Mom, but Bright Eyes
was handsome as Moses
and she liked him in ripped rags.
 
I thought he was arrogant
before I knew the word.
 
Dad and I kicked back like kings, crashed
headlong onto strange shores
and planted our flag.
 
We could barely contain
ourselves when it was time
for the line.
 
“Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!”,
cried the four of us in chorus—
even Mom knew it.
 
One time we were watching,
and I can’t be sure why, but
she stood up, brandished the remote
and shouted, “from my cold dead hands”
before flipping the channel.

[QDeathstar]

Aaron and Abe

Thought experiments never pay out.
There needs to be actualization.
You found it without facing causality.
You avoided it.

You could not avoid consequences though.

Loops stacked upon themselves
till the weight of your mistake
ended what you loved most.

We might reinvent the past but I cannot undo regret.

[Todd]

The Blue Fairy
 
Loving someone is a spider web
that you walk through, unseen
but felt. There is a hollowing
out an indelible sense of the other
taking residence.
 
Not being loved
 
back is being left hollow
You are the problem,
and the solution can be found.
Otherwise, there can be no happy ending.
 
The Blue Fairy is at the bottom of the sea.
If you wish hard enough through the ice
of your emptiness, through 2,000 years
of emptiness, until the world dies,
and you were what was in the beginning.
If every synthetic fiber cries out,
and you release yourself
to the strands that only you can feel,
to the dreaming, to the perfect day
you will still never be a real boy.

[billy]

"Six pounds” of ovoid protein.

One egg, two eggs, three...
Headless parking meters; dead men standing.
"Yes boss, great shot boss"
It's hard when they live through you;
Fightin' the shackles shaming the man.
"No more boss, i can't take it"
you didn't need good cards to win.
looking at the bright spinning lights.
Forty eight eggs, forty nine eggs, fifty...

Free

[RiverNotch]

THE 120 DAYS

1
getting hard to parse through people nowadays --
quite a surprise, to see
how alike all girls' asses are.

not teeth, either -- seems
they get them braces before boyfriends, as if,
to their stock, the subtleties count.

hair and eyes, perhaps? how hard their hair sticks,
how wet their eyes get -- for I've learned
it's not the air that really gets me,
it's the moans, the groans -- then the crescendo
of screams, sobs --

2
know what, this time we'll make the rules simple.
regardless of how swayed you seem,
you will die -- for in these modern days,
who isn't a convert already?

oh come on -- don't cry, not yet, not yet. our sex
still lies hidden, unready beneath the sheets.
besides, if you were really worth saving,
you'd enjoy all this -- twice we libertines
have lived and died, each time
the fires of hell
succumbing to the succulent
smell of the roast.

3
you know, one of the whores -- excuse me,
Sunday school teachers -- tells us
God also loved the smell, when he was nothing
but a child -- turned it into his consolation,
after drowning us in one of his tantrums.
I suppose that's what we're trying to capture here,
the arc of the rainbow
formed by pools of drying spunk --

one more subtlety to count. tell us,
Renata, what exactly did you do
when we married you to Sergio?

shut up. i didn't really ask you anything.
that was obvious. one more demerit.
Anubis would not enjoy this.

4
stop shivering. it's not as if
one hundred and twenty days
were not enough time to prepare.
and those nails we stuffed into your dog bowl
really turned your teeth to shit.

stop looking at that brand. Sergio deserved it,
as he was the one with the sword. you shall get
a far subtler knife -- instead of steel,
maybe a candle. and maybe
we'd stuff it up your ass,
once you're dead, let the putrefying flesh
absorb the wax.

[bedeep]

RN, that's truly fine -- dark and fine. Glad I read it.

[Achebe]

Yes, missed this one. You made me wiki 120 days although I remember seeing the book as a child (luckily I didn't read it...). Now I know about Pasolini.

[RiverNotch]

Thanks! The movie, however utterly vile and disgusting, was great -- it sticks to you precisely because it's so horrible, but not in the way, say, Nuit et Brouillard (that documentary about the Holocaust) sticks, probably because you know it's fictional, because it really is that sort of philosophical work, and because, well, some parts are genuinely titillating ----