NaPM April 24, 2018

[Todd]

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 using a line or portion of a line from Shakespeare as a title.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

[just mercedes]

The ravell’d sleeve


A bleak and rocky land, without a trace
of shelter, comfort; just a rising road
reminds it’s not my first time in this place.

The last thing she was knitting, packed and stowed
before dementia claimed her finally:
a scarf for me. I finger it like code.

Just plain, in rows, and anyone can see
the missing stitches caught up wrong, or split,
or slipped and dropped, to ravel endlessly.

She sent a sweater once, that didn’t fit,
one arm four inches longer than the other.
My winter coat and gloves take care of it

in this bleak rocky land without a trace
of her who left me stranded in this place.

[Keith]

Lovely careful writting Mercedese, the end lines flipped me with that subtle shift in tone. Best Keith

[just mercedes]

Thanks Keith.

[Knot]

Here's the smell of the blood still.


All the perfumes of Arabia
will not mask the stench of this:
Of burning black-smoke deserts,
libraries of ash and tortured flesh.

'Hell is full of good wishes, good
desires', well this road you know:
It leads from Nineveh, to Raqqa
to Palmyra, to the Drowning Sea,

to the unwelcoming heart of you.
To your clean hands.


.

[dukealien]

We Are Such Stuff as Dreams are Made Of


He spoke, at first glance,
as a member of a troupe
of actors, characters, mere concepts
playing on a little stage
as dreams play in our littler heads.

But Devil’s in that ‘We’ for,
actor though he be,
he also was a man:
dreams were our only homeland
in his head, as his in ours.

[Richard]

But soft, what light?

My hands sit on top of your shoulders like two dead parrots.
I smell the lotion you use to soothe rough skin,
bought at the grocery store, unmedicated.
When the photographer finishes, my smile is real
until the quiet drive home, night sky
a sealed black eye, the stars
lies my father told me, so I would go to sleep.
Later, I'll sneak out, afraid to look up,
my feet moving along a memorized route
towards a light she left on just for me.

[Tiger the Lion]

All the Water in the Ocean

The luminol is little help;

it's all kiss and tell
and kiss and tell
when they use it on tv,

but here and now with you and me
it bites its tongue
and will not sing--

as if this 
one thing
might best be left in Vegas.

[Todd]

Nothing Will Come of Nothing

There is the nothing without
and the nothing within—
frost on the bones, and mist
on the skin. The gray clouds
have pushed the bird from its perch
by my window, and the sky bleeds
its solemn melody
into damp leaves underfoot.

[Keith]

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come

I remember the bounce
of a bus ride into Liverpool
and a rolling ferry that made me so sick
I had to sit on his knee.

My small fingers ploughed the fields
on his potato sack face
as he kept a weather eye on the Mersey
and swamped me with his huge farm hand hands.

I love you grandad I said, touching his cheek
beneath a gaze that drifts towards an ocean.
and there it was,
a smile that fitted perfectly into
every furrow on his face.

[vagabond]

t´is one thing to be tempted

and another thing to fall.
yes you know it all,
william, don´t you?
tell me

how forget the altitude?
the gorgeous, tempting depths
can be so terrifying
from the edge, weighing, shifting
feet on crumbly ground.

tell me
how to shed the doubts
and calculations, futile as they are,
when factoring fears.

please tell me
gravity won´t matter
when i fall.

[RiverNotch]

What here shall miss

for John


To have died is a snake's breath,
a burning cloud of poison quickly past.
But to be dying -- planets
pass as tears,
liver ash -- lily bed --

cancer,
house of the moon,
terminal,
cupid's arrows,
sores,

and barely two hours traffic.