NaPM April 10th 2019

[Quixilated]

To set up a new thread for each day of April; First off, make sure no one else has already posted for that date. If not then copy and paste this post into a new thread and fill in the necessary information.

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. 

NaPM April 10th 2019

Topic:  A poem about the number 100 (since this is the 100th day of the year)

Form:  any

Line Requirement:  any

[Richard]

Then and Now and Tomorrow

They almost perfected war
one hundred years ago,
and after re-manning no-man's land,
seeds were planted,
fertilized by the dead,
only to sprout a justifiable war.

We will be experts of some barbarism
one hundred years from now,
hindsight a sniper's scope,
our wounds nursing soil,
still hungry for young soldiers,
crying to their mothers,
gone deaf with grief.

My truest comfort found in nights
when it could be one hundred seconds
or one hundred minutes-
time distorted by sounds
only two lovers can make,
two working against hundreds of other things;
bodies eventually buried together,
but their spring bloom also inevitable.

[dukealien]

C-Notes


In spite of its unwieldy size
and awkward lack of factors
(pairs of twos and fives)
one hundred sports convenient human scale.

A sage may be discerned
by coherent speech despite surviving
his one hundred revolutions of this planet
on its oval track.

And both fellows who
set out to scale off temperature
chose one hundred increments despite
their widely variant decisions
as to endpoints, for

one hundred is a manageable heap,
each member different enough
not to vanish into static.

Human scale, as well, in that
one hundred men- one century–
can all be overawed by one centurion
who knows their names,
conducting like a symphony
but with a vine-wood staff.

And then there are those benjamins
which lubricate transactions
too deprecated to be digitized:
worth enough, these wisely smiling hundreds,
to balance artful paper up against
men’s reified desire.

[CRNDLSM]

I went to the doctor last night
First time in fifteen years.
My wife made me go, she said,
"3 days with a fever over a hundred,
Just go to this doctor hell give you some 
Tamaflu." So I walk in, the place was empty,
I'm a little loopy, and I shout at the reception,
"My wife thinks I have the flu, I probably 
Have the flu, she said go here they'll give me tamaflu
I hope it's not the flu, I hate the flu!"

That's all fine and dandy, the doctor hears me out.
3 days is too late for tamaflu, it only cuts symptoms
If taken within 48 hours, just Tylenol and wait it out.
"We can test for the flu, 450$"  "well let's do it, just 
For verification that it's the flu, cause what if it's not?
If my wife says anything about the price, well
'''you told me to go there!"

Ten minutes later...
Well, it's not the flu.
(No telling how sick I am, just so glad it's not the flu!)

[CRNDLSM]

Found poem by random school kid
(Emma Knight on 100th day of school)

When I Am 100 Years Old...

When I turn 100 years old, I
will be tired of everything + everyone.
So I will tell everyone I'm going to
Canada, but accuatally go to
the Bahamas.  I'll live in a tiny hut
with my tiny dog.  I will order
fish tacos when I'm hungry, +
live my best life with no crap.

[dukealien]

@Richard -  Wonderful, and a Centennial poem as well.  In human terms, a century is too much - enough generations to forget, with the usual consequences.  Maybe we've avoided perfect wars since, not because we've learned from them, but because our generations are longer and the ghost at the feast still has skin on his bones.  A few of them, at least.  (Because, without memory, each crop is only food for the next.  Valuable insight you have, there.)

[Richard]

Thanks duke, I am quite enjoying the prompts this year 

[RiverNotch]

The sun burns so hot and bright
the blue of the sky is almost white.
His light is carried by the wind
which, like chariots, run and return
from distant kingdoms eager to take
this meager patch of dried-out earth
and, for spoils, yield naught but shadows
of glory stained by golden dust.
A hundred leaves, and hundreds more
twigs that root them and join to stems,
streams of sap rooted to the soil,
to the hollow bedrock buried deep beneath
and moistened by the dark: a subterranean sea
pure and pleasant and perpetually still---
peace that the wind will never reach,
and the sun, so bright, will never even see.