NaPM, April 3, 2020

[Quixilated]

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. PM me if you have topic ideas/requests!  


Topic: write a poem inspired by someone from your past.
Form : any
Line requirements: the general vicinity of 8 lines

Questions?

[Todd]

To the people who no longer wish to connect with me on Facebook
 
I do not understand social media.
Perhaps, because I’ve never gone back
to a high school reunion.
So, maybe I don’t understand the need
to pose carefully in an expertly cropped photo,
and present a life only found by models
that pose in those picture frame 
family inserts we throwaway. 
I think it would be torture trying to fit
into clothes for a few hours, to nurse
a vodka and tonic and connect over stories
that didn’t matter to me when they happened.
So, I skate across the same icy surface
we all do, and I listen for the inevitable 
cracks. When I don’t hear from you,
I realize that you’ve simply gone down
into the frigid water between posts.
You’re divorced. Your child is sick. You wish
you could just die. Your fingers numb
as they clutch the ice to post a picture of dinner
and pray that someone likes beef tenderloin,
as your legs continue to kick

[Keith]

Old wrinkles

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.

[dukealien]

Impregnable


He never was a sympathetic man,
though versed in medicine and patient care;
he always had a knowing, perfect plan–
no room for others’ disagreement there.
Good company he was, and glad to laugh
at others’ foibles, never at his own;
intelligent, efficient, though not half
as wise as those who care what grief they’ve sown.
But now with memory destroyed he must
rebuild his world a dozen times a day
from hostile fantasies, for he can’t trust
a word his keepers or his loved ones say.
To see him so besieged in his own mind
gives warning not to seem, but to be kind.

[dukealien]

@Keith - Beautiful, in its own way.  (And every other.)

[RiverNotch]

XIV
Don’t you remember me, fly?
Don’t you remember the girl
in red? The girl who bled? You
taunted me as I taunted you,
you claimed, with my body and
my eyes. My pitiful, starving,
brilliant red eyes. Yours went
between them and my other
orbs-- that is, the bloody
blobs oozing down my legs. We
were what, twelve? thirteen?
Were you jealous? repulsed?
reminded, too young, of your
precious, precarious
mortality? Did you think I was
hungry for you? Did you think
your meat was kosher? It is
coincidence you’re now trapped
in my web. I apologize--
it’s meant for someone else.
Someone more handsome. I’ve
half a mind to free you now,
in anticipation of our
inevitable, incessant
bickering. And yet to watch
you shrivel up like the shells
of your comrades here strewn
about, if not by my jaws
sucking the life out of you
then by your hunger...

[Keith]

@Keith - Beautiful, in its own way.  (And every other.)

Many thanks duke, pleased you thought so.
Keith