Posts: 1,139
Threads: 466
Joined: Nov 2013
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: Write a poem in honor (or ironic dispraise) of a person, or persons, of power.
Form: Ode, after Sappho, in quatrains; meter and rhyme aren't strict
Line Requirement: At least 12
Posts: 894
Threads: 176
Joined: Jan 2021
A dry but cool wind blows from the south,
tyrant flycatchers feed their young
in the rafter just above my head,
and so I sing of you, O Persephone.
Last years leaves are now refugees
huddled against the conquering green
where the flycatchers hunt living morsels
for their ravenous offspring.
There is always that bitter taste
in this season of your resurrection
amid the replenishing sun and rush
of troubling life at full throttle.
Posts: 952
Threads: 225
Joined: Aug 2016
dearest sweet baby Jesus,
you're mission was to free us
from the shackles were born with.
I don't care if it's a myth,
life itself has destroyed me,
but I own my destiny.
No one else in history,
has helped me be who I'm meant to be.
Sweet baby Jesus,
I don't have your endurance
Sixty years of dedication
Can disappear with a single decision
Peanut butter honey banana sandwiches
Posts: 254
Threads: 137
Joined: Feb 2022
All of us sat here
like a battalion of goons
to the self appointed chairman
any man can sit in a chair I think, I am now!
(I suppose a woman can't be chairman though)
because they're not a man
who made up this system anyways?
what a bunch of loons.
The meeting begins
and then adjourns
when a coworker pushes the chairman out of his chair
and declares anarchy.
Posts: 695
Threads: 139
Joined: Jun 2015
Lucifer
Early morning eyes are charmed
as you dangle like a jewel at dawn.
Of all the stars that held the night
none surpass your alluring light.
Your brilliant, simple elegance
beguiles with sublime radiance.
Hovering in the blushing sky
you hold me helpless, hypnotized.
Every morning, there you are,
my fallen angel, morning star.
You reach out, invite my gaze-
I lift my eyes, and offer praise.
Posts: 1,139
Threads: 466
Joined: Nov 2013
04-11-2022, 01:33 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-11-2022, 01:39 AM by RiverNotch.)
Theodora, you could not play the penitent
all your life in the Palace. When the mob
crashed against its gates, filled its courtyard
like a flood,
and struck such prudent fear into your husband
he had his boats prepared, you stood your ground.
You would not live an exile, and so you were buried
in a purple shroud
in the peaceful years long after the riot.
The boats were left unused. Your proud resolve
led to your husband marshalling his guard
and winning the fight.
Who would have thought the harlot that you were
in your youth would grow to save the Empire?
You had no shame, standing before the crowd
naked but for the man
who, covered in feathers, wrapped himself around you
in mockery of Jove. You had no shame
when this history of yours returned to court
through envious mouths
to slander you. No, your former misfortune
you acknowledged not with suppression
but by helping those women who were forced to keep
your former station.
You gave them money. For them, you softened the law
while hardening the punishments of their panderers.
You ordered the people not to scorn them when
they sought new lives.
And now, in heaven, you choose with all humility
to forsake your holy crown, to serve without glory, to be
the lowest handmaid of the Mother of God. Your penance
you'd merely delayed.
Theodora, how you are now honored by tesserae
under your feet more luminous than the glass
glued to the walls of the St. Vitale in Ravenna:
the stars!
heck, i tried xD
Posts: 254
Threads: 137
Joined: Feb 2022
you gave a better effort friendo
never written an ode before
so I just kinda smeared my feces on the canvas
proud of the result
none the less
Posts: 695
Threads: 139
Joined: Jun 2015
Hey Tim-
Just wanted to let you know that I really like these lines:
Last years leaves are now refugees
huddled against the conquering green
Posts: 438
Threads: 374
Joined: Sep 2014
Posts: 1,184
Threads: 249
Joined: Nov 2015
He Gave Them a Sword
Richard Nixon, always the smartest man in
any room he ever would enter knew that
all the others always would hate him for it
and his solution
was to gather power so they would have to
suck up to him even while plotting to be
rid of him. So each of his best-known speeches–
“cloth coat” and Checkers–
was about some slight he had suffered yet each
time he won and held supreme power in his
grasp he managed to have it stolen from him
not fighting for it.
For he, knowing no-one would ever love him
settled for the hatred of people whom he
knew were lying, crooked as they said he was
and let them rob him.
 Non-practicing atheist
Posts: 468
Threads: 202
Joined: Dec 2017
On Instagram
the faces of women
barenaked, teeth
and glistening flesh
conjured in the water
of southern florida
entice me to move there.
These women, who will never
make more DNA replicas of me,
but cling to wholesome boys,
clean, and tasting of skin,
I think of in disgust, bobbing,
like apples in milk, till dawn breaks,
and with it a flock of missiles
to end the Anthropocene.
These women, loose frocked, damned souls already,
displayed like fruit on mahogany tables
speak to me in cyanide dripping voices
while I cry out dry warnings, like an old prophet.
|
