2023 NaPM 9 April

[RiverNotch]

2017 actually had TWO NaPMs, one for April and one for October, the latter hosted by just mercedes. The October NaPM's biggest prompt, its opener, is also one of the simplest, despite its rather long blurb:

(I'm posting this a day early, so if anyone isn't clear or has questions, PM me. Otherwise just post your poem as a reply. The next prompt will be posted on October 2. Remember NZ gets the day first, so you may become confuzzled. That's a good state to be in, for a writer.   )

Your prompt is Gold.
 
Bright, fine gold.
 
Start with the gold of the Otago Gold Rush, 1861
 
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/first-maj...ago-starts
 
and the luminous story told in NZ author Ruth Park’s 1957 novel ab0ut the Otago gold rush, ‘One-a-pecker, two-a-pecker’,
 
http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writer/park-ruth/
 
or the history of the song
 
http://folksong.org.nz/bright_fine_gold/brfigold1.html
 
or the song itself https://youtu.be/ycesI2VCvJo
 
or maybe just the sounds of the names Wangapeka, Tuapeka
 
or the fact that although gold was found all over Aotearoa New Zealand, Maori had never used or valued it - too soft for tools, and not attractive to them. They wore feathers, stones, shells, and bones, for decoration.

Minimum number of lines: 8
Form: Free verse

[dukealien]

Gold Rush


Fine gold, found gold,
worth its weight in...
well, you know.
It has got integrity
because it still
will be the same tomorrow.

Funny, that, integrity–
it’s why people value gold,
fine gold,
red gold,
yet people it has touched
with its fever
lose that virtue–
their integrity–
as if the metal sucked it
right out of them
into itself.

[RiverNotch]

I just noticed, normally I post NZ midnight (which is around 8 pm here), but today of all days I'm a little late xD

[Mark A Becker]

Worth More Than Their Weight

If I took them all
and melted them
down
they would never
weigh as much
on a scale
as they do
on my heart-
these simple
bands
from complex
hands.

[CRNDLSM]

Golden brown garlic butter crust
250 degrees out of the oven
But the tongue doesn't care.
The brain doesn't care this cost
A quarter of the days income.
That a doctor's visits overdue
Or that the engine light turned on.
The emotional rescue is cheaper
than therapy, and some people
can seriously mass produce it.

[Wjames]

When your metal detector sounds
on the beach where you proposed
thirty years ago, you know
it won't be what you're looking for.

It's probably the jagged metal
you cut your foot on
playing volleyball
on summer vacation.

Even if it were a gold ring,
it would go into your crucible
to be melted down
for cash.

[RiverNotch]

You know how annoying it is when a show
just doesn't seem to want to end: whenever
it's all coming up the people you love,
an evil twin shows up or someone gets shot?

But worst of all is when one of the mains
is suddenly shown to be someone else
and you start to think, not how you were fooled
or all the inconsistencies finally fit together,

but how you're sure you knew the person better
than their director, their writers, their producers?

How you still see someone for what they could be
even as the ratings start to suffer for their change,
their performances grow more and more checked out,
age catches up with their whole way of being:

it's not so much you had chosen the wrong casket
but that the casket catches up with us all.

[TranquillityBase]

When I think of gold
I see the engravings of Theodore de Bry:
the Spanish atrocities committed 
in the so-called New World
in their lust for precious metals
possibly the first time my young eyes
were opened to man’s inhumanity to man.

I no longer remember where I came upon them,
but I can still see them in my mind
as though it was the first time.
I confess there was a certain thrill involved,
as my eyes pored over the details
of amputations, torture, and burning alive.
What is it in us that can thrill to such suffering?
Like gold our souls seem bright but malleable,
it just depends on whose hands have taken hold.

[Quixilated]

Gold

Her hair in the sun as we run
hand in hand through imaginary
doors to find fairy tale country.
Bare feet on moss and stone,
other than trees and the silence
we are alone here in our home
away from home. Without care,
in a world devoid of time, we climb
ancient obliging trees, scrapping knees
doing as we please in childhood’s golden hour.

[Quixilated]

Worth More Than Their Weight

If I took them all
and melted them
down
they would never
weigh as much
on a scale
as they do
on my heart-
these simple
bands
from complex
hands.

This is lovely.