2023 NaPM 21 April

[RiverNotch]

The 21 April prompts from 2017 and 2018 both deal with the theme of opposites. Let's go with the more straightforward version of the prompt, 2018's, by 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 21: Write a poem inspired by opposites.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

[Mark A Becker]

You Go First

Things are never black and white,
there’s always plenty in the middle.
It seems we like to fuss and fight
rather than give in a little.

Then to make it even worse,
everybody wants to get there first.
Well, alrighty then, go right ahead,
or maybe you go left instead...

either way, what really matters
is showing up with a little laughter.

[CRNDLSM]

More of a spectrum really
Everyone is everywhere 
On the line in varying degrees
See the circle, stretched
Over time, forms a wave.
We label points as nodes
And antinodes.  You see
We've already had a christ.
It's not bad though really
It's just on the spectrum.

[TranquillityBase]

Opposites cling to each other
each flailing to escape
but seeking to subdue that other
in an endless cycle of defeat
until both perish from the inanity
of their forgotten cause.
They reemerge in new incarnations
certain that this time
their grief is holy and eternal.

[dukealien]

Position, Opposition, Supposition


To say one thing is opposite
another is to presuppose
they’re not the same thing
or at the same location.

It also raises implications
that yet another viewpoint must exist:
a somewhere else or something else
declares them opposite, which means

that there’s no perfect opposite
of any thing including that third party.
It’s just linguistics, its convention
of nullification: on-off, light-dark,

good-evil each defined
by absence of one quality.  Now, in
the matter of man-woman, what’s
that quality... and what is it not?

[RiverNotch]

Some say opposites attract,
others that they repel, but as for me
I'm always out of luck. I want a woman
who turns the disco down for us

to get to work, I want a man
who turns into the Man when we're together,
but alas: whether we're black and white
or just different shades of brown,

everyone I've ever met's a tangent
to my widening gyre.

[Wjames]

Most of the living dead
frequenting bars
adore being hated.

We have no need to blunt
the sharp-edged opinions
of school children.

I compliment the insult sent my way
by a buck-toothed, doe-eyed child
on the bus this morning,
when he asked his mother why
my face looks like a butt.