2023 NaPM 23 April

[RiverNotch]

So far, 2014 feels rather underrepresented. This April 2 prompt from that year was yet another of TqB's suggestions, by milo and cidermaid:

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 1: Today's prompt comes from AJ (cidermaid). Take a children's game and either write a poem using that as the title or write a poem inspired by that (metaphor).
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

[dukealien]

Ring Around the Rosie


Day shift, night shift, mids.
It’s all the same, flush-riveting
steel and aluminum.

Giving her fat arms, it is
(of course it’s muscle but
unfashionable in
that bare-shoulder teddy
she’s saving, saving for
when John comes home).

For now, there’s only
other riveters - Two-As
or with families,
the rest of her circle
ladies like herself
losing their hearing
and their svelte looks
making these big silver airplanes
beautiful...

Round, glassed-in noses,
wings attached with micron-interference bolts
(a Two-A told her that
while making a pass - declined).

Next rivet.  Next.
Sometimes she gives her planes names:
Mollie, Betty.
Her own name (sigh) always went
with that stupid rhyme:

  ...ashes, ashes,
  all fall down!

For this one, though, something special–
maybe Enola.

II-A:  Draft classification, deferred due to employment in non-farm defense work.

[Mark A Becker]

Hide ‘n Seek?

I wasn’t even playing
but my older brother was-
I could see his car outside
when I came home for lunch.

When I walked inside the house
he’d never make a sound-
stayed as quiet as a mouse.
Then just as I was eating

I’d get caught off guard-
scared shitless once again-
he’d chase me outside the house
and all around the yard.

[TranquillityBase]

Here we go round the panopticon
the panopticon, the panopticon

The Inspector sits above us all, communicating readily with the Beyond and a belfry into which the prisoners’ souls are carried by the radii. 

here we go round the panopticon

Call it the the Lodge.

on a cold remorseless morning

Windows partition the years from us, still allowing light enough, the slightest whisper of the circular. 

This is how we lost our minds
lost our minds, lost our minds

Our cell doors open into balance.

this is how we lost our minds
on a cold remorseless morning

Our fingers want to cling to a few inches of the Inspector’s Lodge.

This is the way we see the end
see the end, see the end

The Inspector is secluded from all communication. 

this is the way we see the end
in a cold despairing universe

The cells are alike so as to not prevent any reflection, to allow the prisoner sufficient passage to the extraterrestrial. Their thoughts issue from the Lodge, backed by the Inspector’s voice.

Here we go round the panopticon
while the Inspector sings his warning.

[CRNDLSM]

I play an x, you play an o,
I block the way wherever you go,
You should have started in the middle
Then try to catch me on the diagonal.
I play an o, you play an x,
Not hard to know where to go next,
The trick to winning this game is simple,
make sure your opponent is a small child

[RiverNotch]

Some kids I played with, when they hid,
were never found again.

Our chairs would always disappear
until there were only two of us
fighting for one seat.

When we would run out of food to eat,
some would die of hunger
while others, they would choose instead
to choke on marbles.

The grown-ups always forbid
tag and all its relatives
in case one of us tripped.

Those who refused to jump rope
would later hang by one.

[Wjames]

Redass

Just throw a ball against a wall
and hope it lands again,
if it gets caught then you may ought
to drop your pants and bend.

This playground game is full of pain
and merry sadist thrills,
but if Ms. Day finds out you play
you better write your will.