Another thing I didn't realize until I'd worked on this year's prompts: milo and Quix share a birthday. Here's the 2020 28 March prompt:
Quote:Only 3 to go!
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 inspired by a fairy tale.
I was saving this one for my birthday because it is my favorite topic.
04-28-2023, 02:04 AM (This post was last modified: 04-28-2023, 02:15 AM by Quixilated.)
The Door
It follows me, this ancient door
covered in moss and the rust of yore,
always in the corner of my eye,
always to the left and too far behind
to touch if I reach out my hand
hoping for a glimpse of fairyland.
Through the cracks soft whispers wander,
so I stop my breath to hear and ponder
with longing upon a world I’ve never seen.
Should I start my search with magic beans,
or ask a bird to find a key of gold?
Does the door no longer open once I’m old?
Still, the door lurks just behind
in the corner of my eye—or mind—
it calls to me to come and play
to dance away the hours and days
to forget responsibilities and pride
and find a way to the other side.
Yes, River mentioned previously that this prompt often seems to be posted on the 28th. It is not a coincidence. I always requested it when given the option as a secret birthday present to myself. It is a privilege and a delight to read fresh-out-of-the-oven fairytale poems on my birthday.
The Soufflé isn’t the soufflé; the soufflé is the recipe. --Clara
It follows me, this ancient door
covered in moss and the rust of yore,
always in the corner of my eye,
always to the left and too far behind
to touch if I reach out my hand
hoping for a glimpse of fairyland.
Through the cracks soft whispers wander,
so I stop my breath to hear and ponder
with longing upon a world I’ve never seen.
Should I start my search with magic beans,
or ask a bird to find a key of gold?
Does the door no longer open once I’m old?
Still, the door lurks just behind
in the corner of my eye—or mind—
it calls to me to come and play
to dance away the hours and days
to forget responsibilities and pride
and find a way to the other side.
Yes, River mentioned previously that this prompt often seems to be posted on the 28th. It is not a coincidence. I always requested it when given the option as a secret birthday present to myself. It is a privilege and a delight to read fresh-out-of-the-oven fairytale poems on my birthday.
(04-28-2023, 02:04 AM)Quixilated Wrote: … as a secret birthday present to myself. It is a privilege and a delight to read fresh-out-of-the-oven fairytale poems on my birthday.
45 years, and counting
I hope your birthday
comes with kisses,
and with other
magical wishes.
And something else
I’d like to say,
my wife and I
were born today-
at least in our hearts,
when our story started-
still keeping the faith
since our first 28th.
It was on Huntley Banks where I lie with her a beautiful fairy, I,Thomas the Rhymer. Her beauty made me deaf to her warning, and she transformed into an aged shrew. We rode fireflies to fairy Otherworld, and her beauty was renewed. And the fairies’ last gift was to make my tongue true.
Not one living soul in the family
could in any way discern
their dead child’s ghost.
Whether this invisibility
resulted from its shame
or the living’s lack of willingness
to see its presence and its plight
only a friendly visitor
could sense its restless passage
and alert them.
Once their attention was secured
a story clicked
and resolution could proceed.
II. The Great Sin
Shock. That a child might be
condemned to wander
barred from Heaven
spending nights in Hell
or Purgatory at the least
for so trifling a theft.
But it’s not the two coppers
but their consecration
to a purpose which
transfigured their base nature
into stealing from the poor box.
Or, worse yet,
Disobedience
worst of all sins which underlies
even the grandest - Pride -
beside which simple Greed or Gluttony
scarcely signifies.
III. Coins in the Coffer Ring
But what have the two
rescued pennies purchased
in the end?
Something very like an Indulgence.
Not so, Brother Martin?
I love getting lost in the woods
Sometimes you know you'll find
A road or neighborhood eventually
It's hard to fathom how expensive
Some woods really are. Unexplored.
I really enjoy that sporadic dizziness
Arguing with an empty stomach
As long as the legs keep moving.
04-29-2023, 06:24 AM (This post was last modified: 04-29-2023, 01:19 PM by RiverNotch.)
1.
Here I lie, unsleeping
three hours after I first
closed my eyes. I tried
praying, first, and it sort of
worked, but whatever
kept me up remained with me
even after my cries
for mercy. So I drifted
towards Jordan Peele's latest
picture, Nope, and the creature there,
the predator in
the shape of an
angel: the screams
of the people it
swallowed, squeezed
into juice, digested -- the buttons,
zippers, rivets, and spare change
it spat out -- it was horror
like Aronofsky's Noah
and the battering of the crowd
clinging on for dear life
on the near-swallowed summit
of Mount Ararat.
I quite enjoyed it.
2.
I always say I visited Russia
before this damned war, meaning
not just their invasion of Donbas
but also their invasion of Crimea,
but even this correction masks
the reality of their situation.
Walking down Red Square, we were greeted
by buskers in the shape
of Mandelstam's roaches
or the satanic terror
behind Akhmatova's requiem
that you could swear was worse
than what Benjamin or Radnoti
had faced. Perhaps he was,
less by sheer numbers
than by that oft
omitted pact....
Eleven years before
twenty-fourteen, there was
a peaceful change in the government
of Tbilisi. Five years after that
Putin swept in
to take Abkhazia and Ossetia.
That I have to write this
here, as a reminder,
speaks to just how little
the world actually cared....
Lucky Prince Ivan,
his treacherous older brothers,
the Firebird showing off
her feathers as a tease,
or the shadowy Wolf
who first played the predator
then the Prince's faithful mount....
Recall now Eisenstein,
how his Ivan Grozny
failed in Stalin's eyes
because the titular Tsar
was troubled by a conscience.
Five hundred years
of autocracy. Twenty five generations
that know little better....
Original broken up like a protest.
Here I lie, unable to sleep again after being rudely woken up by....something, I know not what, but three hours after I had drifted off.
I tried praying, first, and it sort of worked, but whatever had woken me up remained with me....or else it did not even register to me as a temptation, my immediately reaching for my phone.
So I drifted around the internet, reading the news, watching videos, and for some reason I was drawn to Jordan Peele's latest film, Nope.
The creature there, a predator in the shape of an angel---the screams it inspired in the people it swallowed, squeezed, digested---the buttons, zippers, and rivets it spat out---it was horror like Aronofsky's Noah, especially when the crowds outside the ark howled as the great flood battered them, yet I also found myself titillated.
For horror, the strongest sensation is hearing.
For sex, you have touch and taste.
Well, what else can I do now? I have to wake up in fifteen minutes, and the excitement of the coming day bears down on me through the crackling of our air conditioner or the tingling in my gut. And the light---my shade simply isn't heavy enough to filter out the streetlamp a couple blocks away, or maybe our district keeps using the wrong bulbs. Whichever the case, all I can do now is write, but I'm not sure how any of the above translates to verse.
I always say I visited Russia before this damned war, meaning not just their invasion of Donbas but also their invasion of Ukraine, but even that I think masks the reality of the situation. Six years before that, a good five years after a pro-Western change of government in Tbilisi, Putin did the same thing to Georgia. No one really cared during that time, of course, not least because Georgia seems so small, despite containing so much unique culture---so many strange languages!---of its own. I wonder how people will react when, as a prelude to invading Taiwan, China invades us.
I wonder how I'll react. Who will I be in such a story? Lucky Prince Ivan, the hero of my story? Ivan's treacherous older brothers? The Firebird, goading to be caught---Princess Helena, waiting to be rescued? Or even the Wolf: first a predator, then Ivan's mount---twice changing sex, playing decoy for the Prince---at last saving him from death, returning him to his princess, and devouring his brothers? Oh, but I know: war is never so glamorous.
Eisenstein's Ivan Grozny failed in Stalin's eyes because of how the titular Tsar seemed to be troubled by his conscience.
Five hundred years of autocracy. Twenty five generations that simply know no better.
And here I am, troubled by mine.
I will not show my daughter Cinderella,
or Beauty and the Beast,
or Snow White,
there is no victory winning the heart
of a wealthy man with a foot fetish
or a wealthy man who is grotesquely ugly
or a wealthy man with magic lips,
although I would have nothing against
her starting an onlyfans page
if it let her buy her own castle.
