2024 NaPM 01 April

[RiverNotch]

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.

Write about the loss of innocence.

FORM: Must not be free verse. Specify what form you used somewhere in your post. This will be important later.

As for number of lines, I'll only ever specify when there's an actual limit, but for now I want to open things up for those who specialise in Tankas or Rondelets.

[Wjames]

This is a form I made up myself (at least I think I made it up) because it feels natural to write, and I think the triple rhyme x 2 is nice.

It's three stanzas with four lines each, the first three lines in each stanza has four iambic feet and the last one has three. The first thee lines in each stanza rhyme, and the last line of each stanza rhyme.

I've written a few poems like this, and will probably make a bunch more.

-----

Pepper

When evening cold had mangled love,
a collar chiming belly rub
could draw a bath and fill your mug
with honey ginger tea.

When open door meant wagging tail,
a sunshine wind in open sail
propelled you over jagged rails
to where you want to be.

The collar hangs inside a frame
and every walk and stick wrest game
is carved as deeply as your name,
into the bones of me.

[dukealien]

@WJames - pleasing and effective form.  I like it.

---

First Times


There is no limit to experience
except, perhaps, forgetting what was learned
or misinterpreting, a consequence
of seeing fire leap yet stay unburned.

But innocence is not a heap to be
piled higher as a life acquires its shape–
more like unpolished raw chalcedony,
or dewy beauty of an unpressed grape.

The wine of innocence implies its loss;
acceptance cannot be withdrawn once given.
To glaze experience with perfect gloss
what’s lost to gain it must be coaxed, not driven.

[rhyming quatrains]

[RiverNotch]

(Unrhymed Sonnet)

Even when he would go out to the field
only to watch someone get shot
out of the sky, only to duck
when the older kids cried out:

They're getting low! my grandpa
did not lose his innocence.
The stories he heard of soldiers catching
babies with their bayonets

were only stories, at the time,
while his town was pretty smart
in hiding my great aunts,

or else they learned the art too late,
hiding instead their fear, their shame,
even well past judgment.

[TranquillityBase]

(blank verse)

Missiles fall to kiss the eyes of the earth
their crystal fires unchain the waiting time
to free our innocence of all untruths
but with the lies stripped and slain by the sky
the soul of innocence must flee and hide
into the desert’s tide of bone and wind.
There it wanders a landscape without sin
helpless to bless the pyramid sun’s change
from light giving god to a collapsed void.
But the underworld welcomes the lost
to its ice and darkness, welcomes the pure
to where liquid stone baptizes  in slow
simple droplets not different from tears.

[dukealien]

I must be slow today...

only just realized how date fits with subject:

being fooled (or more precisely, realizing you've been fooled)

is, each time, a loss of innocence.

Or, anyway, betrayal of a trust.

[Mark A Becker]

Eyes On

Eyes on the board
from the front row
as the teacher asks me
to read the first line
but I can't make out the words
mortified because
I'm a very good reader

Same with the eye doctor
on the first line
the BIG ONE

It was a bitch to get
glasses at 8
the name calling
from brothers and friends
like glass in my eyes

I was the first to go
now they all have glasses too
I could
but don't call names
because I remember how
it felt


(glad to be back- for way too long the graphics on the Pen looked like mud on my machine. If I suddenly disappear you'll know the gremlins are blinding me again.)

[Tiger the Lion]

Back When

Back when tigers used to smoke 
and we not long had shucked the cave,
a man could tell an artless joke--
at least, when tigers used to smoke.

But now we wear this awkward yoke
where nothing’s in it for the brave,
not like when tigers used to smoke 
and we not long had shucked the cave.


*** triolet

[dukealien]

Back When

Back when tigers used to smoke 
and we not long had shucked the cave,
a man could tell an artless joke--
at least, when tigers used to smoke.

But now we wear this awkward yoke
where nothing’s in it for the brave,
not like when tigers used to smoke 
and we not long had shucked the cave.

Ah!  The innocence of believing one could speak one's mind, even in jest!  Good 1.

[Quixilated]

In the shadow of Don Quixote
I rode. Stars burned in my eyes
while thoughts swirled half-formed
and muddled, but gorgeous 
like Monet in a duel with Van Gogh.
Nothing was impossible.

And then. Words.
Words burrowed deep into my brain
and sliced their way under my skin.
My beautiful windmill became a giant.
Or was it the other way around?
The truth of his face has been lost.

My eyes burned dim and then out.
My body became a pincushion full of words,
I no longer remember which ones are mine.
I reach out for the impossible dream
but Alonso Quijano sighs beside me
and offers instead just one more story.