2024 NaPM 12 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 a poem involving your bed.

IDEALLY, it must express yearning.

[dukealien]

Limited Options


I yearn but little for
my comfy bed when night
has fallen.  Yet
I yearn greatly
to remain there
cratered pillow
wrinkled sheets and all
when my alarm clock chimes.

Rest’s insipid promise
fails to motivate
while that of rising
bright as it might be
engenders skepticism...

as if either could
finally be avoided
more than once.

[Mark A Becker]

I don’t remember
all of the beds that we owned
yet not forgotten

(how we’d make them squeak and moan
through piled up clouds of cotton)

[TranquillityBase]

my beds
sheets loose and tangled
swirled along 
with the ubiquitous Indian bedspread
tactile memories of ecstasy 
(a rare import), but more often melancholy
pulling me down into their infinite pity 
my kind beds

my best beds:
a sleeping bag next to a fire
in the Uncompaghre Wilderness
after a dose of peyote;
Mary’s, in the old Victorian,
a crystal hanging just above it;
another sleeping bag
on the deck of a mountain cabin
where I made love to my wife
among the Sangre de Christos

the worst bed exists
only in my mind
on it lays my over-dosed son
sprawled at odd angles

no more beds for him
and mine is where I hunt for him
deaf to the songs of the dead
but not blind to their coming

[Quixilated]

I always hated climbing into bed.
The sheets were cold, and the dark
was a prickly presence, lurking.
I would read into the wee hours,
read until the words were swimming,
sandpaper eyes burned with every blink.
Sleep was not a gentle falling into rest,
it was a feral biting thing to be captured,
coerced with its restless claws scrabbling.

Oh, but waking up was glorious.
The sheets were a warm cocoon,
safe and soft and full of dreams,
with the slow unfolding of awareness,
the scent of syrup and waffles wafting,
mom’s voice always singing, always cheery.
I would hover halfway between dreamland 
and reality, clinging to that twilight of thought 
as magic slowly gave way to the mundane.

[busker]

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my beds
sheets loose and tangled
swirled along 
with the ubiquitous Indian bedspread
tactile memories of ecstasy 
(a rare import), but more often melancholy
pulling me down into their infinite pity 
my kind beds

my best beds:
a sleeping bag next to a fire
in the Uncompaghre Wilderness
after a dose of peyote;
Mary’s, in the old Victorian,
a crystal hanging just above it;
another sleeping bag
on the deck of a mountain cabin
where I made love to my wife
among the Sangre de Christos

the worst bed exists
only in my mind
on it lays my over-dosed son
sprawled at odd angles

no more beds for him
and mine is where I hunt for him
deaf to the songs of the dead
but not blind to their coming

Haunting

[RiverNotch]

Ever since I met you, I've had to make
my bed a garden plot, or else
all my tears would go to waste.

My pillows now are sampaguita shrubs;
my sheets are purple peas.

Those that are most often grown along
subdivision streets, geraniums
and hibiscus, are my headrest.

The yellow elders to my left
serve as my lamp each evening
while the bush clock vine to my right
rings in alarm each morning.

Around my legs are bougainvilleas;
before my feet bloom roses.

The orchids my grandfather kept
before he died two years ago,
I let creep up the creaking frame
along with some wisterias.

Ever since I met you, I've had to make
my bed a garden plot, or else
all my tears would go to waste.

[Wjames]

Compatible

We were sitting on the bed when she said
I won’t be seeing you anymore.

I said that’s ok, and she told me
that was why.

I asked her how I should have responded to that,
and she said don’t you want to know why?

I didn’t really want to know
but I asked her anyway.

She said you always ask
before you kiss me.