2024 NaPM 19 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.

Warn.

[Mark A Becker]

a warning to myself

Your intuition
is probably correct,
again- trust it;
do the right thing.

Be around, and be kind
in his final months. What will be
will come in due time.
Carefully place one foot

on the other side,
because you have learned
it’s getting harder now
to pull back.

When you look it in the eye
you feel a certain attraction.
Wink, and step away. You must
think clearly now.

Resist the voices beckoning you.
The day for both feet
in
will come in due time.

[dukealien]

Cassandra and Laocoön


I warn you now
you Trojans of
this later day

you who have heard
intimations
of your downfall

and laughed at them
at Cassandra
and Laocoön

whom Apollo
hated for they
disdained him, god

of prophecy.
Hear them and turn
you proud Trojans

see which prophets
are cancelled and
derided, whom

your enemies
shadow-ban... for
they speak the truth.

[Tiger the Lion]

Patriots

Break left,
                                               break right.

The fighter jets
on your ass

engage your wife 
and kids 
this family night.

Your commander less,
your country less.

                                               Break right
break left

this fighter jet
on your ass
ain't ever gonna let
some nobody find his way home.

[Wjames]

Arriving at the inspection
in a brown coat,
you pull out your note pad
and jot down your eyes.

Be sure to mention the yellow string.

[TranquillityBase]

Arriving at the inspection
in a brown coat,
you pull out your note pad
and jot down your eyes.

Be sure to mention the yellow string.

Strange enough to be true 

[RiverNotch]

Fear does not secure
a warning, only the care
it provokes, the trauma
of hearing a baby's rattle,
or perhaps the love of beauty
that makes such fatal stomping
something to seek after.

"Don't tread on me"
not because I'll bite
but because I'll stain your boot,
because you'll lodge a rib
into your sole as a thorn:

because of the dishonour,
the discomfort, the disgust.

[TranquillityBase]

A Warning Despoiled

Driving through the rolling hills
covered in the green of cedar, oak, 
little blue stem grass
I saw a coyote crucified upside down
on a rancher’s barbed wire fence.

I thought to myself,
“fuck that”
made a u-turn back to where
the coyote hung.

He was big as a German Shepherd,
not long dead, but stiff.
I unwired his hind legs from the barbed wire,
and put him in the bed of the truck.

I took him to  my Ghost Deer Ranch,
where I had a stack of cedar,
ready to burn, made it his funeral pyre.
After the ashes cooled, I gathered the bones,
and buried them next to the shed.