2025 NaPM 7 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.


This year, there are no form requirements, only "tiers" or "rankings" given informally to all participants:

Bronze Tier: Participate at least once.

Silver Tier: Participate all days.

Gold Tier: Participate all days, and have all entries be the same form or have all entries be different forms.


Write a poem involving temporal or secular authority. Also, try and guess what tomorrow's prompt will be...

[dukealien]

The Golden Point


O, say, traveler, can you see through the dust
what we labored to place, at millennium’s closing–
Khufu’s pyramid’s tip, solid gold, free of rust,
pharaoh’s final Big House for his ageless reposing?
Greeks and Romans have come, and some French amateurs,
not to mention wild Arabs and sightseeing Turks...
but our government, wise and stately as yours,
surely clings to its rule, and eternal its works!

Dear resident I must give you tragic news
with which you may wish I had not ever responded:
pharaoh’s government’s gone leaving only stark views
taking gold with which it long ago had absconded.
That is how kingdoms fare, and exceptions are rare–
men who claw to the top are congenital jerks.
Thus each government ever uncaring, unfair,
stoutly clings to its rule, and infernal its works!

[Form:  Anacraeontic ode]

[Mark A Becker]

A Red Scare
will do strange things to a country.

Midway through the 1950's
In God We Trust
began to appear on US currency,
Under God
got added to the US Pledge.

There could soon be legislation
to bring The Lord's Prayer
into schools to start off the day-
time to put the fear of God
into those godless atheists!

[RiverNotch]

There was no justice in the Ides of March.
The murderers of Caesar were as greedy
as they themselves had painted him to be,
refusing every effort to proportion

even a single aes to benefit
the populace at large solely because
one of the house of Julia held the pen,
and not a single captive Gaul the knife:

they saw themselves as Samuel chiding Saul
or Moses freeing Israel from Og,
but really they were just the feral dogs
gnawing the bones of Jezebel, their Rome

already slain by slaves, already lost
to Sulla and the anti-Gracchi host.

[busker]

A song of the saviour

I sing again of the man called Trump,
long may his name be spoken
by the scion of every MAGA chump,
their pink little piggy banks broken.

Who chose him to spite the woken
alone, those nerdy upstart hacks,
queue jumping DEI token
women, like Henrietta Lacks.

Great boomer Superman, his sword against the blacks,
Trump is the saviour, not dementia Raegan,
even as he tore for fun the Americana Pax
so their nest eggs won't be eggin'.

Why doesn't the Ayatollah shave? (wop to boomer)
Whatever happened to names like Dave? (cop to Koomar).

[depressedmetalhead]

"We know what is best!
Listen to us!
How dare you question us!
We've given you
A wonderful life with everything
you've ever needed!
Don't question our judgement!
We know far more than you!"

It seems that
the government
has become our
overbearing parents.

[brynmawr1]

I met a sapling today
spindly stalked
I noted
how it stayed
so quiet.

Not needing
more
than its given light.

[rowens]

Humility

To engage with culture
is to be a comedian,
a perfectly self-conscious
charlatan of love.

To wear your heritage
like a gimmick, 
opening your hell
to the uninitiated;

ignorance of the law
is no excuse.

Officer wears the hexagram,
donating his pride
to the solarsystem
of the region;

belief for him
is more crucial
than for a priest.

The law is for all
while science
is a nightsky
of unsanctioned 
loopholes.