2025 NaPM 11 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.


I'd like to hearken back to some previous "Poem of the day" entries:
https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-25655.html
https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-23159.html
https://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-9968.html
and also the old spiritual that goes

Oh, who will drive the chariot when she comes?
King Jesus, he'll be driver when she comes.
She'll be loaded with bright angels when she comes.
She will neither rock nor totter when she comes.
She will run so level and steady when she comes.
She will take us to the portals when she comes.

of which Neil Young made fine work in his album Americana. Whence today's prompt, write something involving a chariot.

[Mark A Becker]

He struck too much gold to carry it;
maybe he thought he should bury it.
Got an idea instead!
Hooked his dog to his sled;
hauled it out on a crude homemade chariot.


FORM: limerick

[carahmellow]

My chariot,
my refuge,
a place of discordant melodies,
where conversations with self
grow intimate and mighty.
A therapy office,
where laughter bounces
chaotically off padded walls,
a lonely highway companion,
an introvert's asylum.
No wonder I wept
when I left it alone and injured.

[dukealien]

Like the Wind


We ask who dreamed of riding first,
to leap upon a fear-mad horse–
no saddle, stirrup, reins and, worst,
no vision of his likely course.

When some millennia had passed
though four-wheeled donkey carts were built
from single- to quadruple-assed
their speed could not be called “full tilt.”

Then Egypt learned velocity:
two wheels, four-spoked, with leather tires,
glued frame of airy density,
wind-racing car of princely squires.

They went to war for centuries
in such conveyances, for stakes
of dash, of headlong archeries
and often crashed:  they had no brakes.

[Form:  Iambic tetrameter (rhymed)]

[RiverNotch]

His chariot moved neither by horses
nor by great blasts of flame,
but as the ancient god of love
born of the ancient wrong
had for herself a golden car
drawn by quick sparrows, doves
draw Him who is both God and Love
at once to His creation.
For who is now with hands and feet
not pledged to packs of wolves?
Whose loins are not by lynxes' tongues
thoroughly rasped and scarred?
Whose head is not from crown to neck
sunk in the lion's maw?

[dukealien]

He struck too much gold to carry it;
maybe he thought he should bury it.
Got an idea instead!
Hooked his dog to his sled;
hauled it out on a crude homemade chariot.


FORM: limerick

Delightful!  And anyway, "sledge" wouldn't have fit very well 

---

My chariot,
my refuge,
a place of discordant melodies,
where conversations with self
grow intimate and mighty.
A therapy office,
where laughter bounces
chaotically off padded walls,
a lonely highway companion,
an introvert's asylum.
No wonder I wept
when I left it alone and injured.

I feel this:  my house is full of inanimates I can't dispose of for some obscure attachment.  If I had to walk away from a car, I'd weep, too.  Maybe silently.

[busker]

More difficult to subdue than the wind

We see what we want to see
and hear what we want to hear,
these are two white horses. Similarly,
there are things we fear
to say or feel: two black horses.
Smell, like blood on a battlefield, forces
itself, this one is chestnut.
And these five horses,
wind in their manes,
wildly drag behind
the chariot mind.
O Arjuna,
hold the reins.

[rowens]

Nailed Down

O muscular crab
walk like a wrestler
ride like the graal in the ark

empty cup
your wick is righthanded

roll your mercies
gnarled by static mysteries

the bull in the field
of thought turns
as the prophet's manyeyed
lantern