Posts: 1,193
Threads: 488
Joined: Nov 2013
Write a poem for National Poetry Month based on the topic described....rather, write a poem set in, pertaining to, or inspired by the given region, whether its entirety or just some part of it, as this year's prompts are going to be unified by the theme "Around the World" like last year's prompts were unified by the theme "Esoterica". Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. There are three levels of participation:
Bronze. Participated at least once.
Silver. Participated every day.
Gold. Participated every day, with all entries either being the same form (e.g., every one a sonnet) or being distinct forms (e.g., no two haiku).
Today's region is Australia.
Posts: 1,310
Threads: 261
Joined: Nov 2015
Under, Over
We of North America find ourselves so
much like you of Terra Australis, over
Cancer, under Capricorn seems a piffle;
even our hoodoos
(treatment of the natives and immigration)
ought to fade in history were it not for
certain over-sensitives who attempt to
guilt us about them.
Now, about those guns that we cling to but you’ve
thrown away, well, you’ve had a shorter time to
be a nation, and with much weaker Injuns–
you can recover.
Non-practicing atheist
Posts: 1,193
Threads: 488
Joined: Nov 2013
4 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 4 hours ago by RiverNotch.)
Absence and Antinomy
I cannot say which system is the worse.
In America, there was simply no sign that the pot
was ever owned by someone else: most places
had names in the tongues of their conquerors, most faces
were white or black or even my shape and color,
and there were no honors---no monuments nor exhibits
outside of museums---afforded to their first nations,
while in Australia a heritage more diverse
is championed by place names more byzantine, statues in public
more angular, murals more nonrealistic, and beggars
more universally dark, squat, and ragged.
Is it better to suffer such contradiction
or to be so thoroughly forgotten?
