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.
Topic 11: Choose a common household item, food, drink, etc. and write a poetic creation myth about it.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more
We think God lives on Main Street, and She
must love Amherst better than all the rest of
creation. Last Sunday in church, the sermon
came from the Book of John.
‘I am the bread that comes down from Heaven.
Who eats of this bread will live forever.’
After service our parents took the carriage,
left us to walk, for the fresh air. On Main Street
we passed the Homestead, still talking about how
Jesus could be God, and bread, and what kind,
rye, or Indian grains, or wheat? There before us,
dangling from an upstairs window, hung a basket
full of warm gingerbread. We looked up. A figure
dressed all in white motioned us to take it.
We carried it home. Mother said it was safe to eat,
that was Miss Dickinson, the Judge’s daughter,
who fed us. We think she may be God.
There was once a great God that looked a whole lot like an armadillo.
After forever it became bored.
God tried to create excitement, but it couldn't.
So God thought to itself:
"If I can't create excitement, maybe I can create something else."
So it tried,
and tried,
and after forever a teapot appeared.
God was excited.
But, after another forever, God became bored again.
So God asked the teapot for advice and the teapot said:
"Why don't you make a sugar bowl?"
So God made a sugar bowl and was excited again.
And yes, after even another forever God became bored again,
but God knew what to do now and kept making
more things and more things and more things
(which included us and the rest of the universe)
and was never bored forever again.
And that's how sugar bowls were created.
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions
Disposing our poop in sand,
our nine lives were immortal.
You teach your kids to flush now,
washing them clean with water.
So be it! We created
the death squid that comes at night
up through your plumbing to feast!
'I think I scared my daughter into diapers forever'
You created the world
but I had issues, so created
windows, so as to further
collect data from a safe
position. I have a door
also, the use of which
depends on my findings.
In a clear reflection
of the results gathered
I have now invented
curtains. If things
improve, I will call
for your return.
Purchased from a choir singer.
They do that, ya know.
Masterpieces float.
Throughout the centuries.
They slip in, dusty, stored in a pillowcase.
This one was resting in a relative's basement.
Yeah, it's simple, so what?
He wasn't himself that day, had the flu.
No roses, peaches, or irises.
Just daisies.
They reminded him of his mother.
It's in my living space now, kinda hidden.
Wright's lamp compliments it,
in ivories, two shades of cathedral amber.
It deserves a bronze picture light,
but then everyone would know.
In the beginning, there was construction paper. Mom said, let us cut it into shapes: triangles for alligator teeth, ovals for panda tongues,
rectangles for orangutan feet.
The children said, let there be glue, enough to cover the whole earth. Let us bind the trees together–- paper shapes to table, cabinets, floor, and baseboard. Let us bind
humans together into one: fingertip to palm, hand to hair, hair to face. Thus, the disparate elements of creation coalesced-– strange yet beautiful to its creators.
Then the children said, let us cover our creation in glitter. They saw that it was good,
and reveled in their success
without rest.
My kitchen sink is home to awful things
I watch these little fruit flies spring
From deep inside that gaping hole
Along with scents so foul,
My stomach curls
And out come little flies from deep in me
They stick to walls and smear across my teeth,
Invade my brain and lay their eggs
Beneath my eyelids, and between my legs
Every now and then, I curdle
When death-scented juices gurgle,
Colored rust, into the stainless
Steel and flaking paint chips
Half-a-bottle of red wine
With sleeping pills can do me fine
For when I sleep, I cannot dream
While monsters rummage in the sink
And rattle plumage in the walls
To smell the fear drip from my balls
You see, the monsters need to leave
Their young implanted deep in me
And I'm committed by a lease
To stay, or else I'm devil's meat
That is how these things survive
They pull in victims in disguise
Of honest people, seeming humble
Up until the plumbing rumbles
By then, the tenants can't survive
Unless they keep these things alive
AND THEN there were flies
I got lost somewhere. This is not the creation story I thought.
Stormfather Neptune waited at the beck
of Juno, diademed, queen of the gods
along with Vulcan, crippled engineer,
first nerd, to hear her orders for their day.
“Amaterasu told me,” Juno said,
“her people wish a more convenient form
of seafood, one that freezing does not harm,
nor time corrupt. Surimi, she avowed
could be a starting point. I’ve heard as well
that my Hesperian people grumble at
the need to crack crab claws. I told her that
we gods of high Olympus could provide.
Now see to it.” A peacock, hundred-eyed,
shrieked at her side: the interview was done.
Lord Neptune dripped and grumbled, “I will catch
the fish - you make the tackle, nephew mine.”
He stormed down to the sea and caught a ton
of pollock, whitefish from the bounty of
moist Amphitrite, demiurge of all
that live therein and Neptune’s fecund wife.
Then Vulcan, lame mechanic, started work
by making fillets of the landed fish
and shredding protein myofibrillar
from them to make surimi, his first step.
Long hours the crippled god tried additives
discovering at last that sucrose, sweet,
prevented loss of firmness when on ice
while starch and egg-white gave the fishy gel
a pleasant texture. Vulcan’s quick machines,
invented for the purpose, processed all
while adding artificial hue and taste
and packaging in plastic, rolled and tight.
Queen Juno tried it in her kitchen lab
and found it good - thus we are blessed with krab.
and head for the door
the truck, the woods, and
I pray, for the wood ducks -
God perfected visual beauty
On creation day one.
First thing Monday morning
fresh from the big bang,
alert, bursting with creative juice.
His eyes narrowed,
time paused then raced,
veins at the temples pulsed. . .
and there were wood ducks.
and it was good.
And when finished the Lord said Damn - wood ducks!
Then He looked at the clock
and said, Shit, I need to pick up the pace.
And so turned to cows and mushrooms
and Lutherans.
But for me today the light isn’t right,
just gray smeared everywhere
and the Ringnecks and Merganzers
squawk like spooked lookouts in
every lake, pond, and creek-fed backwater.
I am grateful for all of God’s gifts.
But I suspect the prick has secretly shared
with the wood ducks the distance range
of my Tamron lenses.
As again, wood ducks bob in magic waters
just beyond the reach of my camera.
Feathered dreams they are
from the canvas of Matisse
or Gauguin, or their maker.
Ivan flayed the dragon before it died. His sword had lost its temper in the fat. From its side Ivan rolled it to its back, and with his teeth he peeled its hide. With mangling claws he split its breast. Glinting eyed, from his pocket, he untied his mess kit. "Borscht!" he said, "sit, sit." He motioned to its tit. I almost died. Dainty, like a prince, with a knife he slit its heart, and from it with a ladle filled a bowl. “Try,” he said. I tried. And shocked was I to find it cold! Ha!
And so, my children, tip your borscht to warm your heart for Ivan of old!
(04-12-2017, 05:17 AM)burrealist Wrote: I got lost somewhere. This is not the creation story I thought.
Well, I quite enjoyed it. Your comment brought to mind this poem.
Quote:Poetics - A. R. Ammons
I look for the way
things will turn
out spiralling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in
so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:
I look for the forms
things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:
not the shape on paper -- though
that, too -- but the
uninterfering means on paper:
not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.
Born from the underworld of Procter and Gamble,
of water, sodium laureth sulfate, and other magic unpronounceable to mere mortals,
shape shifting into an ergonomic bottle
and traversing the endless seas of distribution chains,
with satisfaction guaranteed or call with proof of purchase for a refund,
to splat on a dry scalp and rinse down the drain,
back to the underworld for whence it came.
a leader must be strong like a man, like a woman never can, his arms and legs must be long and his eyes must squint at every little thing that passes him, oh every evil little thing will pass him, he's a hero, he's another Heracles in the making, his stepmother hates him and he's strong when he enters the stage and savors applause and brags about chokeholding death for the life of the nation, when he makes like a rabid three-headed dog and barks like he means it, his role is to mean like he hates and hates and his heart is hated by anyone who speaks against him, who tells him your lyre is bad or your speech is bad or Heracles Heracles you've gone mad, he knows wives can be replaced like leaders never can
myth of the strongman
a leader must be strong
like a man, like a woman
never can, his arms and legs
must be long and his eyes must squint
at every evil little thing that passes him, oh every
evil little thing will pass him, he's a hero, he's another
Heracles in the making, his mother hates him and he's strong
only in the things that really matter, only when he opens his mouth
and enters the stage to claim he choke-held death
for the life of his nation -- and not when he treats with the women in his life,
not when he goes out to keep his wife, his role is to rage,
his role is to make like a rabid three-headed dog and speak
like he means it, his role is to mean
like he hates and hates and his heart
has no room for love, has no room for softness
but for the muscles that compose it, but for the wine
that eternally flows, the venom of the snakes, and the blood
of his wife and children drying.
The village had been built jigsaw pretty,
cottages, white washed and thatched
lined the lazy lanes and quiet roads.
Centered by a pagan cross
daubed with yellow roses
and vibrant climbers.
I caught the cold air, the last
to leave the pub, it bolted shut
behind me. The light didn't bleed
onto the night, stars crowded
like snow flakes over my hands
between my fingers, wrapped
all around me, only me.
Such stumbling quiet can only be heard
by the deaf, I was inside its vacuum
carried blind by beauty.
A wrought iron bench spread
its arms and curled intricate
fingers over my shoulders.
At first I could only sense
a gentle movement, approaching
soft a shy duck enticed by bread.
A rustle beneath a hedge,
the earthenware scrape
of dragged a plant pot.
The night had begun to trust me
its light came out from corner clouds
watching roof tops fall on to gardens
even shadowed doorways shifted
in to grays. That's when I heard
the chatter, everything spoke in an old
language, garden forks talked in rhyme
as they turned over flower beds,
plants self pruned and shifted positions
whispering in a dialect of dark green.
Every garden, the whole village was alive,
fallen leaves where being racked, blades of grass
snipped short, plants were discussing
how they should arrange themselves.
A discarded coke-can tapped on the side
of a rubbish bin that snapped open
to swallow.
I tried to move for a closer look
but the iron bench moved inside me,
thin needles had entered my skin,
energy surged
across the connection.
I could feel every movement,
every part of the village,
the cold brick of the cottages, the warmth
of bodies as the slept in their beds,
the padded footsteps of cats as the strutted
the tops of garden walls.
I began to panic, a body rejecting
its donor heart, images flashed,
my mind a flicker book, millions
of people connected to the earth
energy drawn from one to another.
I could see the whole planet trying
to heal itself, using the created world,
man made object colliding, collaborating.
I could see the whole plan
as it mapped itself to my mind.
I relaxed and allowed myself to go deeper
It was then I heard her voice.
If your undies fer you've been smoking through em, don't peg em out
You would tell me of when
the crickets were silent, and when
the ants had not learned to march.
All of your stories begin too late.
Listen, the sky is always dark when
the world is young. The sun does not
bounce across the sky
like an orange rubber ball.
It has not yet learned to fly.
It sleeps beneath the rocks
and the world above burns.
Your oceans already encircle while
mine lick the edges.
The pot of creation still boils
waiting for the serrated edge of the wheel
to bring forth life.
(04-19-2017, 07:14 AM)Todd Wrote: Of Stoves and Pots, Of Cans and Can Openers
You would tell me of when
the crickets were silent, and when
the ants had not learned to march.
All of your stories begin too late.
Listen, the sky is always dark when
the world is young. The sun does not
bounce across the sky
like an orange rubber ball.
It has not yet learned to fly.
It sleeps beneath the rocks
and the world above burns.
Your oceans already encircle while
mine lick the edges.
The pot of creation still boils
waiting for the serrated edge of the wheel
to bring forth life.
Some stunning lines here Todd, it's great to see you coming up on the inside rails, keep writing I'll be reading.
If your undies fer you've been smoking through em, don't peg em out
![[Image: armadillo.jpg]](http://wordbiscuit.com/im17/armadillo.jpg)
A beautiful image, Keith. I feel I should hug you. >