2025 NaPM 5 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 fertility or fertilization.

[Mark A Becker]

Flying By to Say Hi

My sister could not have children.
I thought she had enough
caring for her six younger brothers
but my sister could not have children
of her own. The slow, cruel answer
would be losing to ovarian cancer.

Yet, each year she'll appear, flashing red
with the cardinals who make their nest
in the boxwood outside our kitchen window.
And each year we marvel, watching
the fuzzy hatchlings struggle at first
then rise in flight.

I think of you, Linda
and thank you for that beautiful sight.
With your angel wings unfurled
giving birth to the world.

[busker]

Yet, each year she'll appear, flashing red
with the cardinals

This one sparkles

[dukealien]

SWM Seeks


One ecstatic seeks another
rising love and urgent mother–
heedless, careless, dandelion
spindrift-seeds mount up and fly on
April gust stained white with myrtle
fallen flowers, loosened girdle
pink rose-blossoms bend in drenching
pulsing downpours never quenching
bonfires of fertility;
flee, my vain humility!

(Contact information redacted)

[Form:  Dithyramb]

[RiverNotch]

I don't take pictures and I doubt
I'm able to convey
the kind of gold these streets can get
when winter ends

and summer swift descends:
move well between the Horny Goat
and the Dim-witted Crab,
so spring should leave your lexicon.

But autumn? June, July, and August
here mingle with the next three months
in just one stretch a sixth the length,

the Kapok and Akasya make like death
all while spun sugar fills the air
in bursts of pink and white.

[depressedmetalhead]

I was perfectly built and kept
years of use and love ahead of me
but you bought me for my parts,
ripped, tore, and cast away
what you didn’t need,
then discovered I wasn't what you wanted
and left me behind without use,
a mere shell.

Then from my window
in my new garage, I watched
as someone bought you,
only to discover
there was nothing to utilize
or even salvage;
you were useless.
Gorgeous and pristine,
but dysfunctional,
inside and out.

[carahmellow]

Welp... this one turned out to be sort of personal and depressing, but you asked for it 

I could probably play around with it more... its clunky, but we'll see. I'm just trying to get out of my writing slump.

Write a poem involving fertility or fertilization.

Cruel Absent Mad

God left her womb empty,
year after year.
In devastation, she tried to cope
she turned her back and faced the lab
to give her a sliver of hope.
God wouldn't succumb 
to her desperate plea;
though omnipotent, he provoked.
Her faith gave way to test tubes and bills
for an act he could do for free.
Through a twisted arm,
he agreed,
through blood, he revoked.

Finally, a boy was granted
into her loving embrace—
she thanked him, with prayer,
for this blessing—
or a joke disguised as grace
He temporarily replaced
her lonely arms,
and gave her just a taste.
In only four short months,
after coos and cries,
he was sent to feed the daisies—

and there, in the dark,
the truth did spark,
where there were only tears to be had.
If there was a loving, 
all-powerful God,
he was either
cruel,
absent,
or mad.

[busker]

She is twelve, copulating 
under bees in the rushes of wort
in the spring, like a goat yearling
under Thuban in the north.
Great mother, your womb is dense
with pyramids and chalkboard 
equations, double bladed swords,
city councils and lords
over people herding people into pens.

[Mark A Becker]

If there was a loving, 
all-powerful God,
he was either
cruel,
absent,
or mad.

Even if I believe in God, why should God believe in me?

[dukealien]

If there was a loving, 
all-powerful God,
he was either
cruel,
absent,
or mad.

Even if I believe in God, why should God believe in me?

He does not need your belief
but He wants it.

[rowens]

Ishtar

Your High Priestess
takes the place
of your spacetime.

I inhale her virgin 
swampgas,
hypnagogic-pareidolic
repetitions float up
down from you,

separating and
innovating
your freeing fascism,

o love! love deferred. Love put off