2025 NaPM 20 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.


Christos anesti! Write a poem about temperance: the cardinal virtue, preferably, and not the inane political movement.

---

Out in the sand, with all the virtues of the flesh
perfected by a man as mortal as divine,
were also all the rest of nature so refined,
Edenic apple cores bestrown and soaked afresh.
By hunger we were fed, by dehydration sated,
by lack of shelter housed, by sleepless midnights rested:
by Spartan answers riddles Attican were bested
just as by banishment returned the long-awaited.

Thus if the brave by their prized Bravery could pile
feat upon feat at large abortive, even vile,
those of the duller virtue are yet more unstinting:
like to the Mali Mansa gold so ceased from glinting
that, in his pilgrimage, his alms were broadcast seed,
so the restrained are, of Restraint, the least in need.

[Mark A Becker]

today's 420
not a day for temperance-
smell it in the streets


Form: senryu

---

Christos anesti! Write a poem about temperance

good Italian sonnet, notch

[dukealien]

Cold Cuts


That first sip of coffee in the morning
or mere scent of it
is like shaving
with a fresh razor blade.

You never nick yourself with a new one
or get bright, bitter insights
from one taste...

only old dull edges, dregs
in a cold mug whiffing
of cigarette ashes:
those cut.

Easy to see why some sects, religions
prohibit coffee as a matter
of Temperance while others
and some of the same
favor beards.

[Form:  Free verse]

[rowens]

Art


Sacred difference
string your bow
and spring from this sober
difference
the same  never boring    beautiful as Emily

[busker]

Temperance, surnamed Brennan -
though lacking any, you still had cojones.
But someone with your facial structure
is too beautiful to be Bones.

Look at the late maestro John Lennon,
gaunt by thirty. To him who stones
such things happen at crucial junctures,
and life is bereft of colour from then on.

Or the nerds who sat in the front row at lectures,
then aced the tests - derided as drones,
at least they were ugly. Excelling at everything
is intolerable. You can't be Bones.