NaPM 2024 Spotlight Thread

[TranquillityBase]

Brother Jonathan


What a lot of history
suffuses your old sunken hulk!
Fifteen years and half a world
from Newark birth,
fast steamer not so much
into harm’s way
as bearing it with you:
Panama, Nicragua,
then the famous runs–
San Francisco, Portland to Victoria
a name change, then changed back
(bad luck, as old salts know)
and finally your wreck
drowning hundreds within sight
of land, weighed down
by golden millions meant
to pay off Northwest tribes
not unlike those
which three years earlier
one of your passengers infected
with the smallpox
much to colonials’ advantage
in British Columbia
when half the natives died of it.

If a ship is not a living thing
with moods and fortunes,
times of virtue and of vice,
you could not prove it by
Brother Jonathan.

Duke, runners up were your poems (I've forgotten titles) about filming of Farewell My Lovely and Emperor penguin poem. 

It rained that day.
That is why the stones
and bricks and glass and posts
shone so fiercely
that night.
Not some trick of the light.

Not the power coursing
through the grid with more intensity
than usual,
nor the moon and stars
finally exposing themselves
to the city below.

Not whatever crystals
were embedded in the rocks
with which our world was built
nor the flowering vines
that laboured to return them
to the earth.

Not the squabbling of dogs
nor the staring of cats
nor the way people walked
all almost running
careless if they slipped
rushing home.

Not the evening breeze clearing
the smoke from the club,
nor the drinks I've had passing
out whichever orifice
they chose to pass out of,
nor even the piercing

sadness in your eyes,
the disappointed search
for a shared memory.
It rained that day, I tell you:
that is why we both
nearly drowned.

RN, also really liked The Liturgist's Complaint.

Ideation

The deadly one
was convincing yourself
there was no purpose

for the abundance of spring,
or the sublime beauty of fall-
only brutal winter; searing summer.

Your once fluid thoughts
turned to ice on blazing asphalt-
you became convinced

life was merely evaporation
of your dream-
from solid, to liquid, to steam.

Arriving at the inspection
in a brown coat,
you pull out your note pad
and jot down your eyes.

Be sure to mention the yellow string.

Mourn

You fade, like a flower,
hour by hour.
Day by day
you fall away 
little by little,
like your memories of
a harvest moon
in Catalhoyuk.

Song of the Goldfinch

I am the lord of creation.
My voice calls forth the morning sun
out from the night-void and into
the great mother’s wing above.
At my command it rises—
red as worm-skin, and as bright
as my lady’s eye. The beauty
and the power of my song
brings light to all beastkind.

I am the king of all the beasts.
I weave intricate nests for my love
and for our little roundlings.
More complex than a spider’s web
and more solid and secure.
With my powerful wings I can soar
higher and faster than the lumbering
beasts of the ground. What good
are all those legs other than
to weigh them down?

I am the loveliest of creatures
with soft feathers in rainbow hues—
as bright as any flower, downy as any cub. 
Who can compare to my magnificence?
Even the humans watch me sail
on the wind—effortless and free—
and long deep in their hearts
for a set of wings to call their own.
I am the final destination,
the most perfect and most envied,
most lovely and most admired.
I am the bringer of the dawn.