NaPM April 8 2015

[Tiger the Lion]

High School Reunion
... Your dreams
have resolved into online pictures of your Golden Retriever...

Inferring that people who post pictures of the dogs they
love have somehow failed at life is a clichéd stereotype based
on sheer-fucking-hubris.

Cats?
People who post pictures of the cats they love are already such
sheer-fucking-hubrists that anything you say will bounce off of
them and stick to you.


 

---

Act of Reunion

Across the land's divide we lie
and ponder the desert fen like separatists -
too fond of comfort to roughly seize
the rifle's shaft and force the alien
predator off the barren soil, take back
the strip-mined remnants of once-rough
crags.  The slit of ferny beds
is an alkaline track to poison shores.

No recruits are left to move up the ranks
and join your side or mine, to spurn
the reluctant conquest of fleshy hills,
sagging down the bogland.
It is just myself now, mustering force
to span the great chasm with a single
caress and risk breaking that detente.

Nuance enough to float several arcs.

Kudos!

---

Look

if you could go back
watch our first kiss in infrared
and thaw your bones in its glow
 
see no blue
no reservation
only abandon
 
in scorched cranberry
in tangerine boiling 

mmmulled burgundy
 
we’d be together again
 
I can see it now

If you changed that creepy 'mmmulled' to 'mulled', I'd have no problem considering this
the best 4-8 poem so far. (Just the over-the-topness of "watch our first kiss in infrared /
and thaw your bones in its glow" is enough to insure victory.)

---

UGGG you guys are too freaking good.

I know right? Beautifully unique voices. I feel like a Backstreet Boy trying to follow Simon and Garfunkel. 

Or Simon and Garfunkel trying to follow Leonard Cohen.

Thank you Ray. and I'm  because you're right- It is creepy! I think I got carried away once I started thinking about mulled wine. 

[rayheinrich]

Thank you Ray. and I'm  because you're right- It is creepy! I think I got carried away once I started thinking about mulled wine. 

Not many things as disgusting as a slobbering-drunk mull wino.

[ellajam]

UGGG you guys are too freaking good.

I know right? Beautifully unique voices. I feel like a Backstreet Boy trying to follow Simon and Garfunkel. 

Or Simon and Garfunkel trying to follow Leonard Cohen.

Or how Leonard Cohen felt following Hank Williams.

[Todd]

High School Reunion
... Your dreams
have resolved into online pictures of your Golden Retriever...

Inferring that people who post pictures of the dogs they
love have somehow failed at life is a clichéd stereotype based
on sheer-fucking-hubris.

Cats?
People who post pictures of the cats they love are already such
sheer-fucking-hubrists that anything you say will bounce off of
them and stick to you.


 

Dogs, I'm not saying I haven't posted pictures of mine. Focus on the breed, Ray...Maybe Black Lab would have been better? And Cats, it'll do more than hairball back onto me...they'll come after you. Don't need that pain. I was actually going for: If I see the most basic aspects of your life now why would there be any curiosity to make me attend a physical reunion. We are all desensitized to one another's minutia, and its gone. But I love that I could be approaching the sheer fuckng hubris of cat posters--that's an achievement. 

[Todd]

Not to mention what Justin Bieber must have felt following Hanson as he contemplated covering Leonard Cohen.

[milo]

Act of Reunion

Across the land's divide we lie
and ponder the desert fen like separatists -
too fond of comfort to roughly seize
the rifle's shaft and force the alien
predator off the barren soil, take back
the strip-mined remnants of once-rough
crags.  The slit of ferny beds
is an alkaline track to poison shores.

No recruits are left to move up the ranks
and join your side or mine, to spurn
the reluctant conquest of fleshy hills,
sagging down the bogland.
It is just myself now, mustering force
to span the great chasm with a single
caress and risk breaking that detente.

Nuance enough to float several arcs.

Kudos!

---

Thanks, it is a loose tribute to:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/act-of-union/

[ellajam]

Let's All Blame Victor

You dig me up with your bloodhound knack,
your name and broad grin are my history.
I'm amazed that your memories are fully intact;
details wisp through my fog, a mystery.
After a bear-hug an innocent inquiry:
Have you got any new poems in your pack?
I laugh at the thought, not even a diary
has been written in years, though I get a flashback
when you pull me inside, eyes determined and fiery,
and pull out old letters tied into a stack.
You read them out loud, they confound but inspire me;
beware this consuming poetry attack.
A switch in my mindset brings everything back,
still a dancing fool, now a writing hack.

[rayheinrich]

I was actually going for: If I see the most basic aspects of your life now why would there be
any curiosity to make me attend a physical reunion. We are all desensitized to one another's
minutia, and its gone.

The hubris comes in assuming that you've seen those basic aspects.
Since I've never attended any of mine and have no direct knowledge of them,
I hope you appreciate the hubris that was required for me to make those comments.
Without the cats, I could never have summoned it up.

[Keith]

Together again for the first time

There is a moment as all things meet,
an incomplete memory, instinct,
a loss that becomes found
before it is forgotten again.

A mouth that finds its mothers teat,
oil that runs through dry wood,
a key rolling the tumblers of a lock.
A knowledge of being together
family within the familiar.

I saw my reflection enter your eyes,
my body shifted as we trembled touches
my lips fit the socket of your neck,
the stubble on my cheek.
All greeting each others first moments,
even the patches on your jeans
had a memory of the weave.

There is a moment as all things meet,
instinct, when all things complete
a loss that becomes found
never to be forgotten again.

[jasmine.m.wardiya]

If I see you again
it's too soon -

There! I see you already.
Go! Be gone.
(blink)
Still there -
(turn around;
dive into crowd
gloriously thick)
Drown me crowd!

(Take a breath;
look around)
There, finally gone.

(Next day,
same place)
You're here again? Didn't I say
to be gone? Again -
(rince, repeat,
then saturday comes)
A break!
(Sunday;
relief)
Finally...

(Monday)
Back again, I see.
No good morning
you'll get from me.

[bena]

Bridge Over Trouble Creek *


The sappy initials carved into its surface
are worn and cracked from age,
fissures that mimic the visage of our marriage.
First kiss scarred into the world---
canyons opened forever.

My naivety is suddenly blinding.
A tear slips,
and you kiss it away
with a gentility that sparks temporary amnesia
from the years of forgotten floods
that have swept under our feet.

I fight the embrace that follows,
but soon surrender,
allowing the good memories to envelope me.


In this moment,
I remember why I will always love you
and why I must try to forget.




*corny name, but truthful.