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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 21: bedeep would like to see a poem about chickens - alive chickens, dead chickens, crossing the road, laying, chicken fights, etc. Write a poem inspired by chickens.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more
Questions?
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(04-21-2016, 12:18 PM)milo Wrote: 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 21: bedeep would like to see a poem about chickens - alive chickens, dead chickens, crossing the road, laying, chicken fights, etc. Write a poem inspired by chickens.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more
Questions?
what??
this has to be the best of the lot!!
~ I think I just quoted myself - Achebe
just mercedes
Unregistered
In Spring the chickens start laying again
They’ll deepen to gold
later, when the chickens
get into new lucerne, darken
to orange when grasshopper season
arrives, but they’re pale, spring yolks,
almost white, like spring butter.
The first new season eggs
often arrive misshapen; yolks
without shells, or solid
walnut sized rocks; once
a single tubular specimen
two eggs long, with thick ridges,
like cinched belts.
I wondered how that felt
to the chicken.
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On Sundays we have eggs
as our contempt for hens demands
we eat the children they’re denied
singing all about the sunny side
the funny side
is, deep within her box
the hen just goes on pecking
looking out across the decking
of her warm suburban cage.
It could be worse
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All My Chickens
Quiet under the hand, soft rumple of feathers.
Low questioning bawk announces an egg. Loud squawk demands food, now.
Running in random around the chicken yard,
scattered by loud noise or anything, really.
Tight in cages.
Pecking. Fighting. Drawing blood. Eating bugs. Me first no me!
Roosters with heel spurs, set at each other for bets.
Hung up by the feet, naked, plucked, in Chinese markets.
Flesh swimming in soup.
Kentucky Fried.
Dinner on the ground, with biscuits and gravy.
Baby chicks dyed pink and purple for Easter. The start of a fun life.
Thump of axe on stump, head flops away.
Pecking around the stump later, for bugs.
Cuneiform footprints.
Warning! Intruders! Fox! Someone comes! The sky is falling!
Chicken: one name of fear.
Why cross the road? It's all right here, samsara, nirvana, same same.
Once across, invisible. No one even knows.
We leave you this wishbone. Use it well.
________________________________________________________________________________________
"Dinner on the ground" is a custom US country churches used to have (some still do I guess) where sometimes in summer the congregation would prepare a picnic for after Sunday service, which they would share on the church grounds. Fried chicken was always a prominent menu item at such affairs.
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Remnants of the Chicken Little Manifesto, shared in secret
the monotony of scratch
and tap across
the weight of days
We eat, we lay,
we live, we die,
we never see
secrets of the edgeless
horizon, until
heaven breaks,
falls upon our head,
demands we look up,
and cross that road
They tell us,
the world
is a flat plate
to peck corn,
nothing more.
We peck
with heads lowered.
We must decrypt
this puzzle of sky.
The pieces streak
like chemtrails.
The ax is laid
to the stump,
and we must
peck outside
these wire fences.
The fox is beneath
the coop. Fantastic
though it seems.
Blue is a pond
draining.
and we must run.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson
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On April Seven, per the prompt, I lycanthroped into chickenness and posted the sad result. Today, with much regret, I imagined hypothecating lycanthroping into chickenness and thus reworked an old poem draft into something even sadder, as posted below:
We Could Be Chickens
I watched and tried other lives -
the large cat, four kinds of birds.
Flying chill-thrilled me but ended
in brain cramps from those so
undersized craniums.
As the tabby cat I moved with
the grace of jello, but worn down
by tail function, fell too frequently
to a state of repose.
And then the snake –
It seemed brilliant for a time
all stealth and glide–
to move without appendages.
But snow was too much and I want
to tell you I now think this -
we could be chickens
walking on two legs
toward what seems like a future -
water, light, heat.
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Fowl or Fungus
Colin is an egg turner
he turns eggs
until they crack
then he hands
the chicks to Jack
Jack is a chick feeder
he feeds broilers.
Broilers get fat fast
so fat, they cant reach
water and their legs break
under their own weight.
Meet the transport fleet
crammed into cases
at just seven weeks
broken legs, wings and beaks
Colin's daughter manages
the slaughter.
She puts them in shackles
cuts their throats
and boils off their feathers.
She sometimes forgets
to cut their throats.
Disclaimer
All animals died during the making of this poem.
If your undies fer you've been smoking through em, don't peg em out
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04-22-2016, 05:25 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-22-2016, 05:26 AM by Todd.)
The disclaimer especially was great Keith. I read the poem and thought: cheery. I used to drive by a cattle yard which isn't even as disturbing as what you describe. I still called it Cowschwitz.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson
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omg.
Yep, Keith, you got in the spirit of the thing alright. Great poem.
JM, I didn't know that about yolk color! but it makes sense, very nice tidbit.
Leanne, Teagan, Todd, I'm enjoying these. Teagan, I did vaguely remember you or someone had already honored the chicken --  -- I like both poems.
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Touché Keith. The last line. I'll have pork tonight instead.
~ I think I just quoted myself - Achebe
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mom cracks the shell
and it screams
as she empties it into the pan
writhes in the hot oil
when it finally stops squirming
she slides it onto a plate
and hands it to me
with two strips of bacon
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This April moon
is waxing gibbous—
a feather shy of full.
It looks like a yawning yellow hole
you could step through
and finally find rest.
The chickens out back
are possessed and plotting
to start a cult.
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(04-22-2016, 12:17 PM)Tiger the Lion Wrote: This April moon
is waxing gibbous—
a feather shy of full.
It looks like a yawning yellow hole
you could step through
and finally find rest.
The chickens out back
are possessed and plotting
to start a cult.
ahhh . . . the old chicken coup
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LOL Milo!
Tiger the Lion, "a feather shy of full" -- wonderful.
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(04-22-2016, 07:27 PM)bedeep Wrote: LOL Milo!
Tiger the Lion, "a feather shy of full" -- wonderful.
La Luna
she is full now
and wont to wane
before we wake
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Appetite for dinner
A rooster, legs trussed,
lay wide eyed at the back our car
for the potholed ride back home
squirting green shit on the footmat.
Once in the backyard
it became curious
strutting in the herb garden
while cook chopped potatoes,
and sliced chillies lengthwise
to better control their heat.
Near four o'clock, a servant twirling a black machete
cut it up
in a flurry of harlequin feathers.
As it ran headless, the cat sprang away
from its thrashing spur
slicing the rich air randomly.
Dinner was tasteless
and mother thought me traumatised
but really, my appetite had died
from seeing green shit in the morning.
~ I think I just quoted myself - Achebe
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A Four Piece Box Please
As fingers gripped and ripped his vest
the chicken bared his breaded breast.
Eleven smells of herbs and spice;
A Coca Cola with some ice.
A side of sweetcorn and some slaw,
me and the chicken went to war.
He didn't stand a fuckin' chance,
I sucked his bones; left nought to chance.
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04-23-2016, 07:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-23-2016, 07:36 PM by RiverNotch.)
Edit, part 3:
Since this edit didn't really transform the poem, only change the title and a few line breaks and junk, I'll just edit this in:
PATRIARCH
Here in the city, the birds
are always begging for food -- their songs,
however light, are never happy ones.
Even the crowned rooster, who at dawn
courts the sun with a little chicken dance,
does not do so out of love,
unless one confuses
the ease of Abraham's climb
with his knife.
Then the cock returns to his kingdom,
the feathers earlier washed by dew now dried by the warming light,
and he finds that he is one son less,
all for the sake of a handful of corn
scattered across the barren road
Also, from the Lord of the Rings:
You know, chickens?
Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew?
And damn, Keith, Achebe -- your poems, and I mean this out of admiration, are real piles of green shit. And jm, Leanne ---- I think I'll just eat beef from now on.
But I ask: where are the fun chicken poems? I'd think that beasts burdened with bird-brains would be more happy than, I dunno, existentially denied --
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