NaPM April 22 2016

[milo]

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 22: Write a poem about losing something or about something you have lost

Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

Questions?

[Achebe]

I lost my sanity

I lost my sanity in a post office queue last year
when the counter lady was out to lunch
and everybody remained where they were
because nobody else was moving much.
But what drove me nuts
were the spices from last night's Mexican
burning like acetylene in my guts
when I couldn't fart, with Ozge Alwardi
standing seven feet from me:
for months I'd been trying to get into her pants.

You may have been in a like situation before - 
mistaking your boss's trophy wife at the bar
for an upmarket whore
then ruing the request for a quickie
knowing how your boss would start acting dicky
with requests for promotion and a company car
all denied, so you'll have a c**t's time.

Well, all I can say is - 
don't stand in a post office queue at lunchtime.

[Keith]

Ripped leather flowers

They sat like buried florists
faded aprons under gypsofilia
drinking beer from vases,
tributes to another road-rash.

But the petals lose their colour
and your photograph fades
like the sepia memories
they try to crayon in each year.
Swapped stories
pedalled like trading cards,
old bikers stuck in slip-road ruts.

You wont find me there
throwing posies at your feet
or nailed on a lamppost cross
wearing that crown of roses.

What's that you say boys?
yes, back in the day boys.
Maybe I did sell out, but its late
and I'm not your mate,
so ask me again about our friend
and I'll tell you how it really ends.

[Tracy Mitchell]

          An Apartment 1972

A pendant formed in frost on cold nights
across the lower kitchen window by
the wooden chair painted white.  

Streetlights ceded shadow effects to
the far wall, like marks on her forehead
from fingernails - like bronze and silver,
like her golden birth sign twisted dark.

That afternoon she sat detached, looked
straight into the camera.  The hem
of her skirt up, her skin grown lush
already starting to enchant.

His eyes were red. She fed him the lines.

By nightfall, her knees were to his chest.
From downstairs they heard cryptic lines of
Leonard Cohen seeping through the floor.

Come morning she sat by the window, fingers
pressed to the frost.  He knelt by the chair,
tried to whisper in her ear, lost his voice.

[Todd]

Cruz, 2016
 
After the convention,
the long night of red
and blue, the election,
we all lost
the right to stimulate
our genitals.
The Constitution,
Founding Fathers,
Supreme Court,
natural law,
and Clarence Thomas,
if he isn’t speaking
to Anita Hill--If
he even asks a question--
would all conclude
that we must have Prohibition,
build a wall to contain
the immigration
of our pleasures.
 
Speakeasy will become toucheasy.
Humbert is in the dark room,
biting cayenne fruit till
juice dribbles from his chin,
his cough a dry scrape, lost
to the lightning, Lolita, and raw
throated moonshine.

[Todd]

@Teagan: I like a lot of the little touches here (the wooden chair painted white, the sense of her being an addiction, her knees were to his chest, and the use of loss in the final line).

[REW]

First an Anchor

Properly kept place,
only rising so high,
sailing so far, or drifting away
as heavy iron will allow.

Strong hulled, but not enough to haul.
Ingenious, but again not enough
to cut, or melt free.

Every new storm more trying than the one before.  
Each wave a mountain with a fast fall.

As new barnacle crusts come,
I sink perceptively lower, another year gone.
My varnish is rough and sloughing off,
brittle to the touch.

Just another vulnerable vessel,
I am losing my buoyancy--
until lost completely.
One day the ship I was will vanish,
a muddy relic on the bottom, under pressure.

---

Well I started looking in here the other day.  I couldn't think of anything in regard to chickens other than playing chicken and of a chicken who survived considerable time without his head by injections of liquid nutrition via a syringe without its head (until it choked without its head).

I did write something for this prompt (if you don't mind).

Todd--I enjoy your satirical bent in Cruz, 2016.

[bedeep]

Glad you're joining in, Casey. Welcome.

[just mercedes]

I told them I hurt myself skating


The rink’s Tannoy speakers echoed
‘Rambling Rose’ over the hum
of rubber wheels on concrete

and the ssshh …ssshh …
of waves turning shingle
along the beach below

where we moved awkwardly.
It hurt. The shadows
left me stone-bruised.

I didn’t want to talk
afterwards, hid from him
in the Ladies.

Do I look different?
Am I a woman now?

My parents collected me
as arranged, full of news;
Kennedy’s death in Dallas.

Later I learned we lost C S Lewis
and Aldous Huxley too
that same night.

[Todd]

Where is the remote?
 
I hid it so the kids
wouldn’t find it,
open the case, eat
the batteries and die.

So a mob wouldn’t pitchfork
down my street, nail
a black cross to my door,
and force my rats to flee
from their crawl space
to infect the neighborhood.
 
So I’m not that parent
on the evening news,
on social sites I don’t care
to name with the Duracell death meme.
 
I looked in the familiar places,
near the cremated pets, under
the balls in the ball pit, and behind
the iron animal my mother
always called an armored dildo.
 
I will search, but I will not
walk to the television
and turn the channel by hand.

[Leanne]

The day Isaac Asimov died
I knew that my childhood had passed
the friends in the books I'd amassed
would nevermore speak. Horrified,

I went to the school I'd just left
the day Isaac Asimov died
straight into the staffroom; bereft
my teacher and I sat and cried

No, physics does not teach us pride
and death is a gap we must cross
the day Isaac Asimov died
the universe wept at the loss

Despair is a relative thing
as everything is, it's implied,
but time started unraveling
the day Isaac Asimov died.

[Todd]

@Leanne: Poignant, dynamite last two lines. The poem doesn't seem like it should punch you in the gut, but it does.

[Leanne]

Cheers Todd. I got a bit stuck in the form. I started out with a villanelle, scrapped it, went quatern, then ran out of lines I'll definitely need to do some serious editing but that's for another month.

[Achebe]

Leanne - love your pome because I can identity with it, though Asimov wasn't a personal favourite of mine. I felt the same way when Douglas A died.
Would've been nice to slip in something about foundations falling apart. Unles you detest obvious puns.

[Leanne]

I think I'll just call it Foundations. I was pretty devastated when Douglas Adams died as well, and Terry Pratchett. This is a true story though -- it was during my very first year at university, and I took the day off to visit my old physics teacher because I knew he'd understand. #nerdlife

[Tracy Mitchell]

Thanks Todd for the kind comments.  I sympathize with Where Is The Remote? Of course as a kid, I was the remote.

Cruz 16  is a  classic.  If I survive NaPo I will try to find the appropriate board here at PP to post my Trump 16, and my Bernie poem, Oh They're Throwing the Kitchen Sink at Me! 

Your twofer postings are impressive, especially as you said you are doing NaPo on another site as well.

[Todd]

Well in complete honesty Teagan. I had to give up on the other site, because 1) I couldn't do it, and 2) milo is a jealous God

[bedeep]

No Great Loss

I lost it in Baltimore.
The bartender came
and took my beer.
I started after him
but Ken and Dennis
each took an arm
and lifted me out of there.

That was just
a practice run.

I lost it for real
the night Jan told me
"hush you'll wake the neighbors."
"Fuck the neighbors, I'll wake the world"
I cursed and howled,
ran up the street howling,
sat under a billboard
in a vacant lot
on the waterfront
howling. I still feel
that howl propel me,
sing in my throat,
vibrate my ribs.

I howled myself down
while the clear night took
all my voice gave it
and the creosoted pole
holding up that huge sign
held me up too
like a good friend.

Yeah, I lost it
but I got my life back.

[Tracy Mitchell]

Todd -  the amazing quality of your poems here make the rest a nevermind. And I think that goes for Leanne, JM, Keith, bedeep and the other wonders of PP. Just saying.

[Leanne]

Milo is a jealous god
full of wrath and piss and ink
he would never spare the rod
you'll be told your poems stink

Abstract is the first to go
Milo is a jealous god
so he'll kill your soul and throw
love away. You'll think it odd,

cry a bit, then call a mod.
You'll be told to suck it up
Milo is a jealous god
deal with it, sweet buttercup

When your phrase is pure and tight
then he'll set your world alight
just ask Tom or Dale or Todd --
Milo is a jealous god