NaPM April 22 2016

[Achebe]

Mercedes' poem is predictably wonderful
I don't know what happened to the font just now
I'll have to catch up on NaPM

[Tiger the Lion]

My Purple and Green
 
The time we moved from Cavendish
to Mansfield I lost all my vinyl.
Some Beatles survived, but only because Dad
insisted they were his.
 
There were early copies
of Hendrix, Neil Young, The Doors and Cream
that a sorta music mentor at work
had given me. All before
my time, but it was the eighties
and we wanted more
guitar.
 
When Prince went crazy
I found my purple banana
in a rare foldout copy
of 1999. I bought
the tapes the same day
so I could keep the vinyl mint.
 
I blame it on the move
but know it was my dad;
he’d joined a cult part-time
and everything was satanic
when it suited him. (though I admit
I’d taken acid by then, so his black and white
was my purple and green.)
 
I’d left the channel on until
he witnessed
Prince on MTV whacking off
his wailing purple guitar
and two days later the records were gone.
 
When he was really sick
toward the end
he thought the mower was possessed.
I let the grass grow till the dog turned green.

[billy]

Playing Catch-Up is a Bastard:

They stipulated thirty poems
in thirty days and gave me many ways
and forms to use. Daily topics
to abuse; nothing too serious you mind.
the genre could be any kind; I joked
and pissed about with mine.

I'd kept up really well and hit the tenth;
all swell, and puffed with poets pried.
I missed the twelfth night like Viola
and so employed a poem about some African
disease they spread on CNN.

Nights twenty one through twenty three
I missed; no I wasn't roaring pissed,
just busy getting on with other shit.
To hit the writers wall would be a great excuse.
Milo wouldn't let it wash; he'd call me out,
point his picky little stick for all
to see me blush and in admission tell
how I had lost my way and now played catch up

once again.

[RiverNotch]

Tiger: I don't find the title as pressing to the poem as it should be (reread might fix that), but otherwise, I love it, especially the double feeling of loss in the poem, and -- damn! -- I find losing records (though all of mine were given me by internet friends, *aherm* *aherm*) probably one of the worst sorts of loss, at least in an immediate sense.

---

LE IUGEMENT: MAYA

This is what the masked figure took from me
as I passed through her domain, escaping
the hot swords and heavy hooves of the Prince's men:

first, she took my cloak, silver silken cloth
adorned with scenes of the humble farmer's life,
from birth to death, from youth to fatherhood,
the contentment of an age in passing;

second, she took my staff, sturdy stick of cedar
rounded at the bottom, pointed at the top,
the power of my intelligence, the spring within my step,
the honor behind my love, the confidence of my sex;

last, she took my ring, a golden cord 
with the ends stuck together like the great serpent
encircling the ocean, its heart a drop of blood
encased in a jewel engraved with my name.

But alas! that she did not remove her mask,
did not reveal the living flesh beneath her cloak --
that the jealous God would deny me the pleasures of love.


LE IUGEMENT: KALI YUGA

Apparently, the teacher who introduced me
to the pleasures of Caravaggio
and the crises of El Greco
died today --

just fell a few steps
and hit her head, four years
after she last gave birth, three years
after she handled us, two years

after I'd set off for college -- about a year ago.
Usually, this sort of news
just pops up on the internet,
but this time I had the luxury

of being called. I had to make an effort
to sound like I was on the brink of crying,
as it was in the middle of class -- Analytical
Chemistry, I think, the one I failed that year.

I think that was also the year I started writing.

---

L'Etoile, La Lune, Le Soleil, Le Iugement -- I think that's all the cards I'll directly tackle. I hope this little experiment worked!

[ellajam]

Tidal Pools

She loses nothing that she ever held.
Each newfound gift examined and explored,
absorbed, mutating what she was before;
remaining even as new whitecaps swelled.

Her salt-sprayed heart remembers everything
she cherished and saw clear in morning light,
caressed within the tunnel of her night.
She danced to every song the conch could sing.

But arms spread wide can only hold so much
before all's washed away, out of her clutch.

Her shifting dunes are strewn with empty shells,
the life they carried thoroughly digested.
What's now diluted changes with perspective,
still whispers softly, each within her dwells.