NaPM April 23 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 23: Write a poem inspired by something terrible happening

Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

Questions?

[just mercedes]

Something terrible


Here’s my mind, the painted mime,
in here the lazy pacing of my paws,
the white claws of those tiny hands
miscarried in anguish.

A child’s face presses against the glass
and all I am already moves in sympathy.
If one ghost escapes my brain
as if it sprang from my own body
his lips will be cold, I know.

Folded arms and sword-agony will never
make me accept this place where
Spring awakens no loveliness
and behind the sunrise, no world.

Maybe this is all - to kneel thus,
with laughter on my Eden’s lips
disintegrating. Veils green-fringed
with maidenhair tremble like dew
so serene in its passing.

[Tiger the Lion]

Apologies, Leanne. I can't tell a groove from a rut.

The Cat’s Got Cancer
 
The cat’s got cancer and the dog’s got balls
enough to face it. He smelled it first in fall,
while we were baking pumpkin pies—he moped
‘til Chinese New Year. And now he sees us grope
for furry feline hope to couch the fall.
 
You know I hate it when the banter’s stalled
with pauses, but how can we speak at all
when the worst-case-scenario is hope
and the cat’s got cancer?
 
It’s not been long since your kitten like falls
were softer; when I could catch you, and walls
were not brick, when words were not aimed to cope
with the weight of the day’s impossible slope;
those terrible Tuesday telephone calls
when the cat’s got cancer.

[billy]

Heavy Metal

The sloppy brown stuff hit the fan
and world war two was lost or won
depending on who's side your pennant flew.
We British, blanket bombed like hell
on Dresden, Bremen and Berlin.
Hamburg's dead reach over forty thou
The RAF reach more homes than Santa
on a chilly Christmas Eve.
The Yanks though late, had Little Boy
It's name belied it punch.
in August nineteen forty five
it sent some japs for brunch.
On August nine the Fat Man called
and sent the rest to sleep.
Their hype would would show they won the war
the truth was much less jolly.
Hiroshima did not fall, it was not won
there was no call to arms.
One hundred thousand plus wiped out
and children's children pay.
Nagasaki fared the best
only fifty thousand; maybe more
succumbed and laid to rest.

[bedeep]

Topic 23: Write a poem inspired by something terrible happening

Gee. That really narrows it down.

[Achebe]

Topic 23: Write a poem inspired by something terrible happening

Gee. That really narrows it down.

a comma between terrible and happening would make it interesting.

[Tracy Mitchell]

 
   Aftermath

Dark varnished maple floorboards
vanish flat in every direction
washing toward baseboards.

The south wall memorializes
blood spatter patterns-
white on white.

Dead space poised, dead air
like snipers holding their breath.

Everyone is issued a piccolo,
tries awkwardly to do their best,
talent or lessons or no.

The notes bounce up and down waiting.

I can’t find the right distance.
I can’t stop, will never
stop wandering these rooms,
watering dead plants.

The difference between a cross
and a crucifix is the presence
of a body.

[bedeep]

How She Went

Terrible
how the band of angels
stood around her bed
pumping oxygen into her lungs
while her wide eyes dried
and I didn't know.

I had to tell them
"Let her go."

Terrible that she died
before I could ask her
what she meant
by seizing my arm
and telling me
"Nobody hurts!"
three times
before letting me go.

I was going to ask
next time I saw her
but that next time
the angels had her already,
the ones on this side
standing ready
to send her on
into the terrible hands
of the others.

[Leanne]

Raiders, invaders, you ran your sheep
and cattle across our sacred land,
built sheds upon our bora grounds
and kept us from our past.

Wiradjuri we, born free
to die as you please. You
spread your disease, you rape
and you maim, you plunder
and poison and pass us the blame.

Windradyne raised his spears and his men
took war into your new white homes;
you couldn't find us, you who are blind,
you killed our women and children instead.
You made a sport of Wiradjuri murder,
baited our hungry, slaughtered our young,
buried it all in a mountain of lies.

Cudgegong cries
as Wiradjuri die
and Windradyne yields
so the ploughing of fields
may continue til all
the corpses have gone

and we are all corpses
in the end

[REW]

One Definition

Congratulations on your beautiful baby girl!

A three year old girl stands up and says,
“Daddies don’t hit mommies” and then spends
a lifetime watching.  There is more between the lines.

Mommy says to her little daughter when she sees her
drawing, “It is ugly.” There is more between the lines.

Daddy stacks behind the couch full of Penthouse Forum
and likes to hold his dick in his hand frequently, the door open.  
There is more between the lines.

When a teenager he pokes his objectified daughter
in the belly and says, “getting beefy.”  There is more.

That daughter starts burning negative calories daily
and buys ipecac syrup.
Her older brother says he wants nothing to do with his sister
if she gets to own a share of a house with him,
so he does and she doesn’t.  There is much more.

By the time she is a teen she has been raped a few times
and assaulted, but she does not even swat
at mosquitoes who bite her.

She grows an adult, has to rip every magnet off that attracts
perpetrators to her for a repeat victimization.  
There is more normal people don’t understand.
People sit like magistrates in white wigs rapping their gavels.  
She tires, so some magnets remain.  She learns to keep secrets.  
There is more.

Her strawberry heart once so red and juicy has burst
into a soggy thing , pecked, and black.

A terrible thing is when you hurt the one you should love the most,
short of killing them--in this case, a girl who was a daughter and a sister,
smart too, who wasn’t allowed to know it,
just that she was painted with red rings
and a thousand bulls-eyes.

A terrible thing is when that hurt person wishes she were dead,
until she kills herself—taking all her pain to the dark earth
and still nobody has learned.  There is no more.

Stomping on a violet flower, pulling petals, twisting it,
until the final crush, to the point where people think they see
a mutation or a strange weed,
until there is no more—that is a terrible thing.

---

How She Went

I was really drawn into this one.

[Leanne]

Casey, that's glorious poetry for a terrible subject. I really hope you return to this after NaPM, because it deserves polish and perfection.

[bedeep]

Thank you, Casey.

---

Casey, that's glorious poetry for a terrible subject.  I really hope you return to this after NaPM, because it deserves polish and perfection.

And I agree with this. The image of the magnets is very strong.

[Todd]

Damn Casey...

No words

[billy]

have to agree casey. powerful stuff. one of the best so far.

[Achebe]

baited our hungry, slaughtered our young,
buried it all in a mountain of lies...

....so the ploughing of fields 
may continue til all
the corpses have gone....

....and we are all corpses
in the end

respect

[QDeathstar]

A most terrible slip

I didn't fall
on a bowling ball
pin. I saw its sex,
perfect curves in bone
white, with a winking
shine. For a loss
of firm grip, in my
behind it did slip,
I reached in to pull it out,
terrible pain left no doubt,
I needed help
to tug my love
free.

Fuck it.

[Achebe]

I'm completely out of inspiration on these prompts...

The watering of plants

The watering of plants 
every summer evening 
is a catastrophic thing 
for the unbiting black ants 
colonising his terrace.

He scans the cracks to trace
their convoys from the larder
to optimise mass murder
in the confines of a space
smaller than a Chelmno shower

then channelling god's power
He trains the hoses on them
the red sea closes on them
in the sixtieth of an hour.
On protruding brick islands

survivors group in silence.
These he gladly thumps on
with hiking boots, and jumps on
ant Gandhis of non violence
who never believed in biting.

But such is fortune's writing - 
he'll fall victim to cancer
that unstoppable Panzer
force and squish similarly.
Which the blind watchmaker surly
may (mildly) find exciting.

[REW]

Leanne, bedeep, Todd, and Billy,

Thank you for your kind remarks.

[Todd]

Diamonds and Toads
 
I swallowed the secret,
and now only have darker words
that swim in my stomach
a school of darting tadpoles.
Terrible are the words we speak
when we must not speak.
So instead, I give you a story
of a child who sang diamonds,
and another who croaked toads.
The moral is the distraction
to draw you from the lie.
Even now, the truth burns
like sulfur on my fingertips.
The lie is the secret I cannot tell.
There are not two children but one.
You are long dead,
and my tongue still roils
beneath this sediment.

[Keith]

Guilty gifts

She wanted to feel small again,
still brave enough
to shout her name into the head wind,
to breath herself alive in the rising swell.

The pier was deserted as she stepped over
the danger sign that danced on its rusty chain.
Through the murk of stirred up sand
her red raincoat appeared disrespectful
to one so angry, one so hungry.

The wooden boards flexed like sleeping ribs
as a large wave spewed over a little café
soaking her favourite Sunday morning spot
to sip hot Mocha.
She would watch the red of the sun
behind closed eyes and inhale the sea-salt air,
the way her mother had always done.

Far off in the deep its mass was moving,
a vast sea cat timing its run for the neck,
each thudded step counted in the waves
as she ran towards the spray,
a surfer would have known what was coming.
The ocean smashed through the decking,
a sledge hammer on piano keys,
its mouth tight around her legs and chest
as it carried her deafeningly into muffled silence.

On a warm Sunday her usual spot was taken,
a man watching his son crab fishing on the rocks.
" I've got one" the boy shouted,
guiding his catch into a bucket.
He didn't notice the red shape shifting in the sand
surfacing only to fold across the rocks,
a small offering as the guilty tide
bowed with outstretched arms
and stepped away.