NaPM April 27 2016

[REW]

Casey I love Tilling Time?   The colors. the juice, the trepidation and uncertainty.  You have layered so much into this poem.

Thanks     That is mighty swell of you to say,

---

winter forgotten
until brown fall

That's a nice ending Casey. I think what we're all feeling is the pressure of an on the surface uninspiring topic. I'm glad we did it though.

Thank you Todd.  Earlier I tried to say (but the site froze or something) that I really like how you portrayed the symbolic elements in your speed dating poem.  I really liked your opaqueness of people in particular.

---

I Learn To Love Hurricanes

We'd gone late
to the family fish camp on the coast
in September, just for a weekend,
when a big storm blew up.
I was maybe 7.
I remember sitting
all five of us huddled --
me and the younger kids,
Mom and Dad --
in the dark downstairs with one lantern lit.
The wind took charge, banging, yowling,
the windows shook, and outside them
the rain rained sideways, I could see it.
We held close together
like we would in a cave,
taking that comfort
in the illusion of safety.

Later Mom recalled that trip:
Oh, we were very frightened!
but I remember my dad's excited grin, his eyes
gleeful as a kid's.
He never met a storm
he didn't like, the wilder the better.
Whatever it brought,
he just loved the weather.

When I went home years later
to meet his dying,
a hurricane came along that next week.
He lay in bed with the windows boarded
for four days, finally asking "Why is it so dark?"
when it was all over. We got someone to take
the boards down to let in the day.
The next week
he went on, never once
afraid.

My dad taught me
how to love hurricanes
and then he taught me
how to die.

Aw Bedeep, see this ain't bad.  I like the parallel of Dad liking hurricanes and facing dying.

[bedeep]

Thanks, Case.

[Todd]

Thank you Casey

[Leanne]

Wind

No matter your station, by birth or by wealth,
no matter your weight or your gender,
you cannot avoid it by bribe, lie or stealth,
the role of the farting offender.

It levels all men by the virtue of stink
and women, though they might deny it;
some folk pass them out with no hint of a blink
while others, disgusted, decry it

But whether your wind is just squeezed through the cheek
or loudly ripped into existence,
everyone’s humbled, the pompous made meek
by futile attempts at resistance.

So celebrate farting, democracy’s friend,
the bodily function with flavour;
I know you all do it, you cannot pretend,
so take a deep breath, sniff and savour.

[Todd]

@Leanne: 

[billy]

100 Degrees Fahrenheit:

All the insects in the world feasted
on my skin; their bite marks testimony
to my delicious deliciousness.
Fire ants flashed me with a brand of acidic heat
I had not known; my blood screamed "hello".
Mosquitoes peppered my pores;
suckling without permission.
Welted scratch-marks gave them away.
The itching left skin beneath my fingernails.
Summer had come to call.

[RiverNotch]

LAST MEDITATIONS

last night, i dreamed a poem --
in fact, i've dreamed up many pieces before,
and though the quality was as tied to fortune
as anything written in consciousness,
at least the act of remembering
isn't as much of a struggle.
in dreams, any pains you have
you can choose to forget, to settle out
the sand for the sake of the gold --

but of course, forgetting only buries them
deep down, and not like corpses
but like seeds, waiting
for the right time
to return, blossoming.

the poem i forget, unlike the pains,
unlike those memories now turned, as with all remembered dreams,
into abstractions, into symbols
floating in mid-air, ready to be manipulated
with a flick of the wrist, to be interpreted:

i remember fear, first and foremost,
the fear of a man with a gun to his face,
and then exhaustion, as if
i had just climbed a mountain
yet the descent still loomed before me,
and finally the mild aches
of my brains blown out,
or, more profoundly, of my male sex
giving birth to a female child.

last night, before i slept,
i thought this season's el nino
had ended, as the rain
kept on pouring until midnight.
a sign from God, perhaps? thank God it wasn't.
that leaves me time
to help water the garden.