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 04: Write a poem inspired by a mirror, reflecting surface, or a reflection.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more
Rosalind, not Ros or Rosy, please.
No one can state prolonged exposure
to XRays triggered my early death. We
are Ashkenazi Jews; family records tell
deaths down through many generations
from ovarian cancer. It’s our DNA.
It doesn’t matter, except for the work
not completed. I’m not at all bitter I missed
the Nobel. They took my XRays, added
their research. It wasn’t theft, when
it built new knowledge.
The medal is a sexist piece of dreck metal.
‘Brotherhood of men.’ No admittance
to science, lady. They treated me like
a lab assistant.
Nisht gefloygen. Cela ne fait rien.
Adding to knowledge?
That matters.
Vonnegut knew what he was talking about. Portals to other dimensions were fairly common knowledge. How else do you get to Oz, Narnia? But Lewis Carroll's example definitely portrayed the most iconic representation, because it's live action. Mirrors can never be closed, there will always be a leak for us to see another side.
"Be right back, broke the seal, gotta go steal a mirror!'
I think the birch tree knew
as its leaves fell for the last time
when sap ceased to complete its trek
and rot overwhelmed the trunk
I think the birch tree knew
when it would surrender its place
topple to the edge of the pond
and prop at such an angle
from which a wind might find its way,
to see this white line cantilevered
to perfect angle with its own reflection,
a sight as breathtaking as God could make,
or as nature could do on its own.
You would like birch trees -
this is the world they always choose.
04-05-2017, 01:03 AM (This post was last modified: 04-05-2017, 01:07 AM by RiverNotch.)
Engineer's Son
entre la nuit, la nuit et l'aurore, entre le royaume des vivants et des morts*
i
daddy would be right to exorcise
this glass-and-metal demon
if he weren't satan.
he offered me birth,
he gave me light.
i thought he would be silence
but it turned out he was foreign,
it turned out he was a heretic.
i thought she would be silence
but it turned out she was native,
one of those folk spirits
he warned me against
when he pulled me out of the darkness,
when he dragged me out of the womb.
ii
it's the middle of the night
and i'm still online.
salsa plays -- arcade fire.
i hear the neighbors complaining
in my head. chat partner says
i should go to bed.
she's very lovely, with red
hair, green eyes, white skin stretched
over french cheekbones.
iii
they're jongleurs, i tell her,
entertaining a crowd, a public
that doesn't really exist.
of course she tells me
not to imitate my father,
not to confuse
her existence
with my own.
they're hypocrites, i tell her,
having so many celebrity friends,
if you could call them friends.
of course she tells me
not to subscribe to a trend,
not to confuse
her ideas
with my own.
they're foreigners, i tell her,
making so much money
out of their own laziness
while daddy has to work
just to keep the internet going,
selling scientific devices
like analytical balances
for a meager commission --
she doesn't reply. i realize
i've talked too much,
turned her off
by turning around. hindi ka pala diwata kundi'y isang multo
entre la nuit, la nuit et l'aurore, entre le royaume des vivants et des morts*
i
daddy would be right to exorcise
this glass-and-metal demon
if he weren't satan.
he offered me birth,
he gave me light.
i thought he would be silence
but it turned out he was foreign,
it turned out he was a heretic.
i thought she would be silence
but it turned out she was native,
one of those folk spirits
he warned me against
when he pulled me out of the darkness,
when he dragged me out of the womb.
ii
it's the middle of the night
and i'm still online.
salsa plays -- arcade fire.
i hear the neighbors complaining
in my head. chat partner says
i should go to bed.
she's very lovely, with red
hair, green eyes, white skin stretched
over french cheekbones.
facebook alerts: countless.
chat requests, comments to respond to.
not tonight, i say. tonight i dance.
iii
they're jongleurs, i tell her,
entertaining a crowd, a public
that doesn't really exist.
of course she tells me
not to imitate my father,
not to confuse
her existence
with my own.
they're hypocrites, i tell her,
having so many celebrity friends,
if you could call them friends.
of course she tells me
not to subscribe to a trend,
not to confuse
her ideas
with my own.
they're foreigners, i tell her,
making so much money
without really doing anything
while daddy has to work
just to keep the internet going,
selling scientific devices
like analytical balances
for a meager commission --
she doesn't reply. i realize
i've talked too much,
turned her off
by turning around.
hindi ka pala diwata
kundi'y isang multo.
iv
then what would that make me?
an outsider to the culture
i was born to,
a pretender to a culture
long, long dead --
thus a class of hero!
the half-mad celebrity demigod
destined to murder countless sons of men
One sunny early afternoon
a rapping, tapping, scuttling
as if from pebbles thrown
disturbed the kitchen, near its window.
Was it mice from under-counter
or perhaps a squirrel hanging
from the gutter or a twig?
It sounded big.
Nothing underneath the sink
but at the window something gray
fluttered, flew away
with a cry of “chickadee!”
So that settled what it was
though motive stayed unclear ~
until just yesterday it started
there again. Through slightly parted
blinds a small gray face appeared:
not a chickadee but titmouse
tapping passionately at
the window with its silver Mylar
mirror-insulating film,
night-black crystal eyes in pleading
football-player sable patches
then with two or three demented
pecks the bird flew off.
Only to return at evening
rapping on a different window
having learned thatother bird,
dreamed-of lover or
opponent to be thwarted
lived somewhere inside.
If I had to see in every
mirror that face, hot black eyes
in dead-black Joker patches I’d
fly into madness, too.
This one was already in the works, may be edited later from this rough 1.5th draft. But how do I get rid of the blamed bird? The tapping is making me crazy!
Evacuate cave,
sweeping high frequencies, screaming.
Night cipher; raw ears in search for warped reflection.
In my mirror I can see frail liars, snacks, sorry animals,
choice echoes.
necessary sustenance .
No flier would dispute the upside down relief,
closed wings, new again, the soak
of silent guns in snug tunnels.
A muted tomb.
He was her mirror,
a catalog of imperfections.
She his voice
as she’d forgotten how to speak
for herself. Each day, she would gaze
upon the captured sunlight
of his glory, and he
at his reflection in the water until
Look in the mirror?
Why?
I don’t need the reminder!
That’s why I had all the mirrors removed
from the bathrooms
and replaced them with known forgeries of Monet!
I like rinsing my hands in the sink
and pretending I’m on a lake,
What you should see in the morning:
reflections of lilies, rippling sheen,
that is you,
not the mug your pillow wrinkled in night drool.
Bright in my eye behold her eyes shining from over my shoulder she’s holding the sun her tears are not falling no finer her beauty behind the sun’s set but summer has come and like the moon rising her love is for me like the sky shining upon a dark sea.
The kitchen was always in winter
a pantry full in shadow,
odours bagged in the fields,
washed in damp soil and peeled paint.
Picked at carcasses lay in rest,
white bones draped in tea towels.
Thin air wafted sweetness
in the drizzle of cooling cakes
and the promise of fresh rye bread.
The worn down work tops
cut away to hands that rolled in pastry
and carried liquid jelly to set outside
in snow that drifted for the day.
A bottomless Belfast sink bubbled
above a makeshift step, positioned
to deploy child-labour onto chores.
The walls gleamed with fired green
tiles crafted flat, almost without seams.
Stood in the doorway between two poems,
a child looked along the mirrored finish,
cast a spell, one arm one leg, the words said
as his body lifted off the ground.
If your undies fer you've been smoking through em, don't peg em out
the corner of the water's angled edge
its intersection as its focus
spectral core of water within water within crystal form
a path
an ordered network
links a sky serrated
jagged
barbed
a nucleus
a rooted symmetry
a knife-edged ridge
we cannot walk
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions
I think the birch tree knew
as its leaves fell for the last time
when sap ceased to complete its trek
and rot overwhelmed the trunk
I think the birch tree knew
when it would surrender its place
topple to the edge of the pond
and prop at such an angle
from which a wind might find its way,
to see this white line cantilevered
to perfect angle with its own reflection,
a sight as breathtaking as God could make,
or as nature could do on its own.
You would like birch trees -
this is the world they always choose.
Now that I'm caught up, I'm finally getting to go back through these. This is lovely. Especially like the final two lines (great payoff to the poem).
![[Image: darkwater.jpg]](http://wordbiscuit.com/im15/darkwater.jpg)