NaPM April 30, 2018

[Todd]

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 30: Write a poem inspired by the day the world ended.
Form: any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

Questions?

[just mercedes]

Oh dear.

[just mercedes]

The day at the end of the world


I chose the new adjustable head,
paid online with my almost
maxed-out card,
drank one last glass of wine before bed -
Australian merlot, Wolf Blass,
cheaper here than there, go figure.

Woke up, grey morning, TV on
jagged lines, white noise.
Adjusted my head.

Same-same.

[Knot]

Questions?


None knew when the world ended,
though there were theories aplenty,
more than enough to bury all the dead
beneath the weight of empty speculation.

We knew it had happened, you see.
Had, was, will have, had been happening,
every conjugation found employment,
but explanations were stillborn.

This was a scab at which we could pick
for a generation at least, a wound
indifferent to healing or to the danger
of infection, amputation's assured.

The day the world ended's a mystery,
but it is certainly not the only one.


.

[vagabond]

The day at the end of the world


I chose the new adjustable head,
paid online with my almost
maxed-out card,
drank one last glass of wine before bed -
Australian merlot, Wolf Blass,
cheaper here than there, go figure.

Woke up, grey morning, TV on
jagged lines, white noise.
Adjusted my head.

Same-same.

these adjustments blur the lines between black-out and grey-out.
great. 

[Todd]

After December 21, 2012

We had run out of days
and no desk calendar remained
to tear off pages and predict the future.
The lost planet of the Sumerians did not crash
into the Mall of America as the Mayan’s predicted.
Judgment Day turned out to be an incompetent
process server, forever clutching a faded subpoena.
The prophets were silent. Harold Camping,
so focused on the end did not foresee his own. There were wars,
and vaccines, and Barack Obama, and Donald Trump,
but these did not cause the destruction. It came instead
as silent as breath on a flower. There wasn’t even
a buzz in the air; just petals spread open
a final color guard to lay upon our casket.

[Tiger the Lion]

Soft Landing

tossed in a cell
and told eternity
would be arriving soon

I couldn't call it cruel

but it is unusual
how the pin-up girls
on the padded walls
all wear your face

[dukealien]

Lasting


Sometimes I lie awake (if that’s the word)
and feel and listen to my body breathe
which is impossible, you know, one can’t
perceive one’s breath without controlling it.
(You doubt me? I have heard my rhythmic snores.)

And one gray morning I awoke to find
my breath had stopped, nor was there any pulse
at wrist or neck or even that small vein
beside my eye.  Enough of mind was left
to register surprise, though I did not
reflect that by most standards I had died.
(Oh, my alarm clock woke me— not before
I’d slept again.  No dream or nightmare, then.)

This world’s concluding day was much like that:
its years and seconds simply had run out
and stopped.  A few were conscious of their loss
and pondered on it, timeless, calm, and warm
abed or, if they’d died already, dead.
Then reservoirs of days refilled and rang
suns, planets, men and women up again
not all to life, but reasserting when.

How many times, and will there be a last
of all last days, an end to end all ends?
I greatly doubt that we shall live to see—
and slightly fear we won’t, but still will be.

[Richard]

Faithful

Will clopping be the last sound we hear?
The better of us vanishing
like mirages exposed by a closer view?
Death smiling as a good neighbor should,
corpses replacing every flower wrongfully plucked,
worms bloated, growing silence
a reminder of lost laughter?
Or maybe a grim faced meteor,
sent by the same force that puts angels in heaven?
The only certainty is that I will never let go of you.

[Keith]

The Jesus factor

Not one of the bombs worked,
even the most complexed
went off like a cheap firework.

In the end it wasn't the owls
that were wise,
it was the whales.
So many on the beaches
thousands more just off the coast,
they tried to warn us.

In the town, a bell tower
haunts the magnolia strewn streets
waiting for the stunt doubles to fall.
Camouflaged behind curtains
families watch the strangers ride in
on their black horses.

Later a mother will swap
her eldest son,
for a tin of corned beef.

[Todd]

The Jesus factor

Not one of the bombs worked,
even the most complexed
went off like a cheap firework.

In the end it wasn't the owls,
it was the whales.
So many on the beaches
thousands more just off the coast,
they tried to warn us.

In the town a bell tower
haunts the magnolia streets
waiting for the stunt doubles to fall.
Camouflaged behind curtains
family's watch the stranger ride in
on a black horse.

Later a mother will swap
her eldest son,
for a tin of corned beef.

Keith, In the town a bell tower/haunts the magnolia streets. Lovely. Great title, great opening line. Like the apocalyptic four horseman type ending. Honest question (because I'm not familiar with all regional word choices) I've never heard complexed used as an adjective--I would use complex. Is that a regional thing? Not really critiquing just curious. Love this one, especially.

[Keith]

The Jesus factor

Not one of the bombs worked,
even the most complexed
went off like a cheap firework.

In the end it wasn't the owls,
it was the whales.
So many on the beaches
thousands more just off the coast,
they tried to warn us.

In the town a bell tower
haunts the magnolia streets
waiting for the stunt doubles to fall.
Camouflaged behind curtains
family's watch the stranger ride in
on a black horse.

Later a mother will swap
her eldest son,
for a tin of corned beef.

Keith, In the town a bell tower/haunts the magnolia streets. Lovely. Great title, great opening line. Like the apocalyptic four horseman type ending. Honest question (because I'm not familiar with all regional word choices) I've never heard complexed used as an adjective--I would use complex. Is that a regional thing? Not really critiquing just curious. Love this one, especially.

Thank you Todd, much appreciated. I always thought complexed was the past tense of complex and when speaking I would always use complexed, but that doesnt make me right. I think your use is the correct version it just feels unatural for me to use it when I mean complicated, I also thought i was using it as a verb To me a complex is block of houses or a collection of things, like I said that doesn't make me correct. its a complexed issue alright

[RiverNotch]

The Beginning of History


Who can predict how the wind will blow?
Who can predict the coming of our lord?

The world is quiet tonight.
Even the electric fan's constant whir
bleeds into the warm lights,
the curtains' motion to that gentle wind
at one with the surrounding wall.
My body lies on the bed, waiting for dinner,
perhaps, for a knock on the door.
Above the black clock
and the white ceiling
and the red roof
and the thin mist
and the clouds freshly burst
and the vacuum of space
and the moon
and the planets
and the fixed stars,
angels hold their breath.
My beard smells of chestnut flowers.

A termite flies into one of the lights.
Its wings tear off. Its body
plummets into the floor.

I feel my chest
rise and fall.

You blow the horn.