NaPM, April 23, 2020

[Quixilated]

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: Monsters.
Form : any
Line requirements: any 


Questions?

Now that I’ve had some coffee and time to revisit, I feel I should apologize that the topic isn’t more specific or creative.   This morning I awoke, after a rather long and complicated dream about zombies, only realize that I had forgotten to post a topic last night. (I have been trying to post topics on, what is to me, the night before for the sake of our members whose time zones cause them the live in the future). Anyway, people were waiting for their toast and I was in a hurry and, as it was pre-coffee, I couldn’t focus and the only word I could think of was zombies.     

[Todd]

Ruh-roh

You see what they want you to see.
My first abandoned carnival
showed me the country beneath
your suburbia. We’ve been in this van
since the Johnson administration,
and driven through the cracks
of society to uncover mystery.
The police want you to think
a gang of plucky kids
pulled the rubber mask
off a rich industrialist. Go back 
to your soap operas.
There are no ghosts. 
The authorities don’t like you
looking too close and doing their job. It’s true
we talk to our dog. Jeepers!
Everyone talks to their dog.
We’re not David Berkowitz—
even if the dog speaks back.

[Keith]

What's that coming over the hill?

They are not the pus ridden blister
or lopsided belief, the hunched or the
hairy with talons and teeth.

They wont eat your flesh or pierce
a vein, nor ride at you headless
whilst wailing your name.

No, they stand on your doors step
with false Id, talk about savings
that go when they leave.

Some follow the frail, the aged
and lonely, snatching at hand bags
unseen and urbanely.

Others are the why, we don't talk
to strangers, drive a slow car
pulled in from the pavement.

They dig shallow graves to bury
their regret, then pretend nothing happened,
that you'll never forget.

So if you meet one, find out where
it sleeps, buy yourself a shotgun
or call the police.

[dukealien]

When It Wakes


Cat-eyed owls flock
over owl-eyed cats
a sharp-eared lynx surveys
with torpor, menace
fright from by our sleeping
etcher’s twisted ankles
with this lesson: Sleep
of reason brings forth
monsters.

Is that so, Francisco–
apostolic faith
antithetical to Reason
such a monster-spawner?
Etching down your own
faith in what men call Reason
you’d have heard of tumbrils,
Committees of Public Safety,
a Terror no stark staring lynx
or slicing owl could contemplate.

Yes, Reason’s sleep
may first breed little monsters but
as Reason wakes they stretch
within it, grow to mountain height
eclipsing hope and love
in monstrous cruel
Reason’s overarching blight.

(Inspired by Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos, Plate 43, 1799)