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.
I was going through your books, the ones I didn’t keep, to trade them into a strange world that never knew you. I came to Rayuela; it looked as if it had been left out in the rain, or fallen into a toilet, swollen, warped, stained, I started to toss it into a garbage can but instead thumbed through it to find dozens of dime-sized pressed flowers hiding every 50 pages or so.
They are all the same flower, now almost transparent white more like bizarre squashed insects but I recognize them from the photos, the pictures composed of dried flowers that you made in Spain: a seahorse, a goldfish, two lovers, a death mask for Day of the Dead.
Now this book is a relic of your passage, the touch of your fingers preserved one hundred times over: I’m thinking I will enclose Rayuela inside a cedar box sealed with copper nails, to add to my reliquary of your touch: pens found when we cleaned out your car, and the sun-faded Topo Chico bottle found in your garden.
Our last photograph of you shows those beautiful hands sewing buttons on a red hoodie.
What will you make, now that your fingers fill a universe?
I was going through your books, the ones I didn’t keep, to trade them into a strange world that never knew you. I came to Rayuela; it looked as if it had been left out in the rain, or fallen into a toilet, swollen, warped, stained, I started to toss it into a garbage can but instead thumbed through it to find hundreds of pressed flowers hiding every 50 pages or so. They are all the same flower, now almost transparent white more like bizarre squashed insects but I recognized them from the photos, the pictures composed of dried flowers that you made in Spain: a seahorse, a goldfish, two lovers.
Now this book is a relic of your passage, the touch of your fingers preserved one hundred times over:
I’m thinking a cedar box, sealed with copper nails, added to my reliquary of pens found when we cleaned out your car, and the sun-faded Topo Chico bottle found in your garden. Then I will build a shrine out of limestone and cedar in the oak grove that we cleared together. Finally I will have a place to pray and a spirit worth praying to.
Do you remember the floods,
They say there were seven rescues sent
Yet your still standing, and the ones
Needing rescue hadn't planned or prepared.
They left you yet here you still are
All around us the woods
Sing all year round while neighbors went
And poured their millions into mansions
That couldn't stand up to your heights, scared
To let you just be who you are
The many years and many moods
You've homed have left their mark and spent
Their last months before the city runs
Their machines to expand the creek and spare
Your neighbors the eyesore you are
Dear furry thing named 'Scruffy' for thine form,
the fur uneven, rough and smooth in turn,
yet always pleasant to the touch, quite warm,
and thine expression playful, never stern;
thine eyes are orange felt and almost round,
the nose is absent, but there is a square
of darker fur beneath the orange eyes;
and mouth, ah, what a smile one day I found
in one wide neck crease, such a happy bear
thou seems to be, enjoying endless highs.
Thou art to Teddy Bear in thine strange shape
as I am to the Human Being in mine;
let us not moan on this, but seek some jape
involving friendship, music, chocolate, wine;
our truth might not be beauty, bugger that;
we say, it matters not if ye be odd --
accept thyself, make merry every day,
put on pyjamas and thine favourite hat
be glad to be described as Silly Sod
and Weirdo, Freakshow, as some like to say.
You hung their field over the front door,
Austrian air captured in your vestibule,
the vast echo of a mountains voice
languishes, lush green beneath the Alps.
Grandad would leave as early as the milk floats
and I would see them ambling down, udders full
for the wooden stool, then drift back off to sleep
and dream the warm bucket onto the doorstep.
What tales you must have, secrets hand crafted
into curves. The village procession on fresh melt snow,
leading to the rich high pastures, this is where
we will go, beyond the suburban street lights.
Following your young herd, high on majestic peaks
I wait to catch your hollow sound as Grandad
gets in from work and shares his stories
about the cows he had to wrestle for the bells.
If your undies fer you've been smoking through em, don't peg em out
