NaPM 29 April 2022

[RiverNotch]

Penultimate prompt, yass

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: Write a poem in honor of an everyday household object. Lose points if you write about something too obvious, like a pen, in too obvious a way. Based on a suggestion by Semicircle.

Form: Ode, after Horace, in couplets or quatrains; meter and rhyme aren't strict

Line Requirement: At least 12

[Semicircle]

An ode to paperclip


Oh no! The documents,
the disarray!
Oh without you,
I'd have to get higher pay.

The paper mess
surrounding me,
oh, and the filing cabinets--
horrible misery.

This chemical violence
I alone cannot silence:
paperclip,
to silence its lip.

[Mark A Becker]

When In Need

Forks, and knives, and kitchen ware-
got plenty of those things to spare.

Pillows, blankets, even sheets-
without 'em I'd still fall asleep.

All of my yard implements
aren't required instruments-

they only help me cut the grass
but they don't get me off my ass.

In matters of true urgency,
when it's a real emergency,

there ain't no time to call a plumber-
gotta find that goddamn plunger.

[CRNDLSM]

Generic brown cardboard box,
in the corner by the clock,
you've held clothes, toys, trash, and rocks,
colored by markers, pencils,
patterns of fabric stencils,
and cut up by utensils,
your final forms a pillow
now for my cat Willow.

[dukealien]

Fork It (An Ode to the Dinner Fork)


We who from youth have learned its proper use
tend to discountenance the dinner fork
yet it withstands our each abuse
including that of eyepatch and of cork*.

The common fork does much but little well:
one edge can cut, but never like a knife;
and soup, as you can tell,
a fork can’t dip to save its life.

There’s salad, one supposes, if
the leaves be small enough to make
no mask for mouth, and olives in a jiff
transfixes fork and all is jake.

The fork makes sad attempts to mend its faults:
for cutting there’s the fabled runcible–
and, true, for spooning fast-food malts
the plastic spork is indispensable.

But fork’s the chief, ‘twill beat
a trident four to three, and earn confetti
from any fool who’s tried to eat
with spoon and knife a plateful of spaghetti!

---

*Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

[busker]

This is a poem about a pen,
but I don't want to make it obvious,
like a poem about a fen saying it's about a fen,
which line, once read, prompts the question - what then?

It's also supposed to adhere to some sort of structure,
an ode after Horace, not Clarabelle cow's
boyfriend in an old Disney picture,
but one of the boughs

of the tree of Western culture
where I sit, as a vulture
atop the new sepulchre
fresh with Christian's vows

of the slain Galilean,
the plain Galilean,
who died in pain

not committing his thoughts to paper,
leaving for us a caper -
did he die knowing he lived a lie,
like a pointless, burned out taper?

If only he had a pen,
what then?

[TranquillityBase]

How did Neanderthal gird himself for another day
after a night of restless dreams of the hunt
without coffee and a cigarette to stir their brain awake?
A stretch, casting off their furs, shoving aside their mate,
a stumbling walk down a rocky incline to douse their head
in an icy stream, a calm grunt, sometimes a mild roar,
scattering a few late scavengers around the cast off bones
that lay in piles at the base of their rocky shelter?
Did they stir the fire instead, throwing on a few sticks
to watch the life preserving flames flare up
while a female groomed their shaggy backs, picking out vermin,
and tell each other of their memories of the day before?
Or pick a fight with the weakest of the clan,
kicking and punching them without rancor
until they moved out of sight to the farthest corner of the cave?
Did they simply stare at the rising sun until their brain no longer resisted?
Day begins, we face it the best way we know how,
knowing our lives depend on wakefulness and desire.

[RiverNotch]

O humble bristled instrument
who takes your place in our hands
most comfortably, like a magic wand
banishing tartar and plaque,
if only your duties you could exercise
without attentive intervention!
If only we need open our mouths
far from a sink or lying down---
if only those nine minutes you demand
did not also engage our hands!
Then you should be like a prophet's staff,
saving not few but all from dental plagues.