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With regards yesterday's prompt, it's ironic how cheerful the very first 14 April prompt was (by milo):
Quote: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 14: Write a poem inspired by a favorite holiday.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more.
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4th of July
I was afraid that I would wake up
and life would want me gone,
but overcoming darkness,
I embraced another dawn.
I piss, then brush my teeth,
then sing a shower song...
We'll grill some dogs and burgers,
throw horseshoes, play ping-pong,
later shoot off fireworks,
and blast off all night long.
Posts: 751
Threads: 408
Joined: May 2014
Good Friday
My Sister used to poke and prod
my Mom and Dad
with statements like...
"Hey, say what you want
about the guy
but if nothing else
He got us a day off work
every year and that's not nothing."
She was never one
to observe any traditional custom,
but for this one day
she let every drop and crumb
possess her.
After the dinner and dishes
she'd go to her room and sob,
but it always passed.
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President’s Day, Traditional
The holiday once celebrated
on February twenty-second
is now extinct, subsumed
by envious charlatans
(aided by our greed
for three-day weekends)
trying to turn their dross
into gold by ennobling it with
George Washington as if
he were a Philosopher’s Stone,
not merely the Hero who steered
a straight course avoiding
both Cromwell and Napoleon.
No king of his time,
it was agreed,
was fit to be his valet–
nor most presidents
of ours.
Non-practicing atheist
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I never much cared for holidays,
a dysfunctional family made sure of that
and even after marriage and kids
we had to make the pilgrimage
and sit through the stomach churning dinners
waiting for the explosion, sobs, and anger.
But there was one special Christmas,
after I’d left home and lived in a cheap rent house,
with a week off work and my housemate absent.
I spent it eating homemade split pea soup
sitting in a rocking chair next to a space heater
reading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom
transported away from those holiday blues.
Keep your Christ in Christmas,
but let me have my Faulkner if you please,
and don’t leave the ham hocks out of the soup.
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Hey hey happy birthday
It is a special day
Today is your day
Whatever you want to do
I don't care what you say
You should have it your way
You can stay, you can play
Cause todays all about you
Hey hey happy birthday
Peanut butter honey banana sandwiches
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Joined: Nov 2013
The evening of Good Friday, a storm was raging,
and every prayer we read or hymn we sung
had to be shouted. Most of us were late,
even the priest, although he lived in the church
(apparently it was also his birthday)
and driving through a flooded bit of street
I dinked the bottom of my car. A clap of thunder
shook the matushka at one point
and by the time all the lights were off
we were skipping pages, slurring words.
Good Saturday, and the first thing that I asked
our aged priest was if he felt alright
after the last night -- he'd felt he had to walk
outside with me, in the pouring rain,
to help me with my car. There were too few of us,
that following night, for a shroud: all we did
after the lamentations was to kiss
the sleeping Christ, the Gospel, and the Cross.
At one point I had a dream. A girl I'd started to fancy
by virtue of a single class we shared
and the fact that we always parked next to each other
a block away from our college was there,
giving me and my fellow visitors
a tour of the family mansion. The library and the solar
were the highlights, I enjoyed
caressing the outdated encyclopedias,
the old toys, the LDs and CDs -- childhood
tokens they could afford to keep.
The morning and the afternoon,
the heat was harsh, I could not help
but overdrink. The first thing the matushka said
as I, an hour early, arrived to help
at the kitchen: "Oh, your back!
That sweat!" And apparently
our priest, he had to improvise
the tone for one of the hymns,
but even the stern-faced angel having to bear
instruments of war in the House of God
gave up a certain satisfied
twinkle in his eye.
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May Two-Four
It is eleven am and I am eating omelette
on a dock above the lake,
sipping on a spicy ceasar
listening to the birds sing
La Vie En Rose.
It is two pm and I am jumping
in the water cannonball,
splashing Rachel into cursing
as she jumps in behind me
and sends a monsoon my way with her arm
when I surface.
It is six pm and Italian sausages are on the grill,
a beer is in my hand,
and Rick is telling his joke
about a drunken carpenter.
It is eleven pm and we surround the fire,
passing around an acoustic
to American Pie and Sweet Caroline
in between the rounds of fireworks
dancing with the stars.
