2023 NaPM 22 April

[RiverNotch]

The 22 April prompts for 2015 and 2016 are both rather melancholy, in a way that somehow feels appropriate for the occasion. This is the 2015 version:

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 22: Write a poem inspired by something you lost.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

[TranquillityBase]

Each day you are absent
adds new memories of loss
reinventing the seasons,
carrying me towards the unknowable.
I never worried about where you came from
until you vanished.  Now I seek out
your sudden disappearance
taking it as far as grief will allow.
But grief has no map to follow
that will trap your existence
in anything this world has to offer.

[Mark A Becker]

Last Rites

A cluster of vultures
wait to take turns,
upon our cat’s carcass
at the side of the road.

They shift and they flap,
rip at unfeeling flesh,
leap away to make room
for each worshipping guest.

A black mass in honor
of death and their hunger,
a type of last rites
until their next supper.

[brynmawr1]

I've spent time worrying
if I had it and now
that I lost it, I know it.

When did you last have it,
she asks.  Right here
yesterday or maybe the day before,
I say, not sure of it.

Retrace your steps,
think through it and don't
guy-look, she advises.

I did and I didn't (I think?),
no sign of it. I asked Larry,
he insists he never had it.

Have faith, she says, it will turn up.
I wonder.

[CRNDLSM]

I quit my job
I tried other things
People were looking for me
I've registered my own business
I have 5 clients who will visit once
every two months.  I've spent $2000.
This is what they call
Flying by the seat of their pants.

[brynmawr1]

I quit my job
I tried other things
People were looking for me
I've registered my own business
I have 5 clients who will visit once
every two months.  I've spent $2000.
This is what they call
Flying by the seat of their pants.

Did you open your own grooming business?  If so, congrats.  It's a gusty move.  Have faith, early days are tough.  You have an edge because you really care about the pets.
Good luck,
steve

[CRNDLSM]

I quit my job
I tried other things
People were looking for me
I've registered my own business
I have 5 clients who will visit once
every two months.  I've spent $2000.
This is what they call
Flying by the seat of their pants.

Did you open your own grooming business?  If so, congrats.  It's a gusty move.  Have faith, early days are tough.  You have an edge because you really care about the pets.
Good luck,
steve

Yes, I appreciate that, it's like waiting for a parachute to open

[Tiger the Lion]

I quit my job
I tried other things
People were looking for me
I've registered my own business
I have 5 clients who will visit once
every two months.  I've spent $2000.
This is what they call
Flying by the seat of their pants.

Did you open your own grooming business?  If so, congrats.  It's a gusty move.  Have faith, early days are tough.  You have an edge because you really care about the pets.
Good luck,
steve

Yes, I appreciate that, it's like waiting for a parachute to open

I agree with Steve.

[dukealien]

Losing It


It’s a process
losing it:
start with a big
newborn block of perfect marble
that gets chipped away
until what it will be
stands beautiful
or ugly amid rubble.

Never quite complete:
no one ever loses
all his innocence;
even the worst consist
of yet-uncompromised
self-confidence.

[RiverNotch]

When I was a kid I had wings.
I listened to the Beatles with fresh ears.
I walked in my dreams; I did not sit
like a director, telling an image of myself
how to act, nor did I select
which scenes to keep and which to cut
like an editor. I wrote
stories, not poems.

I could look at a woman, be approached by her,
listen to her talk and talk to her in turn,
and think to myself, "She's the one".
I could sit beside a man, be quiet with him,
glance quickly at his hair, at the back of his neck,
at the looseness of his shoulders, and think to myself

the same thing. I saw a face coalesce
from the multicolored dots
left bouncing in my eyes
by whatever light with which
I imaged all the rest
of the erring world, and it was handsome.

All life afterwards has been
not a recollection but
an unpeeling.

---

Chopped out most of last stanza.

I could name the things I smelled.
Geckos and cicadas
spoke in tongues I knew,
and my limbs were generous
to mosquitoes. I never bruised,
I painted. All life afterwards has been
not a recollection but
an unpeeling.

[Wjames]

Asleep on the steaming metal grate
that ventilates the sewer
and shoots the only warmth
in downtown Toronto February
on Tuesday at 8:45 am as pedestrians
graze my blanket with their feet
in a rush to work,
I wake up and remember
what is lost.

[busker]

I have lost many things…

once, my sanity,
my patience with a manatee
who was shaping up to spring
his body weight on Hannity;
confidence, certainty,
in the mists of youth, virginity
in the cavernous depths of a wide and mighty bod.
but one thing I’ve not lost
is faith in a whitey god.