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Threads: 408
Joined: May 2014
Let's Pretend it's April - Nov. 3
Rules: Write a poem for LPiA on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a New Reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month, have written 30 poems for the month of November. (or one, or six, or fifteen) Prompts may be revisited at any time. All members are welcome.
Topic : Write a poem inspired by a favorite place to read.
Form : Any
Line requirements: Eight or more.
Feel free to reply with comments or kudos as you wish.
Questions?
Posts: 489
Threads: 182
Joined: Jan 2013
The path from our cabin
goes down shore through birch,
bird, and bug, to a thin beach
where tadpoles peck toes.
A bank of limestone and quartz
cradles the cove, smoothed by water
and soft on the feet.
There is a small wooden sauna
where rock converges with earth,
and the coals from last nights steam
still smoke in the stove.
A hammock sways over sand
in treeline shade.
Posts: 1,139
Threads: 466
Joined: Nov 2013
Out in public's the only place to read,
with lots of shame but no humiliation.
Under a blazing sun, produce your shade
to shelter your proscribed cohabitation.
Fear you no deluge coming to erase
what covenants you draw up on the street:
heaven instead devises light from chalk,
silvered glass from bituminous concrete.
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Threads: 176
Joined: Jan 2021
Every book chooses its own favorite place,
For Lord of the Rings, it was a rainy autumn,
Steppenwolf, an incense filled teenager’s bedroom,
Conan the Conqueror, the rocky ledges of a lake,
The Magic Mountain, my father-in-law’s library,
The Cantos, the mountains of southern Colorado,
Naked Lunch, the porch of a cabin in the Sangre de Christos,
Son of the Morning Star, the imagined hills above the Little Big Horn
stripped and mutilated bodies scattered white in the sun,
the Sioux, a cloud of dust, moving west and into history.
Sometimes the book makes its own place.
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Threads: 225
Joined: Aug 2016
uncountable bugs
above, below; land, sea, air
old pond persistence
Holding pens nearby
unkempt, forgotten, open
Surrendered to moss
Closer, busier
Farther, smaller, quieter
Here, and everywhere
Peanut butter honey banana sandwiches
Posts: 444
Threads: 285
Joined: Nov 2011
There's a newer version with a photograph here.
< The Epistles of Stanhope St. >
a warehouse in Brooklin
a crowded dirty place
a catacomb of unkempt jewels
riches for a dollar
be careful
it's so easy to get out of hand
and on the second floor
the shelves loom over me
a rat
seeking comfort in their narrow aisles
the books of dead parents
thrown into boxes
by sons and daughters
old lives that wouldn't fit
old lives are welcome here
the quiet of the vault
the smell of the books
yearning to be opened
yearning to reveal themselves
my prizes are the annotated ones
notes scribbled in their margins
letters from the past
addressed to me
their titles?
how little this matters
- - -
More about this bookstore:
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions
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Honeymooners
Our first house
was a rickety old thing--
backed onto a graveyard
and creaked both day and night.
The upstairs bathroom, mostly made of rust,
boasted a chipped and weathered Clawfoot tub
with only a trickle of orange sludge for hot water.
I'd attach a garden hose to the laundry sink
and run all thirty feet of it up the stairs to the tub,
fill it to full and slip in with a Bukowski novel
I knew I could digest in two hours or less.
Charlie used to fart in the tub
and blame it on me.
The wife took showers
downstairs.
Posts: 1,185
Threads: 250
Joined: Nov 2015
Peak Seating
My special place to read
is a chair by La-Z-Boy™
in the den by the fire
facing white French doors.
Beyond them is my yard
bird-feeders, bird-bath,
picket fence and windmill toy
with a sunset view.
It’s better than the porch
with its heat and cold and rain
and the neighbors walking dogs
to be greeted and acknowledged;
even better than my bed
soporific though it is
that leaves my eyes mismatched
from the right eye pillow-patched
and the left focused at
ten inches for print
and pin-holed for the light
‘til I fall asleep, drooling.
 Non-practicing atheist
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Joined: May 2022
It began surreptitiously
under a cavern of covers
lit within spelunking deep
and beyond a widening dawn
then daringly I read with
the dark living under my bed
now I settle with a cat curled
in the lap of an oversized chair
or, in the sun, blanket and book,
dog nuzzling my elbow's nook to play
Once, though, I read in a secret place
held in the shadow of a lover’s embrace
Tonight I read until the pages
cover my eyes; drifting
on a tempest sea I dream
and dream, and dream.
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