LPiA-23 Nov. 7

[Tiger the Lion]

Let's Pretend it's April - Nov. 7

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 literal or metaphorical WALL.
Form : Any
Line requirements: Eight or more.

Feel free to reply with comments or kudos as you wish. 

Questions?

[TranquillityBase]

Dead Philip built a wall
around his ramshackle house on Avenue C.
He got the stone from the rubble
leftover from the digging of graves
in Austin Memorial Cemetery.
It was burnt orange and white limestone.
Daily he drove his battered silver pickup
to the piles of dirt and rock and filled the truck bed.

It was simply a piled fence
surrounding the house and its yard of pecan trees,
easy to step over
but it was a mystical boundary to him.

In the end, when he quit the post office,
he sold the house.
It was in Hyde Park
a neighborhood being gentrified
transformed from student ghetto
into a place only the rich could afford.
The house was torn down,
but they kept the rock.
and turned it into a carefully squared 
and mortared wall.
They killed the magic in the process.

Philip had to make do with an apartment
and without his walls
the demons overran his psyche.
Four years later, he was gone.

[RiverNotch]

you know, we had saints
who rode down many jews

only now does everyone
come to speak, they feel they've been

only now, when the jig
makes way for the morris

in truth, such fences
only rise when the walls

in the same coaches
to the same smokestacks

by anyone other than
the self-appointed watch

of the houses of the lots
they divide have been replaced

entirely with glass,
it's unseemly to be seen

straining for a shit
or undressing for the night

and the swords, they are sharp,
and the dancers, they are klutzes

coerced by all these news reports
they always should have seen

just as we had saints
who rode with the jews

[CRNDLSM]

When a lost lover waits
a long life willingly, all
light leaves while aching, looking
like, well, alive, looking, lost.
Worse, a lot, leaking wasted
and limp, learning walls add
layers, lifting wishes adrift labels.
Love wins at long last

[dukealien]

Idea Stones (Romulus)


One grows to love a wall although
it be a foppish picket fence
or foolish misplaced Maginot
between my here and others’ thence.

For though I see in mindful eye
lines crossing fields, bisecting trees
dry-fitted stones three cubits high
ensure that what I see, he sees.

So ravished by one’s boundaries
does one become, I’ll fondly slay
a wolf-twin whose contumelies
despise my wall, even in play.

One doesn’t care what you believe–
don’t cross my wall without my leave.

[Tiger the Lion]

The Creeps

with your bricks 
and my mortar 
we could build a bomb 
and bullet proof border

to keep the creeps away
and all their disorder

it's how we'll keep the creeps away

with your bricks 
and my mortar