2024 NaPM 17 April

[RiverNotch]

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.

Celebrate Hellenic culture (from what time period exactly is up to you).

For inspiration: https://youtu.be/6zkL91LzCMc?si=5GbEhB-rEXKxtu5f

[TranquillityBase]

I clipped a photo from a newspaper
(this was ancient times)
three beautiful young dancers
in black leotards, 
I named them Clotho, Lachesis
& Atropos, pinned them above my desk
happy at the prospect of such loveliness
cutting short the cord that bound me to life.

[dukealien]

Living In Greatest Greece


Greeks of what we call
the Classic era
thought little about
being Greek: it’s what
they were, and what
they spoke and wrote.
They did think much
of themselves
for being Greek, of course,
which however did not halt
their bloody feuds among
those who inhabited
that rocky cut-up land
(including Greater Greece–
Sicily, east Italy,
the coast of Asia Minor and
a chain or two of islands
spilled like jacks across
the Central Sea).

Not a few of them
thought much about thinking
and those thoughts
a spreading tree which bloomed
in all the sciences–
history, geometry,
engineering, politics,
philosophy itself–
inform all humanity
(like them or not)
long after that self-confident
contentious people
changed into something else
from what they had before that
changed into.

[Mark A Becker]

of all the gods
she might
worship
none was more
worthy

than olive oil

[RiverNotch]

not quite europe but never asia,
perhaps you are a patch of the americas
almost straddling the vosporos, o hellada,

just as my country, west of the pacific,
went nuts for hotdogs and basketball
when she was an infant. when i myself was a child,

i dreamed that through those greeks on the victoria
i was descended from those who had served
dimitra in elefsina

and when i was a teen, i was enamored
by how many of our orthodox fathers spoke
your mellifluous polysyllabic tongue

but now i find that even your today
serves as a sort of icon for our tomorrow:
between juntas and crises and drug wars and dictators,
may our two nations be forever bound
by the venerable sash of the mother of god.

[Wjames]

Smoking in jeans and black shirt
at Pape and Danforth, charcoal souvlaki
fills the belly on a hot day.

Foosball in the shop
sweat up the sauna,
breeze doesn’t come.

The cold drink in your hand
drips down your palm.