2024 NaPM 23 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.

Answer the following question: What is the writing on the wall?

ALTERNATIVELY, write a nonsense poem.

[Mark A Becker]

no unkindness

just a single raven
outside the grocery store
of all places
cawing loudly

obviously unafraid
of the people who stopped
to take pictures
it walked right up to me

cawing loudly
obviously injured
couldn’t fly
probably asking for help

I took no pictures
but instead made the call
and was grateful when
animal control arrived

even though I knew
how this would probably end



NOTE: This is a true story from earlier today.
I've since learned that a group of ravens is called an 'unkindness'.

[TranquillityBase]

no unkindness

just a single raven
outside the grocery store
of all places
cawing loudly

obviously unafraid
of the people who stopped
to take pictures
it walked right up to me

cawing loudly
obviously injured
couldn’t fly
probably asking for help

I took no pictures
but instead made the call
and was grateful when
animal control arrived

even though I knew
how this would probably end



NOTE: This is a true story from earlier today. 
I've since learned that a group of ravens is called an 'unkindness'. 

Very vivid and heartbreaking too.  When I lived in Austin, there was a Widlife Rescue center.  Took many an orphan possum or racoon, once an owl with a broken wing that they saved.  But that was a rarity of a place.

Brillant title.

Tim

[Tiger the Lion]

Art is Wine

I had a buddy who became
far too obsessed with Bansky
far too quickly.

      Art is wine
and needs to breathe.

He made a stencil of a lamb
and in the cloak of night 
with a couple of spray cans
graffitied strategic bits of Toronto.

Funny thing is,
he never really had a message
and when his girlfriend 
caught him cheating 
she called the cops to search his trunk.

There's no getting rid of spray paint.

[dukealien]

Finger Tip


There’s no alternative:
the writing on the wall
is meant for you.
The finger paints
in savage shades
while Mendocino warriors
pass in review.
You squint: what language
does the digit
drone on alphabetically
zero and two?
Here pen, there sword
to ponder which
the mightier–
spilled ink, spilled brains
that moving finger
motivating both
to swank anew.
Hark!  How the digit dots
a period to either left
or right
smokes brown and begins
to bleed...
Go!  That’s your cue!

[TranquillityBase]

Wicca Me This

Death interrupted
to dog the true sun
failing the horizon
with sing-song cries,

grateful blackbirds
trigger the watchword,
the clock mocks time
forwards and backwards,

tricked by the climax
a Little Golden Book
reveals an abyss
a sunken paradise,

satyrs on  bicycles
do stunts by the Styx
in and out of the river’s fog
and the crowd relents,

all in a day’s work
nothing to confess
I take my receipt
to the Holy Inquest.

[Mark A Becker]

Art is Wine
Bansky

BEWARE! For Bansky will reappear on the 24th...

[Wjames]

Tangled in copper wire, the bag tears
writhing on gravel encircling hereafter.

Put a penny in a jar
whenever you tell yourself
call tails before kickoff.

The interest alone
is standing clear of closing doors
muffling through the subway PA
with a cold cup of coffee.

There is newsprint on the mime,
nothing advances down the tracks
spinning under quartz lock speed controls.

Heavy direct drive with static balance arms
puts time into a golden age of tables
for a few hundred bucks.

Canvas the sleight build in velvet.

[RiverNotch]

God Hath Numbered


In the 40s came the first
overhead projectors,
named after Belshazzar
by the Englishmen who made them,
which was quite the foolish scheme:

the writing on the wall
was for the Babylonian,
not by him, spelling out
his impending doom
in letters incoherent
to himself or to his court

and, sure enough, it took
an American improvement
for the gadget to secure
its position in the market
(like the Suez) in the 50s.

[Tiger the Lion]

Stall Walls

It's almost always rushed graffiti
or some doggerel limerick about poop--
not exactly a part of popular canon. 

And ya, he's a long way from the library
but this is where he prefers to read.

What sick algorithm dragged him here?
jotting down numbers
in the shitter?

They all promise a good time
and some deliver;

he's never once yet 
met a man
he didn't like

until