2023 Poem-A-Week Challenge (Poems Only Thread)

[Wonderer67]

Keep In Touch

I am sorry, young soldier
You had a short ride, brother
Our hijinks, just recollections now
Dumb stories told over and over
In-jokes, ill-advised pranks
Playing baseball
Cursing those Mets teams that broke our heart
Quoting Holy Grail… I taunt you a final time…

I saw your mom several months ago
She was proud of what you’d become
I am sorry, brother
Thinking of your life, leaves me hollow
You left us too motherfucking soon
I found that letter you wrote me when I was in Iraq
I hadn’t seen or spoken to you in many years
But I sure as hell
Wish I had

5/52

 

[Mrtenant]

One More Day

I walked along the ocean shore
Picking up shells for whatever for
Maybe I'll make something and give it to you
The cry of gulls, they sing their song
It's all I can do to not sing along
Baby how I love what the sea does to you

My heart sings out for you alone
Right here beside me or on the phone
Oh look there you go dancing down the sand
The laughter spilling from your lips
Your hair flying free on all these trips
When will I ever feel the caress of your hand

There was a time in days of old
Where you and I, our love was bold
I could never get enough kisses from you, yea
How our love has grown through it all
The best of times and a terrible fall
And here we are, our story still rolling on, yea

Here I stand gazing at a comet's tail
Heavenly wonders so beyond the pale
And all I want is just one more day with you
Stars will fall and the sea turns gray
I'll look to you and we wont have to say
Looking in your eyes, oh my, how I love you

Week 5, poem 1

 

[Ambient4190]

shadowy apparition torn pink toe shoes

white tutu fluttering atop torn pink toe shoes

petite ballerina opalescent on stage

turning turning time on pink toe shoes

itinerant dancer gypsy no more

abandon travel worn pink toe shoes

picturesque transfixed

exhausted wartorn pink toe shoes

reverie brought to mind a time

when she wore pink toe shoes

 

[Lyricalli]

You're here, as always
can't stay away
leaving telltale crumbs
for someone to follow
or help you find your way back
I'm never sure
but I recognize the path
they're scattered along

I never paid heed to the signs
little warnings
that hide in the depths
of my mind
seek me out in sleep
no matter the plotline
for all the lust and love
or silly fun we have
when you visit my dreams
the constant theme
is you always packing
to leave

 

[Angeline]

Working Girl, Part Three

In the end she won't endure.
There's poverty, burnout. Junk
is her quick trip down, a first rush
of exhilaration, sweet escape,
then deception to a dead end,
a prison of spikes.

She loses her job,
sells what she can.
There's a raft of petty crime
and Daddy bails her out
twice. Still she can't kick
and there's nothing left
to sell but herself,
her sweet, still-young body,
her last commodity.

Johns don't care
about her bruises and tracks,
but oh they love her big tits,
her round ass. They call, answer her ads.
She's used, used, used
in a cheap room she rents,
where she'll die just after
her 21st birthday.

Four people heard screams
but no one reports it and then
it's too late. She had 14
stab wounds.

Seven years later I'll cry
for the first time when finally
I can face the ugly details,
an act of sexual rage made evident
in the nature and placement of her wounds,
made evident by a monster
they'll never catch.

Crying changes nothing.
She was a good girl Daddy said
before he died, when we shared all
her sad, sordid secrets.

Crying changes nothing
so I choose to remember
how we held hands, sang
You Are My Sunshine
on a warm spring day so long ago.

Week 5, Poem 1, Total poems 6

 

[Ambient4190]

pirated pelf touring

packed in a tawny portmanteau

 

[Piscator]

The Opposite of Anadromous – an Eeelogy

The word is Catadromous
just in case need it for
your Final Jeopardy and if
I was writing rhyme, this is
where I’d throw in cantankerous
for Eels are a contrary lot who
unlike salmon who spawn in freshwater,
eels spawn in the ocean, the
Sargasso Sea to be precise
then the larvae then catch a ride
on the Gulf Steam and ascend
rivers on both sides of the Atlantic
where they grow for twenty years or
so then mature head downstream
to their faraway mating ground.

As a student working on the
Ottawa River, we’d always get
a few in night seine hauls,
but now they’re on the Endangered
Species Lists at least in part because while
heading downstream, the adults must pass
through a series of Hydro dams, where they
get chopped up by the turbines and while
changing to dear old Archimedes’ screw
could reduce the chopping, but the mods
are too expensive and other factors like
PCB’s, dioxins, and other nasty chemicals
might be involved factors as well or
maybe shifts on the Gulf Stream
with Global Warming have made it
harder for the larval and elvers
to find their rivers and the it's
all water under the dam.

 

[butters]

week five: poem four

don't colour me rainbow

when people say 'show your true colours'
how often they fail
to take into account
the myriad of such
that make up a person

we're not inked in limited shades
one or three hues to represent our inner selves
most aren't limited
to those base prismatic tones
but are, instead, kaleidoscopes
of overlapping tints

as for me
i am spectrum:
within this lump of flesh
everything
angelic purity of light
to its deepest, truest absence

 

[butters]

week five: poem five


week five: poem five


a desert's not the place to plant a forest

if you experience droughts of the soul
do not fill your fields
as far as the eye can see
with those who'd grow
thirsty as pistachio trees
depending on your groundwater
to survive

they will drain you
demand more
and through no fault of their own
grow bitter, twisted
hard
having used up your resources
leaving others unable to pump
what would normally flow their way

 

[cascadiabound]

Morning fog came in the night
Enveloped in the dawn so pale
Mark the wind and set the sail
Together we will be alright
My mind quiets, we will not fail
Together we will find daylight
The fog burned off, restores our sight
These moments set us on the trail
Dissecting each minute detail
Rocking at anchor in the moonlight
The magic of that far satellite
Such sweetness is a holy grail
Within your arms I do exhale
Our love revealed true and bright
Doubtless our union will prevail
wild girl swirls in the firelight
A match to your reckless appetite
red thread wrap pierces the vale
baby darling safe in this tale
Love endures all, dear knight

Week 5: poem 1: total 5

 

[cascadiabound]

Boughs dance in the wind
rain spatters a staccato
February day

Week 5: poem 2: total 6

 

[29wordsforsnow]

Damn Winter
three months of harsh bite
your rice cooks slow
only in the end
soft-molten
calamity



C'mon Spring
break your moss-laden trunks
leak your hidden buds
shoot your colors
feed me plenty
till empty

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Week 6 Poem 9

The World According to Miriam Margolese.

Being called
“A short, fat, lesbian, Jew with no neck”
is fine with Miriam
because that is how she thinks of herself.

She makes time for everyone,
from down-and-outs on the street
to glamorous transvestites who
make her look like a bag-lady
with her mismatched wardrobe
and unruly hair,

She can hold her own with
skeptical intellectuals with
their patronizing smiles which
she can wipe off because she is
a graduate of Cambridge, she’d
have you know.

Eager to learn, unafraid to
ask awkward questions,
some of the words coming
out of this elderly lady’s mouth
are unexpected, often shocking.

Miriam can, and will, swear
like a trooper, is overtly proud
of her audible flatulence
but is also charming and funny,
and I love her.

 

[Tzara]

Tai Chi

Solemnly, I practice this leisurely, graceful movement
of my arm, whose intent is to casually break
an assailant's wrist.

Then, as I slowly turn my hips and stretch
outward, I mimic first punching,
then throwing some body

off my hip into a corner,
where it crumples fitfully
while smoothly I pivot like a dancer, balanced

and centered, unperturbed
by anything so crude as resembling violence,
my mind emptied

like a scroll on which one's life and destiny
has perhaps been written by a monk
in milk or some weak acid

so as to appear blank,
a thing that can only be read
when carefully singed over an open fire.


Week 6: Poem 1: Total 9

 

[Remec]

Another Saturday Night

She leans against the wall,
not the actual brick and rust;
but the slim barrier of an ancient
series of posters for some band
she's barely heard of;
Checking the battered pack of
Virginia Slims tucked in her bra,
she figures she'll make it through
another half dozen before calling
it a night and heading back to her
closet of an apartment;
The sudden brightness of headlights
turning onto the street brings her
off the wall and to the corner,
They stop,
Window comes down, and she flirts
while talking in the code everyone
uses as they make a deal,
Then she's in the car, riding along to
a cheap motel that's nicer than her place,
It's still a fleabag, but better than
doing it in the alleyway, back against the wall
again.


Week 6 Poem 1

 

[Rockymtnman]

As I walk amongst the shadows
I feel the burden of man
to want more than you need
to need more than you can have
to destroy everything
and I smile

 

[Tzara]

On the Origin of "Kubla Khan"

Higgledy piggledy,
Samuel Coleridge
Ingested opium,
Fell fast asleep.

Later that afternoon,
Most paradoxically,
Wrote out some verse that he
Left incomplete.

Week 6: Poem 2: Total 10



Sort of a double dactyl.

 

[Ambient4190]

zany varlet ne'er do well

imbibed nixie witchery draught

 

[Wonderer67]

The Best Medicine

There has been no better prescription
Than our farm
My wife helped me buy it
There is something comforting in the repetition of work
Bucking (cutting) logs into sixteen inch lengths
Splitting firewood
Stacking it neatly onto pallets
Filling wood bins
Stealing a break and watching Coopalong Creek flow by
Taking a pull on a cuppa coffee
Turning wrenches on my tractor
Removing invasive trees and sticker bushes
Rebuilding a hydraulic pump
Planting trees
Problem solving
Taking my mind offa my mind

Ptsd days at the farm take the sting outta sleepless nights
The repetition
The rhythm
The physicality
The predictability

An old soldier
Working his way thru something

I am happy, yet also
A little bit scared
And scarred

7/52

 

[Angeline]

Three Triolets

North Star
I'll wrap up my pain in a spider's silk
And bury it deep in the ground
Where I'll consecrate it with thistle milk
I'll wrap up my pain in a spider's silk
Conjure good fortune, charm its ilk
To beam from afar, from your star Earth bound
I'll wrap up my pain in a spider's silk
And bury it deep in the ground


Centerpiece***
Milt hammers his vibes in silvery blues
Trane floats up to the stratosphere
His tenor flight insight in cosmic grooves
Milt hammers his vibes in silvery blues
Hank's keys are an anchor as the song moves
Soft landing, bass, drums my jazz atmosphere
Milt hammers his vibes in silvery blues
Trane floats up to the stratosphere


Jerusalem
In my dream I wore a sparkling gold gown
Rubies were sewn to a net in my hair
I felt regal, shining, freed and unbound
In my dream I wore a sparkling gold gown
In a room of stone, in an ancient town
And it felt as if I were really there
In my dream I wore a sparkling gold gown
Rubies were sewn to a net in my hair


***

Week 6, Poems 3, Total 9

 

[Tzara]

Die Traumdeutung

Sometimes, these poems
are like notes left under rocks
in a garden you might stroll

through in the fading light
of late afternoons
before retiring for dinner,

or old coins
dropped into a wishing well
as if my wishes could come true.

I know that Freud called dreams
symbolic wish fulfillments
but mine never

feature snakes exploring vases
or trains entering tunnels.
They're only of the gently curved form

of your unclothed body,
as shapely as if crafted by Brancusi,
but so much warmer to the touch.

If you can interpret them
as my fingertips gliding along your breasts,
your thighs, your belly,

then they are not only simply wishes—
and that surely is all
that I could possibly ask.

Week 6: Poem 3: Total 11

 

[Tzara]

Biology

My love resounds like a big bass drum,
Its rhythm, though, is the pulse of sex
And lust that I cannot overcome—
For "love" resounds like a big bass drum.
I am thus forced to the clutch and scrum
Of breasts and hips, kissing nipples, necks,
For love resounds like a big bass drum.
Through rhythm flows the pure pulse that's sex.

Week 6: Poem 4: Total 12

 

[butters]

week six: poem six

the phi phenomenon


life's illusion
creation
from a series of static frames
darkness inbetween
played at the right speed
unless
the machinery
behind the curtains
slips a belt
loses a cog
or that spark
essential for light
fails

 

[Ambient4190]

runagates discarded tawny portmanteau shrouded nestled

in 'watery fleeces' whilst zany varlets trousers nankeen soaked


'watery fleeces' vocabulary word 'stream so full of foam as to look like fleeces of wool' 1890 5th Reader University Publishing Company

 

[Mrtenant]

Helen

Entire empires fell at her feet
When all she did was say nay
Spoiled roiled for a fight
Off they went in their starched march
Rattled battle songs all the way
Armadas sailed, a motion ocean
All called for pride of their lord
A strange tale of history mystery

Week 6 poem 1