National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

[Sharon Leigh]

Thanks Tracy,

Yes when I read about it a few years ago I knew I had to put it in a poem someday somewhere. It's deadly enough imo to need no overstatement.

[lisaeagle65]

#14


Oxidize

You are far too young.
Skin unblemished.
Bounce drives your step,
eyes wide as a mound of porcupines.
Years yet from honest depravity, you
still have no history. I chart myself by scars,
but where are yours--where are your scars?
You haven’t stolen, cheated or lied enough.
I can’t trust you.


~

whoa Tracy. That is sooo good.     "" Years yet from honest depravity" Great line

[Colm Roe]

30 ways to die.
#17

He's leaving, 
more reluctant than he thought
when chemicals sat in the director's chair
prominent, important, immortal.

Eager now
for one more mouthful
morsel
taste...even a scent,
shameless,
one more of anything will do.

Those strong branches
supported by stout roots
ruled the world
in broad boasts.

Reduced by time
his filaments,
thin and wasting,
reach and clutch
at the ever increasing soil

[lisaeagle65]

 BEST FRIENDS

Amazed that his father
can remember the long names
of bugs that fish like to eat
and knows where to find them
the boy secretly practices
the names
To make his Dad proud
but they always seem to
come out backwards,
somehow.
His Dad laughs
ruffles the boy's hair
and says "doing good son."
He catches a fish.
His Dad drops his pole to hug him.
The boy thinks about that
and how much he loves him.


The man lifts a chair 
from the truck,
pushes it into the soft dirt
near the river.
 grips the man's arm,
helps him to the chair
casts into the water
and sits on the ground
near the old man.
He notices the warm breeze
ruffle his stiff, white hair.

A fish takes the hook,
a big one.
He turns to his Dad,
the old man rests
chin on chest
asleep.

[Dave]

Sharon. It can't be said too often how good these poems are. This tumbles and swirls and spins. Bolton strid - a bit confusing spelling but interesting place.
Dave

[Deb]

Oh my goodness, so much goodness! Thank you Gyppo, Von, AJ, Marcel - very kind of all of you.
Meaningful, insightful, precious offerings from everyone. I wish I had time to address each one and I could, for they all speak to me in one way or another but time is short. 

Von, I've been thinking about the same topic and after 5 or so different beginnings, ended up with this:

Stupidity

Genes notwithstanding, 
I curse not my DNA
but the ignorance of a family,
who fail to see the light of day.

Their prejudice and judgment
I cannot seem to squash
Condemn 'the gays' and 'coloreds', 
they do so with panache.

I wanted to invite
my brown-skinned, best friend
to Thanksgiving dinner
but it would have been a sin.

To make her suffer through
the underhanded comment
of prejudice and hate,
enough to make one vomit
right on your dinner plate.

My rage greatly heightened
when my dear, gay friend did say,
“I’d love to meet your folks.”
But my family’s idiocy gets in the ‘bleeping’ way!

~Deb



Note: This pertains to grandparents and older aunts and uncles but I took them out of the finished (for now) poem.
 

[Dave]

Yes sometimes hard to fathom how people can struggle with difference in the 21st century. Sad

[Dave]

17
Stillness after Massacre

Nothing stirs.
Not even colour.
Every surface recedes,
bone white through ash to black.
Bony shouldered trees
wrapped in pale shawls
flank their glassy reflections
laid across this dumb brook,
and bow like chastened Christians
before the altar
in solemn remembrance of that day,
here on the Campaspe River in 1839.

[ajduclos]

Thanks Tracy,

Yes when I read about it a few years ago I knew I had to put it in a poem someday somewhere. It's deadly enough imo to need no overstatement.

Hey Sharon - your hornet poem makes one want to run away to save one's soul and sanity.  And I had to rush to look up Bolton Strid - yes, deadly enough.  powerful work...........  

[ajduclos]

 BEST FRIENDS

Lisaeagle - beautiful, idyllic... 
Aj