2015 NaPo Commemorative Thread

[Donner]

One of my favorite things about participating in NaPo is the chance to read such a variety of poems - poems that make me go, Wow, how they'd come up with that idea, or, I wish I'd written that, or, What an interesting experiment. It's a chance to visit different places and cultures and ideas that still manage to translate across to me, here, where I live and work because that's what good poetry does - allows me to experience the variety of the human experience, shared during this crazy shared thing called NaPo.

So, it's become part of the NaPo tradition at PFFA to share for posterity one of your poems from the month that you're glad you came up with, one that you're glad you've written, one that maybe was a breakout experiment for you.

Here are the instructions:

On or after April 30, pick one poem from your output during this year's NaPoWriMo (whether you finished or not) and post it in this thread. If you like, provide a sentence or two about why you chose that particular piece and how many years you've participated in NaPo. Also, please include in your post a link to your personal NaPo thread.

The mods will index the posts by author and title here in the first post for convenience; the "Index" will be arranged alphabetically by username. (We've posted a link to this thread in the Watering Hole, as well, where you can comment on the poems chosen and fluff further fluffy fluffiness.)

2015 NaPo Participant Index:

Angela - "The Kintsugi Method"
Arlene - "Drown me"
avalanche - "JUST THE SAME."
billdozer - "Spaghetti"
casket N orbit - "Bark"
cookala - "The Beauty of Decay (Do not judge books by their covers)"
delph_ambi - "Twenty-eight Meditations On Finding A Street Piano"
Donner -"Instructions"
Dunc - "ANZAC DAY AT GALLIPOLI 2015"
Featherless Biped - "Dragon's Head"
Jee Leong - "April 27, 2015"
Julie - "Astronomer"
larryrap - "Start Over"
PClem - "No One Speaks of Steve (For Steve Heyman)"
Rik Roots - "Tournesols"
Scrow - "National Photographic Record and Survey"
stealthefleece - "Reflection"
Steven - "Country"

[Julie]

I chose Astronomer. It came pretty complete, and it's always fun to make a sonnet on the fly.

Astronomer

I always wished to see the labeled stars
the way Steve seemed to see them. He could shut
his eyes, walk out the door and point to Mars
as if he were the universe, and put
each ring, each moon, each planet in its place
as carefully as I might set a table
(though putting the fork in the spoon's space,
switching Neptune-Pluto. I'm unable
to keep the galaxy aligned). He rose
and watched the planets rise and rose and watched
Antares glare its bloodshot eye. I chose
him as my telescope, the one who matched
a star or constellation to its name
the way I name my brothers. Just the same.

[Donner]

Instructions

Don't bury me in a plot
nearest the highway

where the passing cars
will disturb my rest.

And don't put my ashes
in an urn on the mantel,

it might tip off, making me a mess
all over the floor

that could clog the vacuum.
You know how tidy I like things.

In fact, bypass the cemetery altogether.
I'd prefer an abandoned orchard

or a glade somewhere under a dogwood
or in a grove of wild rhododendron

and cow parsnips where I can feel them bloom
from the roots up.

* * * * *

I picked "Instructions" because I'm bossy. No, seriously, because I basically wrote it in my head after driving past a local cemetery and an abandoned orchard and the last two lines were a very satisfying way to tie the two together.

This was my 11th NaPo, all of which I somehow managed to stagger across the finish line. This year's thread is here.

[Arlene]

Drown me


Drown me in a bath of ivory
soap me with champagne
bubble me dry with cumulus
cloud me over with a shroud
of cirrus and style my hair
feather trumpet blue.


I chose this because it's the least emotional and long-winded and gave me a break. My thread is here. This is only my second NaPo. My last was 2012. I just need an April 1st alarm clock.

[Rik Roots]

Tournesols

This image is as dead as the hand
that detailed it, drowned by fire.

Flames erupt from the starbursts:
they lick the scene, as if a tongue

has pointed each petal onto canvas.
Leaves, too, jag and drip in frames.

A window breaks onto the vase.
A friend could sit by that view

and swallow sunshine whole,
each seed toothed from its husk.

---
Why did I choose this one? Not because it's any better (or worse) than the other 27 poems I committed last month. Rather, this is where I finally managed to write an ekphrastic that:

1. I'm not ashamed of; and
2. Gave me an idea for a format (5 couplets that try to encapsulate both the internals and externals of a thing, or person) that helped me get through the second half of the month (almost).

Here's a link to the image that inspired the poem - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...owers_1888.jpg
And here's a link to the history of the painting, and the series it was a part of - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflow...Gogh_series%29

Oh, and here's a link to my thread: http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showth...hp?84724-Innit

[PClem]

This is my seventh NaPo. I chose this poem not because it is the best but because the subject has been a scab waiting to be picked for many years and the trigger I needed (the tree in the first strope) came dusk the first morning of NaPo on my way to work. What a way to start the month!

No One Speaks of Steve
for Steve Heyman


In the orange-rose gluing night
to dawn the fallen tree resembles
a young man spread nude, sinews taut,
skin pale and luminescent.


It's like that boy tied
to that fence in Wyoming,
a perfect image
of surrender.


Then the heat of day desiccates
light and a thing of beauty
becomes a body
in decay. Lordotic curve, pocks
of brown on beige, the tree collapses
and it's one more thing beneath
notice.


And it's like Steve whose crime,
so similar to Matthew's, so unpretty
in the way he died, a smear of blood
along I-25, a few teeth, shredded
skin clinging to broken bone,
not enough implication
of sacrifice, too much
fear and so, no one
speaks of Steve.


He taught us
how a Jew sits Shiva,
the importance of silence
in the presence of the dead.


There is an absence
of trees in the high plains
of Laramie and of silence.
There is something in the constant
blowing of the wind
that pushes grief into the skin,
that holds it tenacious
and relentless as the wild
rose splayed across the fences of Wyoming.

[Featherless Biped]

My thread is here. This is my fourth year running; I have finished every year.

This NaPo came right on the heels of The Most Painful Friend Breakup In History Ever. (Yeah, yeah, play me a tiny violin and sing me a new Smiths song. But there it is; might as well be honest about it.) Meanwhile, big changes are afoot in my professional life. Poetry remains my favourite way of turning daunting problems with life into manageable problems with scansion. You guys are wonderful company, all of you.

This is the first poem of my thread. After writing it, I was able pick myself up off the couch, stop crying, and do something productive.

Dragon’s Head

Fantasy begins like fast car,
crashes through its own center like tantalize or dismantle,
and ends in messy, broken glassy, misery.
It is not enough to untie the rope,
chip the wax off the bedposts
soak the stains in club soda,
delete the recording.
You can’t erase the question marks
where you ran your nails over her skin.
You would unkiss those bruises into pink oblivion,
vibrate the orgasm back
to whatever nirvana orgasms come from,
burn the air where you inscribed your dirty talk,
if only summon meant control.

Silly you. In your hunger you reached for a girl,
delicate as a Faberge egg,
planned to have her and eat her too,
thought how good she would taste inside,
thought you could clutch without crushing.

[avalanche]

Always the music with me....this is my ninth year.

JUST THE SAME.

The music will play just the same
but will gratefully accept your part
whether you stumble off the first beat
or pirouette on the high notes -
still, must let the moon know
that the sun will rise yet again.

And the music will play just the same
the words will fall like the stars
whether you laugh like a banshee
whether you cry like a Pierrot
howling with the winds and surging tides
the salt twangs in the air...

but the music will play, just the same
regardless of bullet-points
crossfire policies agenda-benders
wrangling finagling committees enmities -
there's no sense in the race
nobody loses nobody wins

because the music will play just the same
past the rolling strolling credits
shuffling out into the foyer
up the road after all the heartbeats
and songlines that follow you forever
because the music will play
play on just the same !

[Angela]

The Kintsugi Method

There are days when I need my adjectives
to be excessive-- grey days where the sky
has crouched too low. I want to take a pickaxe
to the plaster, chip away the lime; pry away
the lath.....................................
...............................................I am pissed
when I break through the layers, only to hit
concrete. If I keep chiseling away, will I shatter
the resistance? Will the heavens appear, intact?

Imagine the vaulted dome like an overturned
Japanese bowl. Let's picture an eggshell-thin,
cerulean-hued porcelain skin, shot through
with liquid-gold veins-- conjured up
by some mad alchemist, using our darkest
heartaches and our basest sins.

******

This was my first NaPo! Thank you all for being so welcoming to this newb. My thread is here. I chose this poem because I want to believe that there is a reason for the ache.

Angela~

[Steven]

I wrote this poem very quickly after work, but the first lines I'd been thinking about during the day.

2. Country



To him, she is the way the flowers break
Around the corner, the lazy river's bend.
Her hair, the shade beneath the wizened oak
Where witches hung, and now the ravens croak.
Upon the grasses melting shadows blend:
To her, he is the water on the lake.

To him, she is a corner of the sky,
Steepled and hazy with a summer morning,
Gone picking bilberries, baskets hanging slack -
That is - until the heavy journey back,
Beneath red skies hung heavy with a warning.
To her, he is the things that slowly die:

The blackbird shadows move across the lawn.
The fluting gate has blown into the wood.
The pool of feathers left upon the floor
Is spiraling to heights where skylarks soar,
And where this little world is understood,
Its lovers and their landscapes neatly drawn.