Acolyte's "Sonnets to Bacchus" Thread IFT

[Acolyte]

And he took pulque and wrote and the sun rose again.

1. Mythtakes
2. Archaeology
3. He Forgot Even His Husband's Name
4. CAUTION, or, Pity Them Not
5. You've Got Mail
6. (NH2)2COHNO3
7. Capture the Flag
8. Zombie
9. Saltwater
10. Celebration of Life
11. You Don't Have To Go Home But You Can't Stay Here
12. Opportunity
13. Raising the Flag
14. Seven Sandcastle Lessons
15. Jess, or, Where There's Smoke
16. This Poem Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity
17. Itty Bitty Discworld Ditty
18. In The First Case It Is Better Not To Break The Bones (Long Story)
19. Greek Love
20. La Vie En Rouge
21. Lord of the Fireflies
22. Mona Lisa with Duck Lips
23. Gehennaphobia
24. On the Dunes at Night
25. Profanity
26. The Bible Never Ends a Story with Happily Ever After
27. The Newer Colossus
28. Southern Exposure
29. Big Jake, With Apologies to The Tymes
30. Birthday




A Tarnished List (poems finished)
2014's Poems Against Humanity (8), 2013's Rated "G" for Guilty Pleasure (14), 2011's Blatherings (15), and 2010's Leaves of Ass (5)

[Featherless Biped]

Happy April!

[Angela]

Happy NaPo!

[Janet]

Ooooh...An interesting mix!

[merelynn]

That's a great picture. Happy NaPoMo!

[PClem]

Okay, Ross, I'm in. Waiting for you.

[Acolyte]

LAURIE DOOO EEEEET! (Also hi and welcome merelynn, Janet, Angela, and FBPed!)

Mythtakes

hey baby before you say anything I want to tell you something
long ago in Egypt people stopped praying to Ra, god of the sun and other things
and so he sent his bitchy, lioness-headed daughter Sekhmet to make them cry
and she was hacking and slashing her way through them like, well, like a lion
because when you're a war goddess normal people are all basically the sickest antelope
and people were all like "oh the humani--" but that's as far as they got
before being disemboweled by Sekhmet's divine claws and awesome sharp teeth
and the noise got so bad all the neighborhood gods came over to see
and Yahweh was like "man, I'm rethinking my whole approach to negative reinforcement"
and even Kali was like "damn girl, that's fucked up. overuse of force, much?"
and so Ra was like "ok, ok, I'll tell her to knock it off" but to Sekhmet, human beings
were like tortilla chip bowls at Mexican places where even if you're full you keep eating
(also in this metaphor the salsa is blood. where was I? right.)
Ra started to panic but Loki was there for summer vacay and he was like
"do what I do when my lover loses her shit, get her drunk, even works on giantesses"
and Zeus was like "that's what I do to Hera when I'm with my mistresses"
and Hera was like "say whaaaaaat?" but Ra was like "Jesus, people, calm down"
and Jesus was like "somebody called?" and Ra was like "help a brother out"
and Jesus was like "ok, but you definitely owe me like fifty souls for this, right?"
and so Jesus miracled the shit out of the Nile and turned all the water into red wine
and Ra was like "hey Sekhmet there's lots of humans over here in all this blood"
and Sekhmet was like "okay let's go, yo" and drank and drank all the Nilewine up
and she blacked out and when she woke she was Hathor, goddess of booze and dancing
and all this, baby, is a roundabout way to say I'm sorry for what I said while plastered
and instead of all the shouting and the rants
let's drink this wine I brought and dance



(Note: I did not make this up.)

[PClem]

That's the best explanation for the universe I've heard yet. Can you keep this up for thirty days?

[5th column]

Jesus miracled the shit out of the Nile - now there"s a line I never expected to read. Ever....

[Acolyte]

PClem-- I didn't even make that myth up. If I make it to the halfway mark, I'll finish. You?
5th column-- And I never expected to write it! The pressure cooker is already yielding novel results.



Archaeology

aspirin and black tar coffee turn these hungover hosts
into semisupine archaeologists in the ruins of a family room
by precisely mapping the detritus of paper and plastic
we aim to discover what barbarian bacchanalia happened here

glass ostraca tell of party fouls past when I step on the shards;
under a napkin midden Eric unearths suspicious stains
analysis of a sample from a tastebud laboratory:
"grenadine, not blood, thankfully"

dried out French dip provides a forensic timeline
we match events by Solo cup strata, and
having exhausted the physical evidence
we turn to primary sources:

news feeds, tweets, texts, missed calls
all refine our tentative chronology
from the most common ideogram we name them:
they are the Friday People,

a civilization totally alien to the bright light of seven am
but we have empirically derived theories:
widespread stickiness suggests regular ritual ablutions
status is determined by vigorous worship at twin altars,

one altar, to the tutelary spirit known as Foosball,
is publicly displayed for communal rituals
but the tabernacle of the Porcelain Goddess
is hidden away in a private sacrarium

we compile results and write articles detailing the finds
submitting them by Facebook for peer review:
"great time last night, y'all.
same time next week?"

[prokopton]

Mythtakes - way fun, yo!

you kept up the pace and consistent tenor throughout, not easy.
Have fun this month. It ought not to be all serious 'n shit.


G.

[Dani B]

'Archaeology' brings me back to when I worked with University engineers. They never slept, they never left campus; you'd find them sleeping on couches in the hallway with some frequency. So many 2 AM emails; so much mystery trash everywhere. There was even a foosball table. This is actually eerie.

<end of floof>

-d

[Acolyte]

prokopton-- fun's the best part of NaPo!
Dani B-- Glad to have touched a memory.
Thanks for the fluff, y'all!


He Forgot Even His Husband's Name

a diagnosis not of death
but of unbeing, going
through the motions of man
without a man's mind
or memories:
untethered,
absent,
lost





(this came from a prompt from another location, to write about loss with lines of diminishing syllables; hokey structure I know but prompts are great for NaPo!)

[5th column]

A diagnosis, not of death / but of unbeing - that's a great, great line. The rest of the poem is pretty cool - diminishing syllables for a diminished individual.

[Bench]

Love the archaeological examination of the party's legacy. 'Name' seems to lose marbles one by one as it drops. Very sad.