NaPo 2016 Finish Line Thread

[larryrap]

When I'm Like This

When I’m like this, sick and full of foreboding,
it’s best to fold my arms
and allow the membrane growing over me
to seal.

Disowned, left for dead
under six feet of rubble
something glows. Don’t laugh:
my theme was love.

Remember the man
who used to tap from the basement?
Even when he gave up
he never gave up.

*



When my latest "good ideas" fail to deliver I often revert to my rock bottom mode. Sometimes the results are not bad. Larry vs. Larry

[Janet]

Grandma's got no buttons

She's got gemstone-colored metal cups,
peanut butter-n-honey clusters,
and a rainbow-week
of jello salad.

When I visit, all we do is swim
(I'm a stingray with fins like wings).

I tell her thank you but I don't
know how to feel anything
when she smiles. It's like I'm dying
for a strawberry and all that's left
are the leaves.


Something about the immersion of NAPO allowed this poem that's been waiting to be written to flow out without a struggle.

My thread is here

[Jee Leong]

Pale daffodils
poor wandering things
the souls of emperors


Description, emotion, and allusion come together in this one. The gift of a spring morning.

Does grass sweat

[Bench]

Flora Day

When I was young and danced the Floral Dance
I jump-hop-shuffled with ribbons of kids,
in starched-white clothes through the Helston streets.

We’d practiced round the football pitch for weeks,
to learn the steps, and how to hold girls’ hands
while keeping creeping redness from our cheeks.

So when the throbbing pounding of the drum
and pompous tuba echoed off the glassy
granite shops and bluebell doorway pubs

disgorging drunken men, we’d learned enough
of skip and hop to earn those knowing smiles
that flashed among the folk that hemmed the roads.

***

I visit nowadays to show my teeth
to the white-washed windows of Eddie’s Toys,
graffiti covered sterling-boarded Wooly's,

Trim, the grocer, selling mobile phones
and pubs with fewer punters than they've pumps,
and wonder at the smiles between their jumps.


Helston is my nearest town, and it's sad to see how corporations and supermarkets have sucked the personality from the place. It's Flora Day this Saturday, and I will be going with my kids to watch the dances and meet up with old friends, and, for one day a year at least, experience how vibrant and amazing the town can be.

On the substitution bench

[5th column]

Accented


In another life, I lived a year
in barren Anatolia with Aysun
who wore fifteen ankle bracelets
that chimed a trail of seeds wherever
she went. She had a snappy dog
named for a count she mispronounced
as, Cunt; Cunt this, Cunt that
and together they rode the Dolmas
every day, no destination, just because.
And because the conductor loved her
more than any other, he gifted her
the tang of sweet, sharp lemons
which she mingled with her hands
and through her hair. One night
she took me to Pamukkale
and in the salt eye of the moon
dissolved into a hammer, beat an anvil
from green shoots - that a mortal may
pour moonlight through a god. I said
she should give the dog a different name
but from this life it seems just right.

I chose this because it combines two elements of my life and writes them into something better.

[Arlene]

The Gardener and the Rose Haiku

once upon a time
a gardener and a rose
cared for a seedling

in their yard. the gard-
ener carved demons out of
trees, dragons out of

hedges, witches out
of thorns. he and the rose taught
her how best to grow

in the shadows of
these monstrous forms, how best to
fight the cold and dark.

before long she grew
into a flowering sap-
ling, straight, bright and strong.

one day the rose fell
for a boxwood the garden-
er had shaped into

a green-velvet prince,
and the sapling began to
lose focus and stray.

when the busy buzz
of a black and yellow hon-
eybee came her way

one day, she let it
lay on her and harvest her,
intoxicating

her. it stole her gold,
her goodness and her will to
thrive, and so she died.

months went by and the
gardener found another
to love but the night

of their wedding crashed
his head recklessly into
a tree and died. the

rose and boxwood went
on tending seedlings until
one sad day the box-

wood died. the rose wept,
darkened, bereft, but stayed strong,
and staved off black death.

This is my third NAPO here, I think. I wanted to write verse that followed some rules but broke others; hence, a series of urban, autobiographical haiku. I chose this one to post because it's not like any of the rest of them. Thanks to everyone who took time out to read my thread, and apologies to everyone for not fluffing to my full capacity. My thread is here.

[Blythe]

Magic Words

1. Sim Sala Bim
For some in the audience, the words burlesque and vaudeville conjured the majestic
height of magic – fantasy unfettered by legitimacy. For performers,
the dance and swish meant life bought one more washed-out
sunrise. Fantastic enough for the wicked and weary alike. One thousand thanks,
one thousand times this old body rises from the edge to walk and sing
one thousand more tunes. One tune, actually. One song
from the remembered nursery – the sun of childhood
remembered by us all.

2. Tamaghis, Ba'dan, Yass-Waddah, Waghdas, Naufana, Ghadis
When the night of your unanswerable question comes –
as it will, son, to us all – you unearth the names of these cities
and fill your mouth with the dry pebble words until you fall
asleep, and the answer tumbles into your dreams.
Beware the ruthless virus that these words can carry.
You see forward in strobes, rocky shoals wait in the dark patches
but the light beckons you, come forth.

3.
Make it your own, your own, your own




I was inspired by images and practices of magic, both stage and mystical, this April. This started to combine the both - the silly words of a famous illusionist followed by the ranting beauty of William Burroughs.
Sorry for the late reply...time sure does fly around this world.