Semiprofligate's April attempt to banish 'semi' (first NaPoMo)

[semiprofligate]

Cameron, thank you for that suggestion, I think you are right, lop off the fluff at the beginning might well strengthen it. Much appreciated!

[Scrow]

Lagos Lagoon works really well, I think.


The delicate transformations that happen through how the images slip past is beautiful, also the sensory nature of the piece, which has some lovely subtle word-choices too, like ‘glazed hunger’ and ‘white/soaked scent’. I love the ‘feathers of ginger and bananas’ and the nightjar at the end is a wonderful image-summation. The idea of petrichor - the scent of petrichor, treaded through the poem acts beautifully as a kind of central locating device, too.

Sarah
(I agree with Cameron that you don't need the first strophe)

[semiprofligate]

A grape-skin moon


Longer and longer each night,
a grape-skin moon slicks its gray oil
over the cooling slivers of creation.

Slipping here and there
through the space below,
its temperament descends

through the air of cassavas,
palm and rice to the terse niggles

of creation: the hoardings
that scaffold hollowed buildings,
banked concrete pasted white

with the residue of filament light,
draining what imagination remains
for daylight.

[TBC]

[scraps]

Hi Semi,

Anytime you can work 'cassavas' and 'niggles' next to each other at the end of their lines, I think you win. I love the idea and image of a grape-skin moon and the sonics of 'slicks its grey oil / over the cooling silvers' is lovely.

Great stuff and looking forward to the rest!

Steve

[semiprofligate]

A grape-skin moon over Lagos lagoon


Longer and longer each night,
a grape-skin moon slicks its gray oil
over the cooling slivers of creation.

Slipping here and there
through the space below,
its temperament descends

through the air of cassavas,
palm and rice to the terse niggles

of creation: the hoardings
that scaffold hollowed buildings,
banked concrete pasted white

with the residue of filament light,
draining what imagination remains
for daylight.

The precision of generations prays
to the good light. The pings of wind
off the wood hulls floating alone

in the long lagoon ignore the angels
flying around the skull of the earth

and the vault of moonlight that grudges
each prow toward the credenza of rocks
wedged against the wall of silent water.

Once in a while a prow turns as if toward a candle,
a meek light striking out of a cloud of smoke,

and the wind shifts like the thoughts
of an old man and his son leafing
white fish nets into a field of light.

Then the angels scatter, in the light of the moon
narrowing like a candle tugged back through smoke,

and the dark earth slips its silent gifts
between the gills of their nets.

[semiprofligate]

Witnessing a shaft of light in NYC

Verbs conjugate each other up
the wire-frame ribs of stone buildings,

shedding silence like a skin onto the shadows
that engrave our kingdom of the mind.

Crowds stare up from the litany of their feet.
Words hide inside the mouths of children.

Then I sense the missing among us.
In the shaft of light from the blue square of air
flickering between blue-tipped buildings,

in the blurs of smooth limestone
that corner me in the alley,
and the creak of traffic lights at a terse wind.

High above me, above us, a woman
cracks open her copy of light through a window.

Through the window her shadow spills
across the wood floor, as if mesmerized into existence.

When her ruffled head steers further out into our air,
it switches to dangle from her windowsill
against her building’s wire-frame ribs.

Pausing, as indecisive as the rest of us,
between the light of autumn
and our shadows underneath.

Debating, I still believe, whether to join us
in this low shadow kingdom of the mind.

[SP Singer]

Hello again,

Your revision poem,

I like S1 very much for getting down to the level of forgotten gravel. Also the line: where dirt searches for the remains of the garden.

You're so strong at pointing up novel ways of seeing something from unlikely POV's.

Hope NaPo/life is being kind to you,
SP

[semiprofligate]

‘I am better off alone’

You said this
in front of strangers
who averted their eyes.

It carved me into laser meat,
and burnt my skin from inside.

A laser is a weapon.
Not a thing with syllables.
Or a thing to make a home with.

But you forgot to burn the bones.
Bone pain is the worst.

You forgot the bones.

[Donner]

Hi, semiprofligate,

"Witnessing a shaft of light in NYC" - Some good writing here, the "missing among us" and their activity made visible through a shaft of light that makes its appearance in S4. There's a lot to work with here post-NaPo.

"‘I am better off alone’" - Precise and cutting as a laser.

Donna

[Cameron Clark]

I'd cut "and burnt my skin from inside" which I think is a pitch too high, and the rest to me seems very fine. Its spare, which is a rare thing in your poetry, and works because of that spareness.

[semiprofligate]

Call Nairobi 0716398582 Now

Half-way up a scuffed pole,
doubled over by whiffs of long weather
that have unhinged each edge,
Dr Daka’s sky-blue, reclaimed paper
sign declaims (to no one in particular)
that he alone can help in

Love Affairs
Lost Items
Man Power
Pete Za Mali (ring of wealth)
Biashara (business)
Land Issues

And because Lost Items
return once and the others
rarely repeat (except one),

erect against the next pole,
Dr Zikaka’s louder leaflets
add Stolen Child and Woman Problems
in sun-bleached crimson

a fraction higher
toward the god each disturbs
like a noisy child.

[semiprofligate]

The Ides of Spring (revision)

First asparagus, then the rooted beets
raise their fingers from the dead in slow rows.

Each understands the axe of temperature
as a new language, its wet syntax of water
breaking from a heavy, pregnant sky.

Worms waver where the long polished blades
barge into each mud lane, each deep sheen
dragged behind yoke harnesses.

With the lanes laned, foam crusts the turf
like the snot-nose breath obedient cattle spew

along the cull-way, abandoned
to dry for what we will call summer in the field.

Here the bruises of abuse swell for skylarks
like the sea swells, its shifts invisible

other than to what is invisible:
the missed root-shards, the axe-shaped worms
that meander like fish in mud water.

In our categories of expectation
this land is ‘done’ by spring, its remains left

spread-eagle for mavericks, each mud channel
deflated to the temperature of picked dry.

Below the hills of summer we are spent by April.
By April fields erase their angles of asparagus,

while barns cough beetroots
as if gagging from tuberculosis.

This, this is what April does to us all.

[scraps]

Hi semi,

I really enjoyed the spare nature of 'I am better off alone' and the list in the middle of 'Call Nairobi 0716398582 Now' and how the list grows longer on the second sign like either he just thought of those scenarios or maybe he actually did help with a stolen child and woman problems since the first sign went up.

Either way, you're half-way through your first NaPo and you don't seem to be lagging or weary at all!

Looking forward to the rest!

Steve

[SP Singer]

Hello again Semi,
I like the levity in your Nairobi poem, nice snapshot for those of us everywhere else.

Your revision of Ides of Spring is clearer and kinder now for sure. Aren't axe shaped worms terribly dangerous? I just had a link sent about never touching them for a few reasons. They've only recently made it to the US.
Thanks and all downhill now,
SP

[semiprofligate]

On the road to Amboseli, Kenya (revision)


Between acacias bent to their evening’s will,
Jesus birds skip the swollen lake,

irritating the Egyptian geese
picking out a lineup of worms.

A bull elephant ripples the lake’s skin,
his musth dribbling down
one watery leg cruising for sex.

A lioness slobbers over her quiet giraffe.

Beyond the acacias, grudging shrubs
tempt recluses with a cool chance

as the breeze conducts vibrations around us
into fleeting signals: where to go, where to turn.

Before instinct freezes the zebras and antelopes
for the buckle of a gazelle,

her hind legs carving dragged horn grooves
in the dirt toward a wounded thicket.

Then as if nothing happened, dusk resumes
its stirred melting of evening dust,

releasing the valley’s vibration like smoke
toward Kilimanjaro. Through a quarry of birds,

past full-bellied monkeys tailoring branches
due by nightfall,

through treetop leaves tuning their green radar
to a dwarf sun.

Up, up into a million hanging stars.