NaPM April 6 2015

[milo]

Rules: Write a poem for national poetry month on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month have written 30 poems for National Poetry Month. 







Topic 6: I have received around 5 suggestions for an ekphrastic poem so I suppose that will be today's prompt - write a poem inspired by a piece of art.  Feel free to include the art that inspired it.
Form : any
Line requirements: 8 lines or more

Questions?

[just mercedes]

What fun! I hope the hyperlink works - I don't know how to add the image and each time I try I make myself very depressed because it doesn't work.
A Marcel morsel
 
 
What do they look like,
the ones in the large glass?
The bride
stripped of her bachelors, even
to be looked at
with one eye, close to
for almost an hour.
 
That crazy Spanish artist
in a taxi by the fountain -
I call my apparatus
[i]Excalibur.[/i]

Given: 1 the waterfall,
2 the illuminating gas

all that’s  missing
is a green box
by Rrose Selavy.
Marcel Duchamps, through “the large glass painting” of “the bride stripped bare of her bachelors, even”, his book about the making of the large glass called “the green box”,  his sculpture “fountain”, {Dali’s “rainy taxi” is there because DuChamps organized that exhibition}, his final work ‘given: 1 the waterfall, 2 the illuminating gas’ and his female persona, artist Rrose Selavy (say it slowly and it’s Eros, c’est la vie)
 

 
 

[billy]

come on guys, poem of the day april 6th

The Stick

I had a friend who'd fly away
I'd run and fetch him back
when in the park or on a hill
or down some muddy track,

and then i saw him with a scout;
smoldering by the fire
when i said "the stick was mine"
I was called a liar.

You'd think he'd ask how i could talk
no, this kid was bitter.
he tied me to bramble bush
and kicked me up the shitter.

[jasmine.m.wardiya]

A Doctor's Empathy

Attentiveness but distance too: this is the posture he selects
in which to keep his vigil. The arm is outstretched
but he does not take it within hand; there is still pulse:
he can make out the slow rise and fall of chest.

It does not to panic, to be distraught: he can fault the parents not
but he is a doctor, and after this there will perhaps be a dozen more
patients on death beds, some to heal and others not: a dozen other
bedsides which would invite him to draw up a chair and sit.

He cares. He pays attention but he must pay distance still
elsewise one sickness, one death, will snatch this livelihood
away, and others’ hopes. For his job, this duty of care
he cannot afford to sit too close.

..
'The Doctor', Sir Luke Fildes' 1887


The difference between empathy and sympathy. The second thing they teach us at the clinical school...after how to get lost.

[Erthona]

To V.

Up-down, over, around,
it looks like a storm,
but it's not dark, it's light.
Through myopic eyes,
see blue hay rolls rise,
encroaching on the town
with doorway-mouths agape
and bright-lit window-eyes:
while outside under starlight 
are brown-bluegreen trees
that look like blight.
And though I know
some claim cliche,
or even worse it's now passé
I still love your "Starry Night!"



Erthona

©2015

[cidermaid]

Allow your hands to melt.
Lactate time into a soft yield field
of semi set cheese, that oozes
through shades of brown and blue.

I am a brittle sunrise.
A conduit of numbered strings
to infect your cultured veins.
Drape yourself around my universe
of cutting edge perfection.


The Persistence of Memory a 1931 painting by Salvador Dalí.
Picture in a mo.  (For some reason I cannot get my image to upload - will be back to try again later...unless some kind souls can get this to load for me ) Your welcome dale

[Todd]

Allow your hands to melt.
Lactate time into a soft yield field
of semi set cheese, that oozes
through shades of brown and blue.

I am a brittle sunrise.
A conduit of numbered strings
to infect your cultured veins.
Drape yourself around my universe
of cutting edge perfection.


The Persistence of Memory a 1931 painting by Salvador Dalí.
Picture in a mo.  (For some reason I cannot get my image to upload - will be back to try again later...unless some kind souls can get this to load for me ) Your welcome dale

I so love "I am a brittle sunrise."

[bena]

obligatory liability disclaimer:  I blame Milo.  He was supposed to chose an image so I'd stay focused. But alas, I did not.  Left to my own devices I chose to seek out inspiration from a familiar source:  blues music, and just typed in image search 'singing blues painting' and found this beautiful work, but I cannot name the artist or title. I think the original artwork was found on a 4 pt CD of blues out of France.   Once again, this is all Milo's fault.



Funky Sings the Blues

There’s this joint down on fifty third—
behind a dumpster full of free-range rats and
stagnant dreams.
Underneath the neon lights,
the moths flop saggy-daisy down.

Just inside the door,
you’ll know that Hell ain’t far away.
The cracks hold the cankered-newspaper walls together
and the cold that lives there is neither good nor evil—
just a fact of life.

Everything there’s a victim of shadow and light,
of circumstance.

There’s this one lady at the back
who holds the microphone like a newborn,
holds it like a life line in her shaky hands;
somehow she manages to strangle the dreariness out of the room.

Repeating these two words over and over again
just behind the beat
just enough to turn you on.

She sings, “Love me.”

She sings, “Love me.”

No one notices the track marks radiating up her too-skinny arms,
the dark circles under her never-sleep eyes,
the roar of her rarely-fed belly
or the don’t-own-a-brush hairstyle she gets sleeping in the alley.

She becomes the most beautiful girl in the world,
when Funky sings.

[Todd]

American Goth

 
We see the postcard and don't really look
at faces pinched like piecrust at a church social.
Fail to see the breath fog the black cathedral
window. Forget to kneel on the wraparound porch,
smell the decay beneath swept floorboards.
 
We never see the man lying awake at night
telling himself that the knocking
on the pipes is the house settling, or the woman
blocking the threshold when neighbors come to call.
If it is only a postcard, then when the mob roams
this quiet street looking for monsters,
they might be asked to grab their pitchfork and join.



Grant Wood
American, 1891-1942
American Gothic, 1930

[ellajam]

Sssshhhhh

A breath
shifts the scenery.
What was is lost,
what will be will pass.

Substance and space
kiss and walk on,
a new landscape
with each breath.



Link to video:
Alexander Calder's Rouge Triomphant

[milo]

nevrybody

you will never see them hiding
your face behind a bus schedule
or skittering in the back of the coat closet
at your favourite restaurant
but if you stare at the reflection
of the phone in your hands
 as if you were staring through 
you might catch one between the stripes
of the wall paper in the hall.

her teeth are not trapped
in the lochs of her lips
and her eyes pool down through her cheeks.
What is the wet cord she works 
with her hands as if threading herself 
together with entrails?
she asks you not to see her
through the greasepaint bars
of her prison.

[billy]

yummy use of shems artwork

[Tiger the Lion]

*August 18, 1969. Jimi Hendrix' Star-Spangled Banner @ Woodstock.
Video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt3cYpFLJiM
Cherry Trees and LSD
 
You can see in the day’s first golden light
the patriotic axeman wail;
his chops sap every cherry blossom’s blight
you can see. In the day’s first golden light
there were half a million that refused to bite
or let the war dog wag their tail.
You can see in the day’s first golden light
the patriotic axeman wail.

[just mercedes]

*August 18, 1969. Jimi Hendrix' Star-Spangled Banner @ Woodstock.
Video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt3cYpFLJiM
Cherry Trees and LSD
 
You can see in the day’s first golden light
the patriotic axeman wail;
his chops sap every cherry blossom’s blight
you can see. In the day’s first golden light
there were half a million that refused to bite
or let the war dog wag their tail.
You can see in the day’s first golden light
the patriotic axeman wail.

Never read a triolet about Jimi before. Well done!

[rayheinrich]

        Trail Through The Woods - John Pirnak
       

                                                   
                                                  < the sun's eye >
                                                   
                                                    tree upon tree
                                                   
                                                    still lakes and eager brooks
                                                   
                                                    cries remembered
                                                    yours
                                                    mine
                                                    so many others
                                                   
                                                    time watchs like an eye
                                                    (the sun's)
                                                   
                                                    seeing the beauty it illuminates
                                                   
                                                    and the unspeakable
                                                   
                                                    to the sun a road is just a tiny line
                                                    to us as well
                                                    but the sun knows where it goes
                                                   
                                                    wooded hills
                                                   
                                                    endless to us
                                                    to our fantasies of sacred places
                                                    to our dreams of refuge
                                                   
                                                    escape
                                                    revenge
                                                    mumbled confessions
                                                    treason
                                                     
                                                    eyes
                                                    ours this time
                                                    witnessing their acts
                                                    feeling the dreams of revenge
                                                    corrupt us
                                                    our tongues
                                                    mumble acts of retribution
                                                     
                                                    fantasy
                                                   
                                                    our life has been devoured
                                                   
                                                    refuge
                                                   
                                                    we dream of such a place
                                                    the earth is vast enough
                                                    these wooded hills
                                                    just these
                                                    if only they could keep us close
                                                   
                                                    let us have peace
                                                   
                                                            - - -
                                                   
                                 

[Keith]

Loosing Fingers

Keep your hand flat,
summers snap away
with dandelion seeds
landing like aphids
green on the breeze.

We were together those days,
lonely in our corners,
my secrets blown to
pollen clouds,
rising to reach the city.
I miss the muscle
beneath your skin,
the uncertainty in our eyes.

[cidermaid]

I think this was my favourite day / prompt.
I would be hard pressed to say which poem I like best. I've lost count of how many times I’ve bee back to re-read all of these.

I found all of the poems fascinating for the different aspects that were drawn out of the picture to what I might have focused on. In particular Milo's scan of Shem's picture and bena's story behind her blues woman, then again jasmine's portrayal of a doctor was crisp and felt spot on. So much to recommend in all of them. Ella and Todd to my mind, perfectly captured the essence of their pictures and Ray managed to make me feel like I was caught in a time bubble on that wooded path.

If I had to choose I guess I loved the slightly sad reminiscence of Keith’s poem and in particular this line captured the feel of a hot summer day for me
Summers snap away
with dandelion seeds
landing like aphids
green on the breeze.

[bena]

Todd and Merc won NaPM and that's the truff. Everything they wrote, I wish I had.

[ellajam]

Todd and Merc won NaPM and that's the truff.  Everything they wrote, I wish I had.

If it was a contest they might have, , but I think every poster has at least something worth working on, and certainly everyone gets to read all this interesting stuff. All winners.

[Todd]

I thought this was a really hard prompt. I think those of you that are also visual artists may be more able to process across disciplines. I loved AJ's Daii in the way her language choices complemented the poem (lactate time/brittle sunrise). I also thought the Marcel morsel by mercedes set the bar pretty high. I loved your funky one too mel. It seemed to capture elements of the era, and had some dynamite phrasing free-range rats, holds the microphone like a newborn (lot of good stuff in that), I didn't realize milo choose Shem's picture, but that makes it cool on a few levels. The poem was a solid complement to the visual. There was a lot more to like on this day. Paul had the title I liked the most: Cherry Trees and LSD.

All good folks. You can really see people starting to hit their stride.