NaPM April 23, 2019

[billy]

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.

NaPM April 23, 2019

Topic: A love poem of at least eight lines, but you can't use the following words: love, lover, red, heart, sweet, beautiful... no plurals or different tenses of these words either

Form: any

Line Requirement: any

[billy]

The First time:

I saw you in a car engine with an oily rag
hanging out of your arse pocket.
You looked like that girl with the red bandanna
in the war effort posters of old.
Grease smeared over your face, a blond curl
hanging from an oily brow.
Dungaree sleeves rolled up like two denim sausages
round a slender bicep.

I'd only parked up to get some pork
pies from Stan the butcher
It wasn't even my car; it was my first lie
the only one i ever told you.
Dry-washing your hands in a blackened white towel
You walked toward me and asked

"What's the problem?"

your voice was like soft caramel dripping off a spoon;
rich and soft, at first i stuttered, fighting
my lack of composure.

"It's fucked."

Throwing the cloth away she came nearer,
eye's scathing.

"Do you speak to your mother with that potty mouth?"

My mind was played the church organ while
i swung a hula hoop round my tongue.

"The fuck i do."

I thought she was going to get out
some favor beans and a nice chianti;
she laughed like I'd said something funny.

She's been fixing my brother's car ever since
and me...

I live with her at the garage.

[nozaki]

One shot (two, three,
we never promised each other infinity-
it was always a game
which one of us was going to leave
first-
but tonight, until the music
wails into the stars,
we'll promise). Light me up (eat me up
like those cigars-
fat,
plummy-
the smoke resting in your chest,
exit wounds cauterized by another pull).
I nurse my beer,
wasted on the tide of Frank Ocean,
musing on your lost innocence
and how you seem to regain it
only when you're grinding against me
to the synth leads on Pyramids.
Tonight,
until the music wails into the stars,
you're just seventeen years
young (a rising talent
at liquor pong-
stack them Solos),
drunk, a little
high,
just like me (pass the vape,
let me hit it, one
two three, light me up).

[dukealien]

Virtuous Stratagem


Oh! Ginny, you have spurned my suit,
my ring in crimson velvet case,
my hopefully entreating face,
but, jilted, I am resolute.

How can I ask again? At root,
I’m anxious, so must force the pace
to see you in May bridal lace
before rejection grows acute.

I know that you’re susceptible
to physical exuberance–
I’ll boldly warm your crucible
to melting, then I’ll take my chance
when you’re about to acquiesce,
to beg, instead, a lifetime “Yes.”

[Richard]

Haunting

All we ever had was a waltzing apparition,
spooking my bloodshot eyes
in between lines of late night poems.
Our moonlight illuminated faces faded
slowly afterwards, like every dream
I dared to have- at least branches
can scratch windows, not worried
about waking anyone, the noises
of their exchange dismissed
as part of the darkness, while on a page,
when even you slept, my pen
always danced alone and musicless.

[dukealien]

Absolutely bloody wonderful - @billy, you're just blooming in NAPM!  And rules are for other people, anyway.

Lest I be misunderstood, this is meant in jest:  sometimes you have to break the rules, and this is a perfect example.

The First time:

I saw you in a car engine with an oily rag
hanging out of your arse pocket.
You looked like that girl with the red bandanna
in the war effort posters of old.
Grease smeared over your face, a blond curl
hanging from an oily brow.
Dungaree sleeves rolled up like two denim sausages
round a slender bicep.

I'd only parked up to get some pork
pies from Stan the butcher
It wasn't even my car; it was my first lie
the only one i ever told you.
Dry-washing your hands in a blackened white towel
You walked toward me and asked

"What's the problem?"

your voice was like soft caramel dripping off a spoon;
rich and soft, at first i stuttered, fighting
my lack of composure.

"It's fucked."

Throwing the cloth away she came nearer,
eye's scathing.

"Do you speak to your mother with that potty mouth?"

My mind was played the church organ while
i swung a hula hoop round my tongue.

"The fuck i do."

I  thought she was going to get out
some favor beans and a nice chianti;
she laughed like I'd said something funny.

She's been fixing my brother's car ever since
and me...

I live with her at the garage.

[CRNDLSM]

We didn't hook up by holding hands
She stole my cellphone when I
Wasn't looking and put her 
Own number in so when she
Would call she'd keep the conver-
Sation going.  Again the
Next day, then the next day, and
Now we're married til we die.

[RiverNotch]

I have to reread a lot for 22, so here, like two months late, after a long delay from my one-month-late streak, with a tiny bit of cheating (although i didn't count the quotes when i wrote this anyway),

The Purple Rose of Cairo

1
Here we have another separation.
I'm flying home to Hollywood while you're stuck
divorced and desolate in the theatre
watching over and over Fred Astaire
carried by Ginger Rogers' charm to heaven.
Last year I featured in a fancier flick,
Death Takes a Holiday. Not your kind of picture.
"There are only three games: love, money, and war."

2
Tell me what war
a woman of our time should fight
other than a thankless job
or a family that broke apart
shortly after the honeymoon.

To say you failed by some fatal flaw
would be a thoughtless, pointless gesture.
After all, we're in the same boat:
evenings you hustle with glitz and glamour
while I work a diner by day.

How did I catch your other-you's eye
anyway? I'm nothing.

3
Don't be obtuse, you're Mia Farrow:
the director is your partner.

4
"I wish that we may never meet
when you are less beautiful, and I must be less kind."
I caught it, alright.

I suppose all words on the subject have this strange way
of stumbling back to cliché. "Love is a kind
of madness, love is blind."

If you say I'm an actress on a screen,
fine by me. I'd think you were too kind
if I wasn't blind.

I suppose we were always actor and actress,
our story all a creature of the screen.
The screen that fed us, entertained us--- kept us blind.

5
And Fredric March, in a booming voice, replied,
"What could terror mean to me, who has nothing to fear?"