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Threads: 409
Joined: May 2014
So long as you guys are going to run with these, I'm more than happy to continue posting them.
***There was also some question as to what might be appropriate for the "Fun" forum. Rest assured, all poems are welcome.
Write a poem inspired by a body of water.
Bonus points for using the words "corn," "plywood," and/or "pencil."
*** a reminder that prompts are not rigid. Poems about lamps, t-shirts or flatulence will not be considered out of place.
Go!
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I'm looking for my toes.
The reflection's first,
then the dirt,
some sticks,
some bugs,
hairy legs,
empty pockets,
stains, frays, fades,
a mystery scar, hard
worked wrinkled hands.
I see everything from here,
to the land across the water,
the life before me and behind,
the cosmic landslides that led
us here alone to this spot,
staring at my hands,
looking for my toes.
Peanut butter honey banana sandwiches
Posts: 23
Threads: 3
Joined: Jul 2023
saber-toothed salmon,
jaw full of sharpened pencils;
ice age Salish Sea
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Threads: 409
Joined: May 2014
(08-28-2023, 09:29 AM)O. M. Geezersnaps Wrote: saber-toothed salmon,
jaw full of sharpened pencils;
ice age Salish Sea
serrated incisors
eyes as black as black
deathroll, deathroll
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Threads: 3
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brackish water soup,
hodgepodge composite plywood:
Tiger the Lion
Posts: 751
Threads: 409
Joined: May 2014
(08-28-2023, 10:49 AM)O. M. Geezersnaps Wrote: brackish water soup,
hodgepodge composite plywood:
Tiger the Lion
Posts: 23
Threads: 3
Joined: Jul 2023
Hockey Dad at Free Skate
He slides onto the ice with two young daughters
who got hockey skates for Christmas
because he doesn't have sons.
They follow him like ducklings in a row—
newly hatched, wobbling toward the pond.
He skates backward to watch them
until the speakers blast Bohemian Rhapsody.
Then he pivots forward, gaining speed,
feet over feet as he breezes
around the ice. His nervous chicks
scramble to follow, but nothing really matters to him
except the high notes he's hitting
that ricochet off the metal bleachers,
and the invisible instrument he grips
in his gloved hands. He starts racing
a pack of 12 year olds in black padding
like he's a mighty duck and they are hawks—
always hungry, stalking their prey at night.
He thrills to the challenge
of this newfound rivalry,
while his girls cling to the wall of the rink.
Huddled underneath the Russian flag
suspended from the ceiling,
they're trying to catch his eye.
But, he's fighting that flag like a dream from the past,
when he gripped his prey like a hawk in the night,
eyes wide alive for passion and glory—
the predative gaze of ravenous tigers.
Posts: 894
Threads: 176
Joined: Jan 2021
On First Reading Wallace Stevens
What am I to make of these blue guitars
these ice cream emperors
modernist images from out of Florida seas
torn from inside my thrusting brain
to fall upon the page in front of disbelieving eyes?
I am like a rabbit, tossed back and forth by the clouds.
Yet I persist, through rattapallax and whoo-hoo-hoo
pulled forward by their sound if not their meaning
clusters of the infinite, crossing and uncrossing
my meager intellect, thrilling me
as they leave me far behind in a confusion
of falling leaves and negro cemeteries.
I stumble forward, word by word, poem by poem,
never completely lost but not quite found, shouting ahead
unheard as you march in front of your columns of musical spirits.
But follow I must, until I am turned to dust,
or simply fall unconscious onto your piercing poetics.
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Threads: 176
Joined: Jan 2021
In Between
This day, almost over,
drags its feet towards late afternoon.
It was over before it began
thanks to a well worn groove.
What’s there to say?
Endless riddles spiraling in my brain
from inside an Austrian novel
leave little time for conversation.
I guess I’m the silent type.
Hell, I’m practically a mute
unless it comes to words on a page.
I can say I’m not in pain
or love or threatened by the sun.
I could brag about my Jerusalem Bible
illustrated by Salvador Dali
that I got for $14.95
because the woman at the cash register
left off a zero.
I could admit to paying
$100
for a history of Lenin’s Cheka.
But why would you care?
I don’t even know if you’ve read this far.
Have you?
Where are my penpals of yesteryears?
One suicide, one has retreated into childhood,
one moved to North Carolina
to be with his computers.
Enough about me, what about you?
Répondez s'il vous plait.
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Joined: Dec 2016
Rain
She walked through the corn
one grey cloudy day
touching the stalks and leaves
as she passed
twirling around the soft silk ends.
Beneath, the dry dirt softened
and congealed into paste,
the kind that squelches between toes
and forms the best mud pies.
She always spoke in a gentle whisper
that sounded like wind in the grass
or thousands of tiny feet tapping on glass.
The farmer loved her and looked for her
daily through the hot summer months,
but she was skittish and mercurial
and could not be bade or made to obey.
She was gentle but wild, an element at play,
in love with and loved by the earth.
The Soufflé isn’t the soufflé; the soufflé is the recipe. --Clara
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Threads: 3
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Don't quibble or quarrel,
you querulous peasants!
The Queen of the Quill,
the quatrain and stanza,
acquainted with quackery
and quitters unworthy,
requires her quietude:
no queefing or flatulence!
Posts: 695
Threads: 139
Joined: Jun 2015
Makeshift Competitions
It's not hard making
new cornhole boards out of old
pieces of plywood.
We have pencilled in
some fresh new toe lines, with chalk,
for this Saturday.
You're invited
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