Welcome to The Tangled Branch!  Join us.

National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Locked
Lecram06
Posts: 1484
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:13 pm

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Lecram06 » Mon Apr 29, 2019 7:29 am

Gyppo wrote:
Mon Apr 29, 2019 12:29 am
Napo 29 - 2019

Terri

She grew up in a family of brothers,
three of them.  Not inherently violent,
but their Dad taught them all to box.

Finely controlled and balanced pugilism,
handing down the 'manly art' of his generation.
A quiet man, but not one to mess with
as many a belligerent drunk discovered.

He saw no reason his daughter,
a proper little Tomboy,
should be excluded from the training,
and boasted like hell when she, 
like a lithe bouncing shadow,
slipped one under his guard
and bloodied his nose.

In time she grew, as some tomboys do,
into a tall and statuesque lass
with a calm demeanour,
one who avoided unwanted trouble,
but walked without fear.

But I still recall when a school bully,
a swaggering 'hard man',
grabbed at her budding bosom
and was felled instantly,
with one precise little jab to the chin
as the entire playground watched.

No fuss, no warning,
and no bragging afterwards.
She just carried on talking to her friends
as if nothing had happened.
Job done, finished.
As was the lad's reputation.

Gyppo
Gyppo,
Your narrative poetry is gripping. It lets the reader in on the family's ethos. And it reminded me of my redhead daughter who flattened a bully who was terrorizing her younger brother in the school yard. Thanks for the memory. Marcel
 

Lecram06
Posts: 1484
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:13 pm

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Lecram06 » Mon Apr 29, 2019 7:33 am

indar wrote:
Sun Apr 28, 2019 11:33 am
April 29 (still a day ahead because who knows what tomorrow will bring :) )

Gabriel, for God's Sake Blow Your Horn:
or
Understanding Divine Intervention

Why is there almost universal agreement
that angels are beautiful and kind:
that they save, refine, enlighten
individuals by sheltering them from evil?

How explain the dust devil that whirls
discarded burger wrappers, burnt-out butts,
plastic bags into stunned faces

or the specter of an animal carcass,
eyeless sockets accusing, caught in the snarl
and rust of abandoned barbed wire

or the angry challenge hurled by a man,
from a morning doorway,
filthy, urine-stained, hair matted
beset by delirium tremens

or the border guard who believes he
is saving America as he lifts a terrified
two-year-old from her mother's arms?
Indar,
Just when I think that the poem has reached its crescendo, you slam a last stanza right across my face and wake me to my silent complicity.
Marcel
 

Dave
Posts: 1991
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 9:07 am

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Dave » Mon Apr 29, 2019 8:30 am

Hey Folks
Love the way the poems have kept coming and the ideas and craft keep giving. No time for deep comment, but eternally grateful for all the joys provided here.

29
 Indigenous 

The new names we gave them
gave birth to their strangeness,
set them apart on their strange island
between Atlantic and the unknown,
far from all we knew of home
in the already named world.
These peoples who could not be
people in their feathers and colored dances,
who must have fallen
from the sky,
lost of the ability to fly,
could not flee
once discovered
and named. Still
they cannot belong
to our history
for we have created them

as we now know them, outside us,
their skin red as the burnt desert.
They must find a place in this world
we made on their burnished soil.
We name not the things
but the things are the names,
and so too these natives
whose history is buried beneath our dreams..

Vaughn Neeld
Posts: 646
Joined: Mon Apr 01, 2019 10:50 am

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Vaughn Neeld » Mon Apr 29, 2019 9:11 am

Day 29

In Times Like These

In times like these, can be find in ourselves
sympathy
for the man down the street who just lost his job;
empathy
for the woman whose son just died in a drive-by shooting;
generosity
to the homeless man shivering on the corner;
magnanimity
toward the politician with whom we do not agree;
leniency
toward the neighbor who plays his music too loud;
clemency
toward the ex-felon striving for rehabilitation;
charity
to all humanity?

Vaughn Neeld
Posts: 646
Joined: Mon Apr 01, 2019 10:50 am

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Vaughn Neeld » Mon Apr 29, 2019 9:15 am

Good morning to you all. I came to the computer today with sorrow that we have only two days left in this wonderful exchange of ideas and companionship. Thank you all for your comments and indulgence. I hope we can continue this "branch" after tomorrow, but if we must go our own ways, I want all of you to know how much you've come to mean to me. Vaughn (Von)

User avatar
Colm Roe
Posts: 2697
Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:45 am

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Colm Roe » Mon Apr 29, 2019 11:16 am

Hi Von,
Please drop in to the Bar & Grill for a drink and a chat when we're finished here :)
viewtopic.php?f=522&t=1282

Vaughn Neeld
Posts: 646
Joined: Mon Apr 01, 2019 10:50 am

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Vaughn Neeld » Mon Apr 29, 2019 11:42 am

Just name the place. :lol:

User avatar
Colm Roe
Posts: 2697
Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:45 am

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Colm Roe » Mon Apr 29, 2019 11:49 am


User avatar
Mark
Posts: 586
Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 4:19 am

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Mark » Mon Apr 29, 2019 4:17 pm

.

Human

A constitution for the syndicate -
but love and sex, circles of trees.
The slow faith of deeper waters,
and Chronos, the sower of dust.


Autumn

I saw you at a café, or perhaps
a boulevard, leaves on the wind.
Hazel words unsung, blue eyes
in farewell, a sweetness of days.


Moonlight

Wickled glass is a mercury spider
paused on velvets of torture.
Drums in the distance signal
a darkening of willful blades.


Zenith

Sometime on Sunday I sat and stared
at life with bold eyes of appreciation.
A bowl of fruit, clean water, pure air a joy,
the patterns of wood grain, all clearly art.   


Random

Insane scorpions of civility
with doubt loaded as debt.
Scratch-eyed mad in lies
studded with probability.

 
Thoughts

As-ragged-as-jagged-canyons
slotted-across-rotted-horizons -
… past wafted wildflower petals
as softly aloft as angelic feathers.


Radical

Like neurons from a gun
What have we become –
Slaves to microwaves
Lives as liquid assets


Mother

New birth from the moon womb of earth,
a beautiful life with seasons, the goodwill
of sun and rain. Then druids and megaliths,
and puzzles of history about gods of mystery.


Rebellion

Yahweh is dead, I think,
this is good, most likely.
But what happens when
half a bipolarity remains?


Cycle

There are ancient layers
imprinted with extinction.
Patterns of fallen leaves,
lost creatures of the seas.


Alkali

A fisherman’s grave, buttressed with stone,
cradles a young man’s remains. The spirit
survives, soars high through the lives
circled around assumptions of grief.


Zero

As line 1
            runs on,
so line 2
            will do.


Weld

A goddam army cook popped off a round
outside the gates of the base as we arrived,
making rifles safe in the back of a cattle truck.
Fucking ricochet hit the thigh of a guy next to me.


Clouds

I like to ride waves in the sea,
on a retro blue paddle ski.
Slipping down watery walls,
a rush away from thought.


Around

You say you love me
but I do not understand
the nature of this promise,
only the arrows of domesticity.


Ogre 1&2

The North Face is the murder wall.
When the sun touches the cliffs,
rocks and boulders let go and fall,
scattering and battering ice and bone.

The mountain face is dire peril for those who venture there
Five days by rope and piton, ice-axe and crampon.
At night, just pinpricks of light, seen far below.
Death Bivouac is two feet wide but thousands high.


Music

I need emotion -
to write. Even passion,
if you will. A lovely muse,
near yet far, a flowering of desire.


Dawn

The wind, the wind, it howls and blows
at shadows speeding swiftly by starlight.
The night, the night, it slows and grows
in silence of spirits as assassinated by satan.


Lost

The musk-ox herd shambles into polar fog,
into the whiteout’s ceaseless chatter and rattle
of crashing floes, growling ever closer. The cold is deep,
a blue vision of frozen ice, razor green as the grasping sea.


Cursive

So Grandma finally buckled
and bought a smartphone.
Grandpa, meanwhile,
has nothing to do.


Birthdays

The same candle and photo,
this year a chocolate muffin.
Time is an easement but still,
a bottle of gin and Pink Floyd.


Ghosts

This blue bowl of the sky
saturates the day with heat.
The cobalt sea though,
advances in halos of fog.


Trok

Colin the Mighty
chugs and rumbles
in a surge of torque,
his progress is majestic.


Yesterday

We met for coffee one morning,
as some old lovers do. How are you –
The moment seemed strange, for 
the shape of her lips had changed.


Zonnenstralen

Friends from far away,
here for a week and a day.
Sublimely devoured in morsels,
time savoured as saffron parcels.


Descent

Speckles of rain from
moon drifted clouds.
The dark earth swallows,
and dry stars are serene.


Gulp

Gluten, dairy and sugar
is an acid brew of inflammation
which is then the factory floor
for all disease and disintegration.


Freddie

A man walked all the way
from Burundi to South Africa,
to push shopping trolleys
and hustle for car park tips.


Thirty For-ty

A day of little poems,
of words and phrases
into spaces and places,
united with punctuation.

 

User avatar
Colm Roe
Posts: 2697
Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:45 am

Re: National Poetry Month Celebration 2019 - Post Poems Here!

Post by Colm Roe » Mon Apr 29, 2019 5:25 pm

30 ways to die.
#30

We don't lust for life,
it's just greed and
fear and vanity.
We don't grieve for others,
we just cry for our pathetic selves.

Rejoice in the dying
in the unshackling
in the release,
befriend it early
not like a lover, but
like the enemy of your enemy,
close enough to know
but distant enough
to just observe...for now.

And when it comes,
and come it will,
it might go away
if you stay
really
really
still.

 

Locked