30 Poems in 30 Days (Redux)

Neonurotic

Share some skin
Joined
Apr 22, 2011
Posts
1,405
* This thread is a recreation of a closed thread, but you can find the old one here.


This is a challenge.

Yes, a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 consecutive days to encourage you to get off your lazy poetic asses, out of your winter blahs and back to writing some poetry. Just so you all know, I totally ripped this idea off a community in Live Journal that I'm a part of, but since I like the people over here better I'd rather try it over here instead of there.

So these are the rules:
• The challenge is to write 30 poems in the course of 30 consecutive days.

• All poems written in the challenge must be posted here in this thread, but you can submit them too. You also can take poems you wrote on the other challenge threads of the given day for the 30 Poems In 30 Days challenge. Meaning, if you write something The 5 Senses Poem Challenge thread today, you can also use that same poem for your 30 Poems in 30 Days the same day. You cannot nick old poems and call them new ones.

• If you take the challenge, start the title (subject line) of each entry with "(x-y)" replace the "x" for the number of attempt of the challenge (including those that were unsuccessful) and "y" is the number of poem in that attempt. You may also add a title to your poem as long as you have the attempt and poem number too.

• You may stop and restart the challenge at any time. For example, if you forget on the 17th day to write a poem you can restart at "1" on day 18, which would make it a second attempt of the challenge, being: 2-1 (what a bummer if that does happen).

• The most important rule is to have fun!​
GOOD LUCK!


**Please direct any comments to this thread to Trix's a companion to 30 in 30. This will keep this thread all about the poems. Thank you.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
1-1 Counting Stars

Lately I been, I been losing sleep
dreaming about the things that we could be
but baby, I been, I been prayin' hard
Said no more counting dollars
we'll be counting stars


Lately I been, I been losing sleep
falling into bed way too late then
out of it again before you wake,
avoiding what I see when I close my eyes.
Wanna know why? It's fear of being yours.

I've been
dreaming about the things that we could be
we've been living less than
and I don't want that, want everything
love is supposed to be.

I stopped believing long ago
missing what we've lost
but baby, I been, I been prayin' hard
to get that love back
but baby, the cost is

much too much and don't know
if we're worth all that together;
separate maybe we are.
You said no more counting dollars
and we'll see who pays

but we both know it will be me.
Can't do it anymore because I'm a broken man
without a good night's rest,
the rest is the death of us,
don't grieve long, we'll be counting stars.
 
Last edited:
1-1

Absinthe

Drip. Drip. Drip
over sugar spooned

onto a laceleaf utensil.
It's why you don't get drunk

in Montparnasse.
The ceremony

is way too slow. Instead,
you huff Gitanes

at each other
as if you're interested.

And when you leave the café,
you don't look at each other

as that might mean your union
was union. Which it is not.
 
1-1 of 30 Live Writes

Neo you bitch, I'll get you
and roast you and serve you
up cold. Oh revenge

for the poems that roll
under the bed and the songs
that play on that loop in my head.
Oh Time! Oh frabjous 30 days!

Well perhaps three or four
will shine and compel even
from me some cause for joy
but until then I'm blaming

you (and probably Tzara, too).
 
Last edited:
1-1

Abstinence

Slosh, foam, gurgle
liquid stirred with phallic swizzle sticks
tip of a febrile tongue licking cream

Abstinence smolders
under heathen mistletoe
glare poisoning the eggnog -- Indecent!

rolling in spice-specked waves of cream
whiskey sugar and eggs — eggs!
Loosening pinstriped tongues
Peeling down stockings
Sip by sip

Indulgence bursts free
Slosh, foam, gurgle
 
1/1 Here I go, again.

Stretched,
an elastic band
about to snap
and sting the hand
that holds it but,
you say, it is self-
induced like the
pain of a picked
scab - there's blood
spilt there too - mine,
again but it's all in
fun and, I tell myself,
in the interest of growth.
 
umm

1-1

what a creature a poem is:
not fish, nor foul;
a white bowl
to cup the sum of image, thought
tangents, the
geometry of love;
garden of the healer
or acrid trench of those who've
spent too long in bitter winters of defeat...
a marbled whip;
emotional trick
or treat.

it invites investigation;
bids reader wield your spoon

pavlovian receptors -
tastebuds howling for a distant moon.
 
Last edited:
1-2

cocktail-recipe-blue-martini.jpg


Blue Curaçao

Her drink is the color
.....of the sky
.....of the sea beyond her shoulder
.....of the film in my head
brought on by the swell of her breasts.
I see my fingers
trailing across her unclothed skin
.....like a wave smoothing sand
.....again and again
.....as if water is hypnotized
by the concept of land.
 
Last edited:
1/1

Unsettled

Even after all this time,
the water under the bridge
having bogged down to a
trickle from the ashen dam
we both left there, I can
picture that smile, those
crow's feet bordered sparks
that initially drew me in,
even if I can't quite make out
how her words sounded--
ears still fill with an echo of
our mingled moans, though,


:cool:
 
1-2 Too Close

It feels like I am just too close to love you,
So I'll be on my way.

It feels like I am just too close to love you.
Loving you is too hard to breathe.

Right here, underwater with you
is not my world.
This is a Pisces' ocean
I don't belong; an air sign needs air.

Baby, sorry
you can't give anything I need,
just bubbles in my heart.
The pressure is much too much,
more than I can take.
The ache and burn say to decompress
before it's too late
but maybe it already is.
Maybe, I am already dead

Mayday, mayday
there's nothing left so I'll be on my way.
 
Last edited:
1-1

Genesis Of Breath

And Adam took his soul from God
but what of bone of his bones
and flesh of his flesh?
What of her that was his gift?

I know. I watched your lifeblood
flow from you, in great gouts
that your soul nearly fled
free of that torment which consumes
your very being, fled from me

I could not bear to go alone
you are flesh of my flesh
and to watch that breath
return so laboured, so slowly

filled my soul with elation
and today you came home to sleep
with me and now it is my turn
to be free of torment
and finally to breathe
 
1/2 Another Holiday Season

Stockings up,
dangling in a line across
the mantle and full to
overflowing,

Tree lit,
shining in a the way you
always hope the eyes
of your kids do when
watching for Santa,

Belt cinched,
breaking out the tool kit
to punch another notch
in the too old leather
ignoring how its surface
flakes apart.
 
1-2

Such a sweet girl, a good disposition
but when I was bad, I was the horrid
despoiler of bureau drawers a princess

of distress who dragged a leg and took
her time and never gave in and always
had that secret grin irony my urban badge

of honor. Then you broke me like a twig
in a stiff wind, snapped me clean off
my moorings, sluiced into Nowheresville

ejected in scorn and ire. I've traveled
upstream and gathered some stones
from the river, heavy smooth and pure.

I hear you from the slow distance of water,
a chug of bubbles that break and dissipate.
 
1/2 Mirror Image

I am not young anymore
but was one of those ugly-
attractive girls you are not
sure about, neither plain
nor pretty. A slight over-bite,
not unattractive in most,
my smile reveals too many
teeth to sustain that.
Blue eyes, good skin and firm
chin, no sign of duplicates
even in my forties. I can still
see that girl in my morning
mirror behind care-worn
crows’ feet and smile-lines.
I comfort myself knowing
she is still in there,
somewhere.
 
Last edited:
1-2

From the Borrow a Song Lyric thread-

I marvelled as I beheld
that moment in a hurricane
A man stood in a space
where no one should be
another climbed a wall
of kaleidoscopic graffiti

yet barren to the east
and I heard the chant begin
"Tear down this wall!"

Like a stormwind that will ring
the freedom bell


the image blew across the cheek
of the marksman before
his finger squeezed
the trigger and froze him fast
in that December moment
on a glory night that I believed
we'd never see

The Scorpions Winds Of Change Click on the photos to be taken to a clip of Reagans speech at the Brandenburg Gate and to a video of the song.
 
1-1

NO
I did the right thing
I asked,
you looked at me
as a bug beneath your feet
drove off into a laughing
horizon

So I did it any way
invited you along
with a few of her
closest friends
when dessert
rolled round
I got on one knee and asked
the look on her face
photographed in my memory,
as is yours

when wedding day rolled round
the sound of a tinkling glass
revibrated halting the revelry
you started your speech saying
"I'm losing a daughter,"
finishing somewhere I forget

my mothers speech a lot simpler

"shut the fuck up"
you have just gained a son
 
1 - 2

too?

did she
touch his face
in the dark
spill sorrow's dreams
to track hot cheeks
tuck cold hands
around his form
to seek a warmth she
only ever fooled herself she'd found
make plans for salad days
when short, dark days
hung motionless on their horizon
search the soil for green shoots
where frozen mud clung hard
write poetry to stay this side of sane...
 
Last edited:
1-3

ontherocks.png


Campari, Rocks, Orange Slice

is hardly as bitter
as our final separation
and its headache merely lingers
through the next morning

they are both red,
though in our case that jagged hue
is crusted blood
 
1-3 The Ultimate Shoulda Woulda Coulda

Last time he seen a doctor was too long ago
thirty some odd years. The first years
were too broke and then there was
a new revolutionary business
a new fangled flim-flam invention
so he was too busy. More time flew
and he just plain forgot.

Fast forward twenty-nine years,
eleven months and two weeks ago
(he doesn't count the days, what difference would it have made?)

He can't eat and can't swallow.
It's fear now the reason he doesn't go.
He's starving but wouldn't go
because he's afraid of what it could be

The wife watches him wither,
gripes and moans, "Will you go now?"
Finally yes, it's hard to breath not to,
be damned if he does, double damned if he doesn't.

It wasn't fear he finds, but a premonition,
stage 3 cancer, fight-able
some hope
maybe

then two weeks later he coughed so hard he broke a rib.
It's in his bones, his spine gone stage 4.
no hope.
no maybe.
 
Last edited:
1-2

1ctNT1j


Arak

It looks like pure water
melted from the snows of Mount Lebanon
But in a mysteries of the Orient trick
water turns to wine
white wine skim milk that tastes
like black jelly beans
lost in the plastic grass
of an Easter basket.

Looking over the dozen mezza dishes
with alcohol-softened eyes the realization
of betrayal
Yusuf there has blue eyes
Mariam could pass for Irish

Arabs are supposed to be Brown
Or Black or something other than Caucasian
And scary.

They are supposed to be scary.

Just when you think you
understand the Arabs
They serve you Arak.
 
Last edited:
1-2

adrenaline dumps
past time of the primitive
where the lizard brain drains
all thought, shapes your
reason with two options
fight or flee,
me I always chose to fight
I revelled in the might
fist on flesh in the middle
of the night
I was addicted to the dump

that surge that makes the
brain purge itself of reason
it's fighting season
drunks, punks, skaters
I didn't care, wasn't scared
would fight anyone,
a self made pitbull

fought a giant,
6ft 11, 420 pounds
can still remember the sounds
of his head hitting asphalt
my assault continued
until he couldn't

what woke me up
going home to my daughter
eye black, ribs cracked
barstool to the back
boot to the head
three men vs me
they went to hospital
I was violent cocky and brash
wore blood
like a first place sash

a hiss when she tried to kiss
my swollen lip,
growling in anger
nearly bit my own flesh
and blood

I quit that day
no more fighting
for pay,

my soul was blackened
you little one dampened
my fury, tempered my mettle
made me better
helped me settle
into a proper life
where violence is a mere memory
or something I see on TV

when you say I am the best daddy ever
I buoy with silent pride, proud to not be
dead or in jail
 
1 - 3

sneaky cupid

beguiled with feather bedding
enchanted with sweet waters
bright and bubbling
wide skies and heart-wood fires
smoke in my eyes
cocktales
and music enough to bring me to my feet or
lay me down on suppled leather

air and fire
forever the water
always the stones

glancing down
the arrow surprised me
 
Last edited:
1-1

tap, tap
as you wait for the queen
of hearts
fingers cold, like razors
invited, burning, welcome
sorrowing sawing
deep
distress
to give birth
to a butterfly
 
1-4 I Adore

I see Grace, Marlene and Marilyn
good company
chique for Charlize.

Blondey in gold, quite literally, wearing
a fortune. 24 carat, dripping
honey diamonds, bedazzle
for ears, neck and fingers,
walks the catwalk in haute couture.

With the the lights on her, all others
are shadows, eclipsed
by her visage. I'm left in her wake
and thank La maison Dior
for bringing out the stars.

a9c81c3bc439f74446e80a449426d0fe.jpg
 
1-3

Million-Hai-Red

Someone must have slipped me a Mickey Finn
washed down with olives and vermouth-damp gin
I thought I was paying for unnamed sin
then looked in the mirror at a redhaired twin

Gone were my mousey, dirty-blonde locks
instead I was sporting a pelt fit for a fox
Not ruby, nor orange nor some shade from a box
this hair was as natural as me not wearing socks

Reluctant I wiggled out of black underwear
and looked down to see if it matched down there
Amazed, I regarded my red pubic hair
and wondered if hubby'd found a genii somewhere

And had wished that he'd married a redheaded girl
who'd rode his virginity with her bright ginger curls
bouncing and flouncing as her pink nipples twirled
while he exploded all over with sticky sperm-pearls

Perhaps I was asleep and was caught in a dream
or reality'd shifted and all was just as it seemed.
I pulled up my pants and went down to my teens
who ignored me as usual while I drank coffee with cream

So I gave up wondering if this was real or fantasy
and decided that a redhead was just who I'd be.
The only way this could be perfect was if he loved me
as much as before, so I'd wait and see

And then he came in to the kitchen and said with a grin
I see you're no worse for consuming all of that gin.
Do you remember us celebrating our lottery win?
So now my beauty, let our new life begin!
 
Back
Top