It's the 2025 Poem-A-Week Challenge! (This is a *poems only* thread.)

[Wonderer67]

Cold Chicken Salad

On a hot summer day
Nothing like it!

My wife bought some premade chicken salad
A few days ago
The blandest
Most boringest chicken salad
I ever et

So I souped it up:
A fine dice of onion
And carrots
Broccoli, stems too (I was out of celery)
Topped it off with a little bit of mustard
Salt and pepper to taste
And a touch more mayo

Now THAT’S a chicken salad!
So cold…
On a hot early August Sunday afternoon
Along with a coke
So refreshing after stacking wood
In the August moisture
Sitting on a stump
Near the woodpiles

A yellow jacket zipped around
Wanting a piece of the action
I didn’t mind
It was too good just being alive
And in this very
Moment

28/52

(If you want a full chicken salad recipe just add 2-3 chicken breasts (cubed) and some more mayo…)

 

[Wonderer67]

Not A Great Night…
But Not A Bad One Either

Heat lightning
Far off
Blue white flashes off to the north
Without sound
Nothing on the radar
Except the pale blue glow
Of my phone at 3:28

By 4:16 I give up on sleep
And step outside
Into air as thick as your breath, hon
Restless as your kegs
And my insides

One last dull flash
Even further out now
Am I living a Bob Seeger song?

Now the crickets are doing their thing
Dropping their relentless jams
A ceaseless background noise
So loud I don’t even hear it anymore

I pace the patio
Walking the perimeter
Straining my ears
I want to turn the crickets down
To listen for thunder
That never cums

4:40 Neck bent to the stars
Clear skies now… stars out too
No lightning for 20 minutes or so
Maybe a stray Perseid?
Sliding down the dark

I’ve always loved
A good shooting star

Now it’s just me
And the stars
Thinking of life and love and happiness and heartbreak
The usual freight

Too heavy for sleep
Might as well stay up

It’s almost time to get up anyway

29/52

 

[Ash999]

There once was a bookie called Morse
Who wanted to be rid like a horse
He whinnied “Neigh! Neigh!”
As the wife whipped away
And now he wants a divorce!

Then the Bookie: Mr. Morse
Invented telegraphic code
Which became for Progress: a Force?!!!
His sub-maso fetish he did decode!!
And today he is Famous , perforce!!!

 

[SmilingLez]

Then the Bookie: Mr. Morse
Invented telegraphic code
Which became for Progress: a Force?!!!
His sub-maso fetish he did decode!!
And today he is Famous , perforce!!!

There once was a code so bold,
It shook my core, uncontrolled,
With dots and with dashes,
It fired all my flashes,
A rhythm that never grows old.

 

[Ash999]

There once was a code so bold,
It shook my core, uncontrolled,
With dots and with dashes,
It fired all my flashes,
A rhythm that never grows old.

Tis' a Tribute to Samuel Morse!!!
' with Dots and Dashes'
This immortal Line has Poetic Force
Dots 'n Dash clashes
Lez owns the Vocab Bourse!!
Her Genius flashes ...

 

[_Land]

Rotten Anthem in Chrome

I am the splintered prophet
bolted to a sidewalk vein,
roots nailed into concrete coffins
while holograms scream commercials
across the smog-stained dawn.

My branches rattle like broken antennae,
catching only static,
only sirens,
only the laughter of glass towers
that drink the sky dry.

Rats stage revolutions in my hollow chest,
their teeth write manifestos
in pulp and rot.
I cheer them on
the only audience left
for a dying trunk with iron lungs.

Once I sang with rivers,
now I choke on subway fumes,
a cathedral gutted for circuitry.
Even the rain is fluorescent,
dripping neon scars down my bark,
graffiti I never asked for,
graffiti I keep.

The humans pass
face-masks glowing,
eyes wired to pocket suns.
They don’t see me raising
a middle-finger limb
at their endless scrolling apocalypse.

I am the last green heretic,
my anthem a cough of ash,
a scream disguised as photosynthesis.
When I fall,
let it be a molotov
splintering sparks into the skyline,
a final riot
from the casket in the park

 

[_Land]

When the Sky Split for Her

At dawn the heavens tore,
in reverence, in offering.
Clouds opened like temple doors,
and from their hollowed chambers
rose a table of light.

Bread of nebulae,
wine of first dawn,
fruit carved from constellations,
a feast prepared in her honor.

The ancients gathered in flame and drum,
their voices braided with thunder,
their hands striking rhythms
that shook the horizon awake.
The sun itself bowed,
laying its crown of fire
before her feet.

Her name braided the wind.
Her laughter carried in storm-song.
The rivers lifted silver cups,
mountains bent their spines,
trees clapped their many-leafed hands.
Even the stars
traveled closer to watch.

Each cloud an offering bowl,
overflowing with her touch.
Each echo of song
carving her memory deeper into sky.

And I, among them,
stood as witness,
my breath caught in the marrow of time.
I saw the glory they sang,
I knew the truth they declared.
When the sky split open,
it was to begin eternity
in her honor.

(Elizabeth 10-4-71 to 8-7-2025)

 

[Tzara]

Carry On, Jeeves

He looks like our poor Bertie Wooster,
Though crossed with a fierce banty rooster.
So he struts and he crows
But when chère Flossie blows
It isn't because he seduced her.

Perhaps it was Jeeves who arranged it.
If Bertie had known, he'd have changed it,
For B's todger was shy
But his valet is sly
'Cos let's face it, this toff is a strange git.

So scheduling this little jobby
Jeeves took on as kind of a hobby—
Lady Florence was game,
And though Bertie was lame,
All was set for the Grand Brighton lobby.

It happened one evening, off-season
(For a scandal would seem like high treason).
Florence dropped to her knees,
Bertie started to sneeze,
Mumbling Sorry, rhinitis as reason.

Poor Bertie, unable to finish,
Withdrew with a smile, rather thinnish.
Lady Florence, dismayed,
Turned to Jeeves, who conveyed
He would service her needs undiminished.

A manservant's duties are varied
But honourably out they are carried,
And whatever they be
They're performed perfectly,
One's employer's shortcomings left buried.

Week 35 : Poem 1 : Total 45

 

[42BelowsBack]

Rare ball Lightening
Explodes over the sea’s face
Swimming fish below

N0 28

 

[_Land]

The Little G

Even silicon kneels.
Autocorrect lifts its head,
refusing the smallness,
turning every g into God
whether I asked it to or not.

The code remembers hierarchy,
lines of language stacked like altars,
a quiet submission
built into every machine.
Creations of creation’s children
still bow to the first name.

Always capital,
always crowned.
Not a whisper,
but thunder at the start of the sentence.
The algorithms themselves
are preachers in the chapel of syntax.

Yet that God is He.
Not She.
Not They.
The capital carries the weight of men,
their scepters raised in pulpits,
their voices trained to declare
what divinity looks like.

A little g waits in the margin,
its back bent in refusal,
a protest etched in lowercase.
It asks:
if even our machines know to rise,
who taught them
which way to bow?

 

[SmilingLez]

No string.
Panic!
Fingers deep.
Pain.
Gotcha.
Quick.
Messy.

 

[Angeline]

Autumnal Improv While Listening
to the Chill Tones of Bobby Timmons

Summer is falling down,
tumbling toward cool not
fast enough for me,
longing for October chill
advent of winter.

Get down with you
Persephone young queen
of the undertow. Icy tears
will be Demeter's consolation,
frosted until we green again,
eager faces lifted to the warming

Sun though i'll be counting
days, counting the blessings
of strawberries and garden
fresh tomato sandwiches,
but watching the calendar

yearning for that wee nip
to right my world again.


Week 35, Poem 1, Total 39