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

[42BelowsBack]

The
Jagged
jigsaw
puzzle

Sleep. Doesn't come easy.
It comes quick. …………..
In an instant my eyes droop
……………I am blown off
the roof………In an alt world
greasy tin slide, ….grainy
images super imposed….

The meat…….. My body
blossoms into your body.
Your ribs exposed……..
-accusatory………Bone
fingers reaching from
inside my spine… your

……my chest flapping, a
fish… my mouth moves
out of its place… there is
no candy in two bodies
morphing un-controllably

The limbs of it, …of us,
…spread out. I will wake
sweaty and write I saw
you last night…… in my
dream I hear their lingo
then, a metallic click?

A thousand times more…l
…I wake thinking it
would have been me,
and when I sleep I keep
knowing that there is still
a
bit of you still missing
-out there somewhere.



NQ 31 Halloween came early.

 

[Angeline]

Autumn Leaves

In autumn the beautiful scent of decay
Is rising miasma to curl the leaves
And paint the trees in dying hues at play
In autumn the beautiful scent of decay
Accompanies this riotous display
As if life, not death, danced on the breeze
In autumn. The beautiful scent of decay
Is rising miasma to curl the leaves.




Week 38, Poem 1, Total 43

 

[Ash999]

Bengali folk song 1950-s' ...translation....:----
' i have named her mind,: Madhumati!!!
Her Eyes , I call....
Mirror....
I love her,
So much:
Why doth her Eyes Not Sparkle'n...
Speak to me??!

 

[42BelowsBack]

In the annals of my
youthful mind an
orgasm was a very
short story.
Holidaying at my aunties place
I discover the attic is filled with
many things, including books.
I uncover an old writing desk
with a dusty window view. Its
surface a grainy age old oak.
Casting around, my youthful
inquisitive mind abruptly
pokes up.
A diary! One of many! Quickly
seated with a selection I read
with the pregnant silence of
hope.
Leafing fingertips and eyes skip
then slip into passages of her
hand written prose.
I discover she is a poet. Abruptly
my mental wandering is arrested.
A single note falls feather lite like
music into my lap. A kiss
in faded lipstick stares daring
me to open her note up,
I hear the siren call of her body,
Silently a battle begins, my
body rebels,
my mind in collusion, then
con-clusion, aha! Got it! She
is only my aunt via the
mechanism of an age old
social contract.
I hear the mental
click, irrationally locked in.
The matter is decided.
She and I permissibly
could get related.
My uncle is a dick.
I have my winning youthful
argument.
Not to mention,
the real considerations are: I am
eighteen, plus she is forty
four, double D whatevers!
What could go wrong with
all of that? Nothing!
Quietly. lipstick note in hand,
I tiptoe back down. Mid step
the ladder squeaks, fck! my
feet tremble as quiet as a hand
held open buttock.
I stall mid ladder
then
whiplash quick
check my six…
the coast is clear,
but, the house feels
weird, somehow thick,
almost as if, its…
holding its breath.
A pregnant silence descends.
I hear a footstep, my foot slips!
I come crashing down!
cheek hits the floor,
me legs all limbs about my face
the lipstick note by my nose,
then mom’s shoes (fck!) she
picks up the note, Now more
than my face hurts,
I see her eyes widen
then squint, shut. She looks up
and unceremoniously laughs
her fucking head off!


N32

 

[Tzara]

Summer Romance

The heat subsides. We enter fall,
where days grow shorter and more chill,
when love poems wither to mere scrawls
as heat subsides. We enter, fall,
and can't recover joy at all.
Our love-life now is dead and still—
its heat subsides and enters fall,
its days left shorter and more chill.

Week 38 : Poem 2 : Total 49

 

[_Land]

In the Shadow of Yeats
By Bear Sage

I lay the hush of twilight in your hands,
the quiet hours gathered like petals.
Each one carries a dream I have sown,
fragile as morning, trembling as dawn.

The ground between us softens to breath,
each step a whisper, each pause a prayer.
Do not hurry the silence of my heart,
for silence is where it learns to live.

I have placed the weight of my longing
in the shadow of your open palms.
It rests there, a bird not yet flown,
its wings aching to trust the wind.

Your gaze is the tide that carries me,
your touch the quiver beneath the reed.
What I offer is no shield of stone,
but glass, still warm from the fire.

Move gently, as though the earth itself
were listening for the sound of your feet.
The smallest crack will echo forever
through chambers I have given you.

And if you must walk away, beloved,
leave softly, leave like snow in spring.
For even departure has a holiness
when it honors the dream it leaves behind.

 

[_Land]

Offering Emily
By Bear Sage

A Sparrow — left its Syllable —
upon the Garden — Rail —
so slight — it split Infinity —
and pierced the Morning — Veil —

I thought of You — in quiet Hymn —
that fastened Self — to Rhyme —
a Pilgrim — through the inward World —
an Archivist — of Time —

No Steeple — marked Your Sabbath —
No Pulpit — held Your Creed —
yet still — You broke the Heaviest Bread —
and gave — to Human Need —

So take — this timid Couplet —
this Ember — from my Hand —
too frail — for all the Light You lit —
yet hoping — You might — stand —

 

[SpermFactory]

ALL MEN ARE WANKERS

In the morning the light fades under the darkness of rustling leaves in multi colored sheets and duvets, hands ablaze searching the wood for the tree’s that bough that branches into cupids power arrow of love flows stiffly soft to the touch the branch drops the wood’s lower limbs all a sprawl blistering in speed the little tributaries of youth grow in a cycle as old as man the glowing smattering of tissues that day breaks into a man’s hand’s memories of women that they like.


(34)

 

[_Land]

Spoken poetry
Cartography of our Bedroom

https://suno.com/s/Zkp0HQounyttfxGV

 

[Tzara]

Reconciliation

Things went badly last night.
I drank too much again
and spilled beer on your tablecloth

so the room smelled of spoiled hops
all evening. When we tried to kiss
you recoiled, saying

my lips were as bitter
as an unripe persimmon, so sour
you almost forgave the coarse grit

of my unshaven cheek rasping
along the long flute of your neck.
Thank God your window was left open

so we could hear the clatter and clomp
of the dancers in the square
and for the mirror

on your closet door
where we could see our joined image,
reminding us we were still in love.

Week 38 : Poem 3 : Total 50

 

[Angeline]

Heavy Weather

The evening sky was sickly
green as if it might be ill
and neither birdcall, bee drone
nor cricket chirp broke the silence.

Ominous sky. I'd seen it before
in the Midwest. Tornado sky.

The phone cord came nowhere
near the bathroom so no comfort
from the voices of home, just me
sitting on the tub's edge, waiting

while ozone's sharp scent came
with the shrieking wind, crack
of thunder then a fall of breaking
glass from next door by the pool

like a harbinger for the rain
that screamed a cacophony
of nature: Iowa in late March
and I taste the bitter sour sick

I can't hold back, wipe my mouth
with the flannel washcloth. Will I never
see my children again, die the unknown
unfortunate occupant of Room 412?

Jason laughs though not unkindly
when I tell him the next day.
He's a farmer's son, accustomed
to crazy weather and of course

we're working: always this show
will go on.





Week 39, Poem 1, Total 44

 

[_Land]

In response to Mary Oliver's one or two things

More then Two
By Bear Sage
°
I have heard the world say
there are one or two things
worth knowing.
But I have walked beside you,
and the count is different.
°
You, with your quiet breath
that threads through the grass.
Me, with my listening,
as if the earth
were inside my chest.
°
The heron lifts,
and we do not speak.
Even silence
is doubled,
because it is ours.
°
A leaf spins down.
Your hand moves,
catching it.
The moment
turns into permanence.
°
I wake in the night
to the shape of you
beside me.
The darkness becomes
a softer field.
°
So let the poems say
one or two things.
I answer back:
it is always
you and me.

 

[_Land]

Polaroid
By Bear Sage

I strayed outside the black and white
of your Polaroid expectations
choosing to live my life in full color.

You framed me flat, corners curling,
a frozen smile trapped in gloss,
but I bled beyond the borders.

My hands smudged the chemicals,
turned shadows into wild bloom,
faces into flames, silence into song.

I refused the click of your shutter,
that impatient snap demanding stillness,
a command for permanence in a world
that insists on movement.

You built albums of what should be
each square a coffin of moment
yet I found breath in the blur,
life in the streak of light
screaming across a cracked lens.

Your black-and-white devotion
reeked of control,
yet even your chemicals could not bind me.
I was spill, I was overexposure,
I was the light leak refusing your frame.

You see, memory is not fixed
it floods, it fades, it resurrects.
It stains fingers with chemical blue,
warps paper in summer’s heat,
burns edges until all that remains
is the subject’s ungoverned fire.

 

[_Land]

Spilling the Forest Forward
By Bear Sage
Inspired by What Carries Us by Emily Jungmin Yoon


First, there was an acorn.

Imagine a husk splitting,
a root pressing down, a shoot rising.

Imagine standing for centuries,
bending only to storms, never to haste.

Imagine carrying seasons in your body,
rings tightening, widening,
a record of thirst, a record of plenty.

In crowns of branches, birds nested,
squirrels ferried hunger from limb to soil.
We learned to spill ourselves,
to let go of what we made
so others might carry it farther.

One time I watched a child
kick through a litter of leaves,
her joy the crackle of my shed skin.
I wondered if all my labor
was only to become her fleeting music.

A complaint of longing.
We are such spilling creatures.
And when I say we are trees,
is that a metaphor? Or prophecy?
Rooted in silence, yet speaking
through scatter, through shade.

I like the idea of falling
as continuation, that the end of branch
is not death but the soil’s arrival,
a dark station where life changes trains.

So when I say we are trees,
perhaps what I mean
is to remember that patience
looks forward with wide vision,
not for the kill but for the next season.

What I want to do is slow down time.

Imagine love as a forest.

Think about us—leaves apart,
yet wind carries our whispers
turning and burning, rust and gold,
until we are finally with each other,
laughing through bare branches,
unclothed yet alive in our roots.

In this era of brevity in this era of harvest in this
era of falling, yes, I’m trying to make you
stand with me longer. Yes, this whole time,

the acorn, the leaf, the whole thing
about falling, I said to say this,

that this is what carries us, the slow
consideration of what each other is, can be.

And first, there was an acorn.

 

[Tzara]

The Poet Comments on His Lack
of Consistent Inspiration in This Challenge,
But Doggedly Forges Ahead Despite
His Want of Verbal Facility

Another week, another poem.
This sometimes seems too hard to take,
As if a tree with clogged up phloem
Could nourish leaves, its life at stake.
So I fall back on silly rhyming,
On jokes that lack the proper timing,
And on this stanza form I love
That saves me when push comes to shove.
It isn't simple, weekly versing—
To find a theme to write about,
To find those words which twist and shout
(Unless you're _Land, I mutter, cursing).
But here's another fruit, a pome
All froth and filigree and foam.

Week 39 : Poem 1 : Total 51

 

[Angeline]

Dear Rock and Roll,

You get a comma with my salutation
because we're close, on intimate terms
since American Bandstand when Chubby
Checkers taught me to Twist and I danced

with the bedpost, refining technique~
drying my bum with a towel, grinding
out a cigarette under my heel, well
metaphorically, but I mastered twisting

and moved on to Pony, Swim, Frug
even Mashed Potatoes because how
can you not swing your busy hips,
and let your backbone slip? Music

pulses through the veins, jives
and jumps you with relentless beat
like some ferocious freight train
carrying you away from the safety

of childhood and into the uncertain
but exciting realm of hormones, zinging
when some silky-haired boy flashes
his eyes at you, asks you to dance.




Week 39, Poem 2, Total 45

 

[Ash999]

someone should be there
someone, one can call one's very own
who will share all sorrows.....
even if he or she is not near
she can also be far.......
but someone close to one's heart
staying awake at night
eyes full of unshed tears
remembering broken promises
heartbreak......
forgotten dreams.....
loneliness invades the darkness
bitter unconsummated love...
creates starkness.....

 

[Xenofidelity78]

is it a shield
or is it a crutch
does it help you survive?
or do you lean on it too much?

Maybe you needed it
once upon a time
and then it became a behavior
a cope you believed to survive

because otherwise you bleed
torn open from the inside out
it's the kind of hurt you can't stop
with a bandage or a shout

So you found a little pleasure
and in that moment it was enough
after all we do what is rewarding
and we eat what feeds us

but do you do it now because you want to?
or did somewhere along the line want become need?
did you learn to give up and trade bitter moments
for a life spent limping and on your knees?

 

[Kat90xx]

There once was an old lass from Abernaint
Whose hubby made love quite faint
He’d heave and he’d grunt
While she stared on quite blunt
Thinking the ceiling could do with a paint

 

[Mrtenant]

And the World Keeps Turning

Was I ever the antelope
Skipping across the prairie
Full of youth and vigor
On a bright Spring day

Yesterday I was the eagle
Soaring high in the deep blue
Then diving fearlessly
Certain of my prey

Leaves now whispering, it is time
Night comes with its moon and stars
Where will you go my dear
When the cold wind blows

Spinning the long years to Winter
He is coming for us all
Come share with me my warmth
Shelter in our hearts

Sunrise returns in full glory
Gleaming through the icicles
Amid the the melting drips
Shaking off the cold

 

[_Land]

Question to the Man I Will Become

By Bear Sage

°

Future self,

tell me what still lingers

when the marrow of time has thinned

are there moments you cradle

like river stones in your palm,

worn smooth from touching them

too often in the dark?

°

Do you carry the weight

of chances left behind,

like locked doors

whose keys rusted in your pocket?

Or have you built new houses

where regret cannot enter?

°

If I could press my ear

to your chest,

would I hear laughter echo louder

than the silence of sorrow,

or is there a hollow there

where I buried a “maybe”

instead of a “yes”?

°

Tell me what you would change.

Was it a word swallowed

when love needed breath?

Was it a day you gave away

to worry, when joy

was waiting on the porch?

°

Future self,

I ask not for prophecy

but for mercy

the kind that teaches me now

to live with fewer ghosts,

to leave behind

a trail of flame instead of ash.

 

[Angeline]

Lost and Found

In the Willywags
of Maine where we lost our way
turkeys crossed the road,
gabbling, slow as molasses.
I've never been happier.

Week 39, Poem 3, Total 46

 

[_Land]

Parallel
By Bear Sage

Two lines drawn in the dark,
never touching, never apart,
faithful and unbroken,
always one breath away.

Geometry of heart and hand,
angles only we understand.
The world divides, numbers fall,
still you remain beside me.

Count the steps across the plane,
different roads yet not in vain.
Every proof, every sign
whispers that your fate is mine.

In the silence I still hear you,
echoes tracing lines so clear.
Through infinity we are carried,
closer than the world appears.

If the stars should shift their frame,
we remain inside the same.
Even when the cosmos bends,
this is a road that never ends.

Two lines through time and space,
two souls written in one trace.
Endless journey, endless song,
always near, where we belong.

https://suno.com/s/0WXMwmvszF6qW7wQ

Redone as a song

 

[Lily1011]

The Pain That Stays

I carry a scream
that never leaves my throat.
A cry,
frozen mid-birth,
lodged somewhere between ribs and memory.

I fail myself
again and again —
never there
when I need me most.

Inside me burns a bitterness
dark enough
to poison a village,
to turn rivers black.

“Why?” I ask the air —
no answer comes.
“For how long?” I whisper —
silence replies.

Only pain that cuts deep enough
seems strong enough
to call my grief to the surface,
to remind me I am still alive.

 

[Ash999]

Translation Rajesh Khanna love ballad circa 1971...
o my Peace of Mind.../...Heart
please do not desert me Darling...
this is the first Step on Stairway to Heaven
and thou art so nervous.....
if you grab my hand...
even if i fall...i will get up
if you leave me Babeee
where will i go.....?????!
with thou by my side...
i feel so strong
and blissful....
I feel I can change the world
please do not leave me Darling
All your Desires and Fantasies ...
Are important...
I am too insignificant.....
Whatever you decide
I will Not judge you....
I lose myself in lustrous jungle
Of your luxuriant hair....