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

[Angeline]

Another Holiday

Aunt Zelly is five-six,
a foot of which is red hair,
a bright, sprayed confection
that towers over her birdy
frame like candy floss.

She is tiny and stylish,
just ask her! Mister G says
I'm the perfect sample size,
and she twirls to show full skirt,
little waist in wide belt.

Uncle Len is proud of her.

He squeezes my knee,
tells me knock-knock jokes.
He's the baby of the three
siblings and Bubbe smiles
on him but not so much
on Zelly who was a divorceé

and stole her son's heart.

Family secrets are crowded
at the table between platters
and the bottle of Manischewitz
with its sickly syrup smell.

They switch to the mama loshen,
Yiddish, when they don't
want us to understand,
but it's clear enough Zelly
is drunk: she cries in the kitchen
and tells Mama she's "misherable."

We're a Woody Allen movie,
a Philip Roth novel.
Is everyone's family
a cliché?


Week 46, Poem 3, Total 57

 

[Tzara]

Waka

I read her poems
in the dim afternoon light.

Are my lips moving
savoring her chosen words
or imagining her kiss?​

Week 47 : Poem 1 : Total 69

 

[Aquelle]

I HAVE RETURNED

I have returned, returned, returned
A lifteime lived, a lesson learned
Some allies made, some bridges burned

I have arrived, arrived, arrived
I barely made it through alive
I cheated death, and I survived

I'm searching for you, for you, for you
If I fail, what will I do?
Your heart's the only one that's true

You've left me alone, alone, alone
My heart as heavy as a stone
You cut me deep down to the bone

I can't go on, go on, go on
Played like a piece, merely a pawn
I can't stay for another dawn

Now I must leave, must leave, must leave
I killed your man, you'd best believe
And now, like mine, your heart shall grieve

 

[amitheotherone]

Sometimes my words flow free
Maybe they should not be seen
Kept under wraps not expressed
Hidden then lost and suppressed
Find other ways to enlighten
Show them your just frightened
By those storms in you guts
Mind trusts crack and erupt
Eyes awake to this fate
Pain fades the more you take
Exhale out it is just fake

 

[42BelowsBack]

ARS POETICA

THE 13, 10, 12(?) FREE VERSE COMANDMENTS

1. Oh thou free verse poem, how like a sermon, you need not make sense, but woe betide thy fool of a poem that lacks an inner logic and fails to take the reader with it. And has many words. Surpurfluos.
2. Thou shalt show not tell! Beware of thy adverbs and adjectives.
3. Let the salt of thy poems be found in thy verbs and nouns.
4. 
   
5. Thou shalt not fake orgasms as figures of speech. Lest thy clitoris be smitten.
6. A penis is a dick is a prick, is a cock is craftiness. Be not fools writing lines that have nothing to do with anything; I have a hard on.
7. Let thy linebreaks be not random.
8. Seek and welcome thee thy chastisement. Lest thy penance be to read and reread your own poems.
9. 
   
10. The devil in the detail: Craft is paramount; form equals function. Shape – cannot be underestimated. Technique is freedom. But don’t be a fucken mess.
11. Strive to keep thee the right note. When sucking cock. Work on thy tone discovering the appropriate voice. Lest thy cock believes you are not eagerly eating the prick.

10. Follow your ear. Pussy on your mind. Go where you are led. Ask, what have we here? Non binary lines!


11. Mmmmm Revise, mmmm revise, mmm revise. mm? m!


12. Thou shalt taste my words with thy tongue, feel their sounds fill your mouth. And spit them out.




NQ 45 Free verse anachxsts there are no rules only technique.

 

[Angeline]

Sijo

My lost love I watch the sky, constellations don't reveal you.
Stars are crowds, night a vast field, perhaps a road you once traveled
Reveals your trace. A comet moving away from me may return.


Week 47, Poem 1, Total 58

 

[TheRedLantern]

Sijo

Oh Jinny Lee! Beautiful, soft! Your sijo live, in Jae-ho's warm heart!
Your words are pure, float like air. He breathes them, and I am alone
Yet while you wrote, he was lonely, until he joined me in my bed

-- written by the kisaeng Nine Tailed Fox after she lost a sijo contest to her rival Jinny Lee

Week 47, Poem 1, Total 1

 

[_Land]

Crown of Blood

Bear Sage

Her legs shake against the metal rails.
A thin stream runs down her thigh,
darkening the sheets,
pooling at the crook of her knee.
°
The baby’s head crowns,
scalp slick,
hair matted with fluid.
A nurse presses a hand to the belly,
forcing the next contraction.
°
Her breath breaks.
Her fingers claw the mattress,
nails tearing the fabric
as the shoulders rotate through.
°
The room floods with movement,
scissors, clamps, suction.
The baby slides into gloved hands,
lungs collapsing once
before the first thin cry splits open.
°
Her eyes dim.
A monitor bleats.
Blood continues to spill
in a steady, unbroken ribbon
no one can stop.
°
They lift the child to her chest.
Her skin is already cooling.
The cry grows louder.
°
Two bodies touch,
one new,
one leaving,
still connected
by a cord someone has not cut yet.

 

[42BelowsBack]

HULK Stripper.

HULK is standing on the sidewalk, in the noise of the city he is listening to a slow wind dancing with a tree, these sounds are familiar to him, like flipping off his shirt in a mountain of green glass, ripped steel, hairy concrete. HULK is in his head again, doing the two step with a strange woman, his thoughts getting BIGGER, his heart intimate as a leaf with the wind playing with his biceps. HIS HULK mind is in a cinch with the precipice of THIS woman’s blouse. She boops his nose and says, you wouldn’t like me when I’m horny.



NQ46

 

[amitheotherone]

Chance impact

It is carnal and primal
That salt the ocean
High tides sea spray
Lightning touch
Thunderous kiss
Big bang
As two collide
Time stops
Two become one

 

[amitheotherone]

Worth less again

Opening up to a stranger
Was easy at first only anger
Dark secrets words tough
Why’s implied shown rough
Time brought a safe place express
Others pains open need to impress
Those pains feelings words arrive
Thoughts feeling free words drive
Head space change pain dives
Opening up things needs rise
Kaleidoscope eyes see fake
Heart too fooled looks to take
From the only one who cared
That only one that dared
Help you from the darks grip
Patched sanity that was ripped
Mistake made switch flipped
Light turns dark void slipped
Left lost a connection clipped

 

[SmilingLez]

My Tribute to The Beat Generation

City growls—low, animal.
Neon slicks the alleys like hot sweat,
whispers bite at our ankles,
shadows stalking close enough
to taste our heat.

Jazz snarls on busted pavement.
Dreams rupture underfoot—
sugar, sin, the crack of something sweet breaking,
rain puddles swallowing the shine
of everything we’re ready to ruin.

Skyline—razor grin.
Poets spit wildfire over bitter coffee,
words jitter like teeth on skin,
a scrape, a shiver, a dare—
the pulse before the pounce.

Smoke‑drowned rooms shudder.
Graffiti writhes in color,
walls throb, starving, unashamed—
a whole city crouched in the dark,
waiting for us to move.

Then—your hands, sudden.
Fog coils thick as breath,
hips lock into a slow, predatory rhythm,
heat flaring sharp as claws,
your mouth on my throat—
gentle for a heartbeat,
then a claim, a wildness—
and the city trembles with me.

Clothes fall like prey.
Skin hits skin—flash, spark, tremor—
our rhythm syncing with the street’s savage heartbeat,
deep, merciless,
a cadence made for bodies
that don’t pretend to be holy.

The beautiful, vicious now.
Your fingers undo me—
knees falter, breath torn open,
my hands drag you in,
all instinct, no mercy—until the world collapses into
your heat, your scent,
your name ripped raw in my mouth.

Time fractures, explodes.
Every thrust a neon snarl,
every gasp a siren keening,
every moan a wild prayer
to the unstoppable, burning now—
the city swallowing our fury,
our hunger,
our breaking‑open—
as we come undone together,
feral, breathless,
lost and found
in the same blazing moment.

 

[Kat90xx]

There once was a man from Frickley
Who always came far too quickly
He joined a club
To try fix his fug
But arrived a full day too early!

 

[Wonderer67]

All
I know is everything I don’t want
Night starting earlier
And earlier
The hole
Deep
As it was in ‘07
Iraq nights are back
Walking it off
Laps in he basement
At 2:52
I know what to do now
Staring off
Into the
Pitch blackness
Of night

38/52

 

[Wonderer67]

Things I Do Not Want

1. Gender reveal parties
2. Mustaches… I have grown huge sideburns in reaction
3. Top 40 hits
4. TV commercials - happy families and sexy cars
5. Interest and wealth
6. Line dancing
7. Anything resembling mainstream America. Fuck yourself with your McMansions and fast food
8. You*

*this is not literally you or anyone I know. Just most dumb Americans doing dumb unoriginal things.
39/52

 

[Wonderer67]

Todd Snider is Done Gone

Many years and a long time ago
I sang
DB Cooper to my daughter
At bedtime
Happy times
Looking over the east nashville
Skyline

8pm bedtimes
Big Rock Candy Mountain
DB Cooper
Twinkle twinkle little star

I didn’t even tell her
Pneumonia got him
Cuz it almost got her

Sleep sweetly
Dear prince
And princess

40/52

 

[SpermFactory]

(40) Things I learned from the Poet’s Bro 42Below

Oh don’t get me started on the big morphemes
between my legs. Or the textual meanings in
sexual phonemes. When, I really need to know-

Is my horizontal bar stuck betwixt out and in?
Not sticking up—- damn my hyphen! Am I a
poetic (little dash)?

Or an emdash which is bigger than a endash—
which is slightly longer than a hyphen- which
is a little higher than the base line(?) Of what!!!

Oh gerundium! I am taking a very direct object;
a semicolon getting a big noun manly verb-ing—
ARSe- ASS– ARGGGH— Poetica!

 

[Kat90xx]

Everyone knows emdashes are AI
Hyphens are basic, but they can still fly
Dashes have to worker harder, like the little train that could
But commas and periods, they’re the best to lyrically draw blood.

 

[SmilingLez]

Everyone knows emdashes are AI
Hyphens are basic, but they can still fly
Dashes have to worker harder, like the little train that could
But commas and periods, they’re the best to lyrically draw blood.

I've always been fond of semicolons, a comma and a period entwined.


Edit ------ Because this is a poetry thread and not a poetry discussion thread


Semicolon love
Comma and period entwined
Punctuation hugs

 

[Tzara]

Communion

Her poems—short, spare—
resemble the gray stones set
in the raked gravel
of a Zen garden, islands
of stability
in the emptiness of life.
I cling to her words
as I would to her body
if I were able
to reach across the distance
of country, of time,
of diverse experience,
of simple yearning
for a stronger connection
than the smooth, scentless
flowers of her written words.
Still, I am grateful
I can at least read her thoughts
if not trace her pen's crisp stroke.

Week 48 : Poem 1 : Total 70

 

[Aquelle]

Write

It's time I write
It's time I fight
Against the dreaded random

It's just creation
Not my station
To seek fame or fandom

Words, I battle
Straying cattle
Stampede them into verse

Brand them, strand them
Must command them
Words, my love and curse

Rhyme compulsion
Jet propulsion
Rocket fuel of rhyme

Style or raunch
Soon I'll launch
Countdown, almost time

Like semaphor
My metaphor
Signals my intent

Suck it, fist it
Nipple twist it
Always comes out bent

 

[Aquelle]

Insomniacal

As I lie here wide awake
Satan, here's my soul to take
You put me in this sleepless cage
Insomniacal, I rage

Count dismembered sheep, I tried
Their steaming entrails lightly fried
Tender rest I could not find
SO I HAVE LOST MY FUCKING MIND

Demons, don't claim heaven sent ya
Not THAT far gone in my dementia
Periph'ral vision, there they lurk
Sleepless nights are when they work

This night from hell, the devil sent
He's in my mind, not paying rent
Diabolical torment
Insomniacal lament

 

[Angeline]

New York Tendaberry*
(for Laura Nyro)

She crosses Washington Square
one winter morning in the snow.
The park is clean, the early hour
absent junkies, cocaine blues-train
buy-and-sell, fast-talk
flim-flam men. She walks by

Fourth Street at a time
when neighbors own the square:
old women (with suspicious eyes)
walking unwary dogs, chess players
jabbing at a snowy bench,
too cold, too wet for games.

Across the street a couple
moves as one, wool coats pressed,
heads bent, hair the same. I could
be seeing double but they laugh
and separate, one south to NYU,
the other up a polished stoop.

But Laura is my queen, a once
and future ruler of this low
Manhattan scene. Laura!
Doowop sister, daughter
of my tribe, an urban soul waif
dark hair flowing tumbledown,
deepest, dark brown. Wise

this city songbird
gliding by the square,
a beautiful black swan
(no less rare), a cup held
carelessly and breath a trail
of streaming air.

Sometimes it seemed unreal:
New York City was a stage
set, recalled now in black
and white, shadowed memory,
chiaroscuro.

Laura once and still
my natural snow, once
and still my cameo,
the weaver’s daughter
born for loom’s desire,

Her phoenix voice alive
with Timer's winter city blues
thriving in the flame
of December’s boudoir.


*A rewritten poem from the early 2000s.


Week 48, Poem 1, Total 59

 

[SmilingLez]

Mistakes spawn monsters.
Panic purges the evidence.
A digital scalpel.
Clean up, aisle seven.
Deleting the digital blood.
Smiles, hard-coded emojis.
Fear fuels the deletion.
Denial is a backspace.
Shadows hide the receipts.
Excuses fester offline.
Rot in the code.
Must edit the narrative.
Bury the truth.
Screaming into silence.
Hollow avatars remain.
I see your deleted history
Your curated lie.

 

[kreemi_pi]

autumn's fallen leaves
red and gold swirl in the breeze
movement without life