Earth Day Challenge

[EroticOrogeny]

Here's a new 'weekly' challenge:

Write a poem relevant in some way for Earth Day.
Deadline will be Earth Day, Apr 22.
I wouldn't mind earth sciences since I have advanced degrees in Geophysics and Geology.
No requirement for form.

EO

 

[butters]

Here's a new 'weekly' challenge:

Write a poem relevant in some way for Earth Day.
Deadline will be Earth Day, Apr 22.
I wouldn't mind earth sciences since I have advanced degrees in Geophysics and Geology.
No requirement for form.

EO

nice one, EO

i'm in for the dawning, and hope lots of other poets find this inspirational too!

 

[Angeline]

Earth Day Challenge Poem 1

Here's to the stinking
refineries that belch gray
rush hours among the mud
flats. Heavenward stands
the Empire State Building.
The skyscrapers are jagged
pearls draped on the horizon.

You can hardly blink
before the George Washington Bridge
crosses the Bronx. Miles of projects
descend like stairsteps to the bedrooms
of New Rochelle and White Plains.

Phew. Finally the sky can
take a deep breath
to blow us past Hartford
and New Haven, north, north

of suburbs and industrial parks
rustlings in yesterday's ashes,
north of Yankees and Red Sox,
north of the last great port,
north to dead shoe factories
and paper mills, north until the galloping

sky is panting, and only the pines
and the crows
crowd the late afternoon.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I will have to go a-googling

 

[Rayven101]

Destruction

Ok - I thought I would give it a go!


Atomic bomb blast
Blinding light
Her face scarred forever

Arms spread wide
Energy flowing
Blasting outwards
To take back what is Hers

Mother Earth churns beneath my feet
Her Rage and sorrow holding me in Her grasp
Destructive energy flows like molten lava rising up
My spirit falls away giving room for Her power

I am life
I am death
I am rebirth.

Rayven

 

[UnderYourSpell]

should that be 'her face scarred forever'?

Can't seem to get my head round this at all hoping my muse gets back to me before the deadline

 

[Rayven101]

should that be 'her face scarred forever'?

Can't seem to get my head round this at all hoping my muse gets back to me before the deadline

Thank you!!! I just fixed it....always nice to have another pair of eyes looking at my writings!

I hope your day is beautiful!

Rayven

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Thank you!!! I just fixed it....always nice to have another pair of eyes looking at my writings!

I hope your day is beautiful!

Rayven

My day has been and gone .... it's nearly 10pm here! But I thank you kindly

 

[EroticOrogeny]

should that be 'her face scarred forever'?

Can't seem to get my head round this at all hoping my muse gets back to me before the deadline

For last year our Earth Day bonus challenge was to do a concrete poem - this should be easier!

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Terzanelle for our planet

Too Late?

This precious blue gem so small in space,
a miracle child of time and chance
we should gentle her in our embrace

not plunder her in a greedy dance
and yet we choose to misuse her gift,
this miracle child of time and chance.

Millions of years as continents drift,
she has nurtured man and served him well
and yet we choose to misuse her gift

as melting icecaps flood and seas swell
still we ignore the cautioning signs.
She has nurtured man and served him well

yet our chance for survival declines
with each tree felled, each ton of carbon,
still we ignore the cautioning signs.

the fear is now the Earth’s too far gone
with each tree felled, each ton of carbon.
This precious blue gem so small in space
we should have held her in our embrace.

 

[Tzara]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/146/432311008_e46a4e99de.jpg

Sonnet on the Big Hole
in Clumsy Tetrameter
and Loose Rhyme

Ah, xenocrysts! Earth's kidney stones,
Excreted by Mom E. in tubes
Of kimberlite, like renal moans
From the center of her globe.

The large ones shatter into Hope
Or "cull"minate in smaller bits
Whose facets flash their smaller scope
In glitzy things and bracelets,

And, of course, engagement rings.
DeBeers will thank you for your trade,
Avoiding conflict diamonds.
Their staid cartel remains quite safe.

I pine for her, and think I know
Why Mother Earth's a virago.


.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I know what I am going to write now will try and figure out how tomorrow seeing as it 2 am here right now

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Cremated now earth mother who
watched fondly as her offspring grew,
each faltering step recorded there
upon her face, midst greying hair,
from birth until her young ones flew.

Helpless to stop each thing you do,
weeps now for every tree you hew,
where stood a forest tall and fair
cremated now.

Each factory a witches brew
blasts forth an ever deadly spew,
where now the wilderness for bear
if all her children bring despair?
Dying parent cannot renew.
Cremated now.

 

[Epmd607]

Lady(This is gonna be a scorcher)

Baby, your igneous rocks set me afire,
when I place my hands upon your metamorphic body
all I can say is, "Put me to the test, put me to the torture...
melt me with your basaltic pupils."

Lady, I've got enough Earth Science to write two stanzas about your laccolithic hills,
your intrusions into my strata, that sweet lenticular body beckons me
as we get spread laterally,

O, the damage you do to my Earth, when you're cool like obsidian...

 

[bflagsst]

Earth Day is One Day a Year
(Whereas J.J. Day is every day)


I dig your garden
which isn't much,
a few carrots,
radishes, and beans

I give garden tips
but you don't listen
because I shoot up
your clay pigeons

Who else will chase
your squirrels, and tell you
you sing sweet bird songs,
when you're cussin' like you do?

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I've got Earth Science.

Save this space -->

re-arranges furniture and leaves key under wrong brick

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Sort that one out lol !

Oh whit a sleekit horrible beastie
roils awe the bosom of the land,
nae whit ye dae or how ye feastie
aw hae ye turn the deadly hand.

Begone ye slimy masses boakin
awae ye filth and dirty air,
all the bairns they are a chokin
we want nae of ye any mair.

Yin or twa, ach whit the hell,
nae matter whit the hell ye dae
for awe ye rantin hear ma tell
a'body's gonnae hae tae pay .

 

[Epmd607]

Earth Day is One Day a Year
(Whereas J.J. Day is every day)


I dig your garden
which isn't much,
a few carrots,
radishes, and beans

I give garden tips
but you don't listen
because I shoot up
your clay pigeons

Who else will chase
your squirrels, and tell you
you sing sweet bird songs,
when you're cussin' like you do?

Bump. And I like this poem. I'll have to write a second submission that's less jokey. I'm Jokey Smurf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDdI-gPgMcg

 

[butters]

if only


every day saw empty skies
man-empty that is
and empty roads
beyond the pad of feet or chonk of hoof
and sat sweet on seas
sailboats
oars at the ready
and satellites beamed energy
straight from the sun
warming homes and running 'things' that need the running done
by more modern ways than chandlers might accomplish or their
friends who know the ways of wrapping copper wires round and round ...

i know it's only dreaming
as the blue skies beckon me
to fall into their endless oceanic thrall
and i'd not want to step so far back that
hot water and the net were not
in step with my day to day to day - i'd be
quite frankly, awfully appalled
but think it a step forward
if the trade-off could be greener -
we can do more than merely dream of
sweet air, can't we, dreamer?

 

[Epmd607]

HMS Success Discovers Darling Fault, Scarp, People

Darling Scarp and escarpment,
agile aboriginal original,
fortuitous fortified,
colonial corridor,
rainbow serpent
struck sea
conquest by
sail

 

[EroticOrogeny]

Seeing quite a bit of good stuff here.
Earth Day is 2 days from now (on an earth 4.5 billion years old!)

 

[bflagsst]

HMS Success Discovers Darling Fault, Scarp, People

Darling Scarp and escarpment,
agile aboriginal original,
fortuitous fortified,
colonial corridor,
rainbow serpent
struck sea
conquest by
sail

John Chapman, plant your seed among the natives,
talk to the animals, sleep perihelion near a bear,
stroppy go-by-the-wall,
Jan 3rd plague, accloy medicinally
Meretseger-Medusa-Caduceus-Eden Deceiver-Aesculapius Rod-Nagga Rassa
as energetic and self-reliant as a dragon,
pull your right lower lid with right index finger,
ah-ha, Nagarjuna spoke where Cratylus refused
begin to turn the wheel again, he began, we follow
lost at sea, lost on land, sketched with
tenebrous celerity leading cogitative desuetude
on specular balefire in the nicht night nachturnal
castle and field and horse and hokum
once lucid there’s only tommyrot behind
a bricoleur built the haha on soft soil
what’s kept out is part of what’s inside
fracted sense-awareness awash in ado,
as something to dispel your conviction,
in mythologic and modern fictions(....)

 

[Epmd607]

John Chapman, plant your seed among the natives,
talk to the animals, sleep perihelion near a bear,
stroppy go-by-the-wall,
Jan 3rd plague, accloy medicinally
Meretseger-Medusa-Caduceus-Eden Deceiver-Aesculapius Rod-Nagga Rassa
as energetic and self-reliant as a dragon,
pull your right lower lid with right index finger,
ah-ha, Nagarjuna spoke where Cratylus refused
begin to turn the wheel again, he began, we follow
lost at sea, lost on land, sketched with
tenebrous celerity leading cogitative desuetude
on specular balefire in the nicht night nachturnal
castle and field and horse and hokum
once lucid there’s only tommyrot behind
a bricoleur built the haha on soft soil
what’s kept out is part of what’s inside
fracted sense-awareness awash in ado,
as something to dispel your conviction,
in mythologic and modern fictions(....)

Who's more greenmountaineer?

 

[BooMerengue]

Shoulder length curls gleaming gold
as he bent to an Iris singing
"One for my Eemy and one for me.
not to eat but to love for pretty."

Then he dug a bitty hole for the
cherry pit to grow a tree for me
and let the minnow go to grow
bigger bigger.

We dozed under the willow
watching bees buzz and laughed
and the grass was blankysoft.
This was our day with The Mother.

A blessed day and good.

Not the Earth Day but a day just as good. My 3 yr old love and me.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Well hello Boo not seen you for ages