Challenge: Five Poems in Five Days.

[Eluard]

Here is a new challenge: 5 poems in 5 days, which means one poem per day for five consecutive days. This is a different kind of challenge to the 30 in 30. That challenge is for stamina and going the distance; this challenge is more a ‘quality sprint’. There are three basic rules with this:

1) Each poem that is submitted must be more than 10 lines long, and consist of more than fifty words.

2) Every poem that you submit must be something that you would be pleased to see your name under if it were to be published in a magazine. In other words it must be something that you stand behind. Of course, only you can say whether your submission passes that test. We are on the honour system here.

3) If you miss a day you must go back to the beginning with new poems — you cannot reuse submissions for a later trial.

Of course, when you complete the 5 in 5 you can then, if you wish, go on to the 30 in 30 and use your poems for that, provided you satisfy the further rules of that challenge.

There will be a companion thread for discussion, ridicule and flirting.

Every one who succeeds in this challenge gets the right to make up a T-shirt that says:

I did 5 in 5: Skilled, Not Slutty.​

 

[Eluard]

1-1

. . . .

 

[sellthecookie]

the sleepwalker


i am somnambulist
on the grocery aisle
fumbling for menthol
shampoos and plastic forks,
the sturdy reminders
of where my money
goes and where I have been,
while you fill your cart
with everything
within reach, overflowing
as it is right now, as I pass
you by, and is that
frozen meat, next to
your sleeping pills? i may
not be as awake
as you are,
but it's a start.


note
(can i skip sunday, i get off work then?)

 

[Angeline]

Grandfather cried.
I couldn't tell you how many
times or the circumstance
that leads to memory. He cried
like rain that falls soft, no sound
but I see his wet face, tears
tracked past his glasses.
I smell his aftershave,
Old Spice forever mixed with sadness
for me. I've tried to imagine

their faces, bewildered
then horrified, maybe resolute
in between choking for air,
on the way to peaceful. I know
even the most violent Death
can be recomposed
to manufacture serenity,
but it's all imagination,
a blank gap we fill
with supposition. No one
should have to imagine a family,
and maybe that is why he cried.
Tears for the ocean he crossed,
for the river that moves past
empty banks, for the puddle
that reflects only the sky.

 

[Eluard]

1-2

. . . .

 

[Angeline]

1-2

To Donald O'Conner who has been dead
two years, give or take a year or two
because I can't remember when,
but only that your generation is fast
stepping away from my world, fading

like the carnival sounds of the seaside
boardwalk when I drive away, music
and laughter pulling back from the water's
edge, the waves that crash with terrifying
clarity one moment recede to harmless

foam at my toes the next and I am lost
in highway babble, wind and tire whine,
unsure whether it was you or me
who left the party. But it's ok
because I have my memories, movies

that play on tv or in my head. I can conjure
you at any time, fast forward to the exact
moment when you bend your nose
sideways, sing Moses supposes

his nose is a rose and sling yourself
around the room like a bendy toy.
You'll freeze when I pause, and I
can rewind you or even stop you
until I need to remember a sweet,

untethered moment of us locked
in your performance. I would have
dated you with your boy-next-door
freckles and loose-limbed confidence.
You'd never expect me to match you

move for move in a complicated
swan dance by a moonlit park bench.
I wouldn't need layers of chiffon
to please you nor the athletic
prowess to leap from Parisian

momuments into your arms
and never miss a beat. You're
not like that. You're just a guy
who'd buy me an ice cream cone,
hold my hand, maybe whistle

some old-fashioned song
as we high-stepped down a sidewalk,
missing every crack without even trying.

 

[Eluard]

1-3

. . . .

 

[sellthecookie]

eating mud



everything is muddy
today, mud on the riverbank,
plugging snake holes and drowning
leeches, even the bushes
are powdery with gray,
and brown, and a fire crackles
underfoot each time
I think Ive moved on,
but is actually just my toes
growing heavy
with excess sludge.
you are light as a colloid.

 

[Eluard]

1-4

. . . .

 

[Angeline]

!-3

Why did you stay away so long? Come closer. I don't see so well anymore and I can't wear that hearing aid. I don't even know if the batteries are dead but when I am dead you will have everything that was mine, money and this blanket, too. You'll only have to bury me as a Jew, and the pine box is cheap. Call Schutzbank. He'll know what I need. I don't want a fancy monument like you insisted we get for your father. Just bury me and be done with it. You can buy something you like with the leftover money. You look like you could use new shoes, and cut your hair. It's unbecoming on a woman your age. When I was your age I worked in your father's store every day. I already had lost a child. You don't know what loss is. That store put you through college and you had all the advantages. But a bad husband. I never liked him though we made the best of it. This one is handsome, but will he take care of you? You're still living like a college student. I don't think you'll ever grow up. I don't want you to leave. I'll never see you again. They're like family to me now and you never come anyway. But maybe you'll find some time to write to me. Let me know you got home safe. You know I'll worry.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Hope you dont mind me having a go

Hope this still counts as Monday .. I am in England!

When I was fifteen I wanted
to know it all straight away
so I looked in books because
I didn't know how to look at life.
So naive and bordering on thick
when it came to understanding
the ways of the outside world,
far beyond all my parameters.
Now I look back at my mistakes
maybe not as often as I should
but who wants to see all those
hideous faux pas of innocence?

 

[bogusbrig]

The phone call was at noon and said
it will only be a matter of hours now
after hours of waiting
I cancelled my tickets and went to bed
people don't die to a time table
So I watched her life play out on the ceiling
a total waste of time (her assessment)
But how do you assess a waste of time?
A forgotten kindness
that radiates out ever wider
The warm glow of the rising sun
washing over ever more faces

 

[bogusbrig]

‘You always were her favourite’
I shuffled the postcards I had sent
ignoring the low drone of my sister’s voice,
the self pity she had mastered.
Her determination to be the martyr,
now spanned the decades.
Kyoto, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Marrakech
Surprised that they had all been saved.
Saddened that their clichéd messages,
appeared to mean so much.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

You are playing tricks with my mind
although it's not really you my love.
I forgive you over and over because
I know it is your medication makes
you find fault in all I do and say.
But it hurts so much, I love you
beyond all expression and those
damn pills are breaking my heart.
Where is the man I married
do I lose him to keep him alive?

 

[Angeline]

World Poetry:
An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity
to Our Time has collected the most boring poems
I've ever read and failed to inspire me
with history chisled onto the words
like a cautionary epitaph.
I'm crunched between names and dates,
unable to tack my senses to a single verse,
and it's times like this when I think I've read
too much poetry, written on so many topics,
I've been bled of anything interesting
to say. Frankly I'm sick of the dogwood tree,
the lilac blossoms I've floated in purple-
scented precision through hundreds
of strophes. The green bench is just a place
a child sat too many years ago for me
to recall a certain slant of sunlight.
Ladybugs inching down the slats
leave me with ennui, and jazz
is just an old song on scratched vinyl.
I wish I could fall from the lofty height
of my discontent, drown in the murky waters
of my pathetic mysteries, be reborn
as a blade of grass that springs back
from the weight of souls and rollerskates,
cares for nothing but the warmth
of summer on its blank face.

 

[sellthecookie]

unwieldy you


you with the rusty fingers
and me my knobby heart, you
and your giant ego
and my restless might,
those bloated tendons
and creaking sigh,
i have a hard time
fitting inside you,
fitting you inside.
painful symmetry
and notes too high.
let's eat geometry
together, and be
irrational.

 

[Liar]

1 of 5, Aug 15

Giving this a whirl...

-----


Today trees cast no shadows
more than probable tint,
so softened at the edges
you can't tell it's really there
under a sky of sooted milk.

Today you have no sihlouette
behind backlit curtains,
a Gaussian ghost of shape
that could be flesh and bones
or a reverb not yet faded.

If I reach out,
I just might slide through
the edge of your existance
and caress your heart,

or discover that
you're no longer here.

So I sit,
chained to this chair
by fear of knowing,
waiting for a sun
sharp enough to paint
leaves on the pavement
and outline an answer
on pale curtains.

 

[Eluard]

1-5 The final from me!

. . . .

 

[UnderYourSpell]

1 - 3

The glory of this land clothed
in her multi shades of green,
do you also call her home?
She drowses in the lazy sun
rainbow lit by gentle rain.
Look upon her open pastures
her woodlands and enfolding hills
and know this is my birthright.
This is my land
This is my England.

 

[sellthecookie]

1-4


an imperfect attempt to cut strings from under the clouds



and we thought
rain was forever
nimbus invoked by
thirst, and greed,
and brown saplings.
now, we have so much
more of it
than we can handle,
rain everywhere,
out there on the streets.
rain, the sudden lapse
of faith. rain, the shortest
distance to nostalgia.
rain inside your mouth,
waterlogged, under the bed,
or just outside
your closet, where you
thought it was safe
to come out
to play again.

 

[Angeline]

This is a special way to be afraid
in ripe summer when trees toss
their heads like casual schoolgirls,
then stand still as they have for decades
with the promise of wind, a cool assurance
to the feckless flowers, fruit full on the vines.

The crows jeer no matter the season,
they’ll be fat as plums on the snow
when this very ground is frozen
and the branches thin as whips.

I’ll be at the window. I won’t pretend
to hold sovereignty to the grass or snow:
I belong no more or less than they. My family
of squirrels, of crows, of pine trees, dragonflies
and geraniums, nothing like people,
but I animate you with imagination,
to see an uncle in the shadowed brush,
dream a grandfather watering the garden
of a late afternoon, mopping his head
with a hankerchief and checking the sky.

I’ve been meaning to tell you that the sky
is closer to the ground here, brighter
and the clouds have more dimension.
When the moon rises I wait for the quiet stars
to whisper my name. I gather grandfather’s tears
in the palm of my hand and I fly to stars
and the night birds like a Chagall bride.

 

[Liar]

2 of 5, Aug 16

Letter From An Old God

Dear beloveds, let me go.
My hands are too frail to rip souls from failing bodies,
and my voice is dry leaves rustling on sidewalks, where
once a single syllable could rupture mountains. My lion
heart quiver in fear of asbestos and agent orange,
Diet Coke and Diebold counters. My tusks were filed to
stumps centuries ago, covered by a mortal's skin,
my glowing testicles prudely tucked away, erased by
eons' fear of potent pride.

Manicured and manufactured for mass love, I no longer
know your names, what you love, how you mate,
what terrors makes you scream into the night.
I no longer hear you hammer hymns into the sunset,
nor smell the sweat of rutting, the blood of birth.

So please, it is time, let me sleep the sleep of kings,
turn me into quaint seasonal sales in display windows,
where my brothers have gone before me, or let me slip
like my sisters, unnoticed into a word that nobody
can clue origin.

And if you will, if you're still around to glance back,
dig me out in clay sediments a millennium from this day
and wonder who I was.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

1 - 4

Ruby raspberry fruits upon the cane
bejewelled perfections among the green.
Sweet nipples of excitement
each juicy mouthful tarting
into succulent crumbling pastry.
As like rolled upon a lovers tongue
relished, sucked exuding heady perfume
to excite the senses, softness
upon the palate, tasted consumed
each one the sweetest ardour.

 

[sellthecookie]

things asunder



cracked spines
of romance pocketbooks
and brochures.
yellowed prayerbooks
and missals and
paychecks.
dog-eared spaces
between your periods. .

it is the unexhaled letters
that hurt
most

 

[bogusbrig]

You can’t build in death,
what should have been built in life.
But she, ever the actress, had her stage,
which didn’t require foundations.
She was Juliet, Desdemona, Cleopatra,
a heroine for every occasion.
And what better theatre,
than someone else’s memory?
A mute star in need of a voice,
and she with an audience
and a soliloquy to perform.