Title Swapmeet

[unpredictablebijou]

Here's the game.

Someone suggests a title. Someone else writes a poem to go with it.

No title may be ignored, -- someone HAS to write SOMETHING for each title idea before a new title can be suggested, but more than one person can write a piece to go with any title.

Just to get it going, I'll give three options:

Landscape with Mountains

After School

Sunday Morning

Pick any one of these for the first idea.

git writin', y'all.


bijou

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Sunday Morning

Lazy languid day, whose turn
to let the dogs out and return
with hot coffee and crumpets
dripping butter? He's an early
'riser' but I prefer a hot
steaming shower first before
fingers and tongues can create
our own steam and excitement.

 

[Tathagata]

Sunday Morning

scribbled down at work
just thoughts


Sunday Morning
I get to open the box
i pretend i'm a pirate
this is treasure
huge jewels and coins
they are donuts
if i'm lucky donut guy will have packed
a frosted one against
chocolate coconut
and I get the extra frosting
like two donuts in one
sometimes my father
puts real coffee in my milk
when my mother isn't looking


there is a section of the paper
just for me
with giant comics
in color
and "find a word"
which I am good at
there are little magazines with
all the new toys in them
I want the monster laboratory
with potions that bubble and smoke
I could be Boris Karloff
down cellar

Sunday morning
there are TV shows
that my brothers and I watch
deputy dawg
felix the cat
but no Three Stooges
because mom says
we'll end up hitting each other
on the head with hammers
and think it's funny
( we pretend to poke each others eyes
and call each other porcupine so she might be right)

we go to church and I get
to talk to God
I like church because in there he can hear you think
you dont have to say it out loud
like you do next to your bed each night
so you can keep the secret stuff
for sundays
I ask him to please make dad
stop drinking so much
because sometimes he gets mean
mom says its the beer
so maybe you could make the store run out.
I tell him I've been pretty good
and that the other day
when these older kids started picking on me
i said " God is watching you"
and they let me go
i thank him for looking down and helping me
i feel like me and god are friends
i feel loved and protected
i feel safe

I take the misselette home with me and we go in my room
with saltines
and I redo the whole mass for my brothers
when it comes to the Eucharist part we get to eat all the saltines
and I say
" the body of Christ"
they say " A-men"
we laugh and eat
crunching loudly and saying
" Mmm Christ tastes good today"
sometimes we use grape juice as wine
and arrive at sunday dinner
wearing purple moustaches
and full of the lord.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Sunday Morning

This arm sinew and black hairs
muscle and tanned skin
lies casually across my hip
from behind
darker for the contrast
the hand falls limp
and open covering me
offering modesty
a finger curled would excite me
a finger crooked could call me in
the pulse throbs at his wrist
a comforting life force
as if woken by my gaze
it flexes and travels
to my breast containing it
hard flesh on soft
dark on pale
I turn in his embrace
to his smile.

 

[champagne1982]

Landscape with Mountains

I sat on the prairie,
just there, east of anywhere
else. Land rises up the other side
of the South Saskatchewan,
just before the meandering snake
twists out of the shadowy
foothills. The setting sun
casts cardiogram calligraphy
on buffalo grass and wild
roses. Gold heats to pink
and rapidly cools to purple
masses caught above
and below the silvered clouds
of an Alberta sunset.
I am reminded that to the west,
you see it too.

 

[bluerains]

Appalicia

http://www.nevillgallery.com/emmyelphick/thumbnail/36.jpg

a mind wanders in lavender dreams
where landscapes with mountains
catch the colors of home.
my yesteryear
whispers my name
in the breath of a lilac wind

 

[Angeline]

Sunday Afternoon

Hank and Marie skin off
tee shirts and denim shorts,
jump in and spatter concentric
circles of lake. Their bodies
knife and dive. Sun sparkles
on the water. Marie smooths
back her hair, shades her eyes.

I sit high on a rock, lean
into the afternoon, consider
a swan dive that barely
breaks the silver below.
It will feel cool on my skin,
and I'll carress the secret
deep life underneath, me
skimming through it.

I totaled my car
this morning, somewhere around a curve
my foot pressed the gas and I wrapped
myself around a tree, ran across the street
crying, but unhurt. Lucky this time
and now I'm deep in the woods, over
the lake at Tea Table Rock. The Devil's
Tea Table, the birds in the branches
are talking, cawing at me for crashing
their party and Hank and Marie are naked
dots yards downstream.

When the afternoon grays into twilight
the day will fade in a rainbow sherbet sky
and I'll sit alone in a teepee, even higher
on the mountain, more remote. You're dead
only six or seven months and last night
the demons weren't too bad. I slept
in your bed again, woke disoriented,
and now I've crashed the car. You
taught me to drive it and now another
little piece of you is gone. So I sit
in the teepee and listen to crickets,
think about this messy summer,
this Sunday post you moving
from my outer world into the quiet
inside me.

 

[FifthFlower]

After School

The fighting lasts for hours through the night.
My sister and I go upstairs to hide.
Tomorrow, back in school, we keep inside
The fear our parents cannot get it right.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

After school

You tell me again I was born bad
and you must beat it out of me,
make me watch you cut the willow
twig and I beg you not to do it.
You mark me but no one believes,
branded a liar, I never tell again.

 

[vampiredust]

Sunday Morning

Blinds open to memory
being rewritten.

The murmur of fridges
and sinks taps the inside
of skulls, wiping the slate
clean.

And after the familiar noise
of coffee, toast and scraping
of knives, comes the loud
clank of a clapperboard.

We look at our children
and lie in our smiles,
remembering memories

ready to be forgotten,
knowing they would not.

 

[champagne1982]

Sunday Morning

Yeah, it's another smoke and mirrors
kinda day until I realize
the wires and pulleys that drive
the marionettes are just devices
used to bring us through eternity.

If we were meant to understand,
would babies be born at all? Would
our ego outstrip that of the Creator
in bringing life into chaos, death
to happiness and love to suffering?

Or, perhaps, there is a kinder God
than of which I speak; One who's let
the dust pile up on the mantle;
and left the children to dress themselves.

I must admit that this pageant was more
fun to act in when I was younger and saw
comedy in everything, even in tragedy.

I want the strings tied back on my puppet
arms and the Master deciding where I step.
Take my free will and give it to the moon,
maybe we'd be better off without the tides.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I have stolen a few minutes to read through these offerings and I am immensely impressed. Y'all are doing some amazing work in here.

Given the parameters of the thread, anyone, particularly those who have offered poems already, may now post another new title for folks to try out. If the three initial choices continue to inspire, by all means use them.

Ever since Fool's Same Title Challenge, I've been considering how much a title can generate ideas. Hence this thread, and look what wonderful things it has generated already.

Well done!

bijou

 

[UnderYourSpell]

How about writing about 'Women' ... they love you, drive you up the wall , they love you and they may hurt you but in all their different guises are surely worthy of a few words. Or how about 'Clouds' or 'Roads'?

 

[Unbridled_Passion]

women

no matter what the subject,
we will always find the time
to listen to you and all of your gripes
from your job or home life

we don't even have to be your
sinificant other
to learn of all of your woes
or what you feel bad about

our loving ways
are inbred
and we feel like we should
all listen

no matter how
boring or insignificant it
may be

 

[unpredictablebijou]

How about writing about 'Women' ... they love you, drive you up the wall , they love you and they may hurt you but in all their different guises are surely worthy of a few words. Or how about 'Clouds' or 'Roads'?

Roads

This is the road I have seen every day for twelve years
and this is the road that is a new road every day.
It changed when the eight-point buck ran across
and I left the marks of tires on the curve
there, right there. And that house
is where we found the young fox
and pulled onto the gravel shoulder
to drag him gently
so he could die in the soft grass
instead of on pavement. That white house
with the porch light on now. This road
is the road that changes
when I see the blue heron aiming
its noble neck and the brocade weight
of its wings from one pond to another
skimming the power lines. This road
changed that night
that you pulled the car to the side
and got out, began to walk
the gravel, the last mile home. Right there,
where there are no marks in the grass
but I know the spot.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Ok you told me to ask ... why did her get out of the car to walk the rest of the way home?

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Ok you told me to ask ... why did her get out of the car to walk the rest of the way home?

I see it as a conflict, or possibly a breakdown. The origin point for me was an argument scene, in which, to be dramatic, someone actually got out of a car and started walking. But when I thought about it for the poem, it was easily generalized. Why does someone just pull a car over, get out and start walking? Maybe they've had enough. Maybe they've just killed a small animal and can't handle driving any more at that moment. Maybe there's been a mechanical problem. Maybe they've suddenly decided to just walk away from everything and begin fresh in a whole new place.

To me, driving along a road defines it in a particular way, but you can drive the same road for 12 years and then learn so much more about that space when you finally get out and measure it with your steps, move at that speed instead, touching it with your actual feet. Usually we're forced to do that, because of some crisis.

The piece is still unclear in some ways - that was a true late night rough draft, mostly cause I like this thread and I wanted to bump it and see if more people will play.

thx for asking!
bijou

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Bit like life really you can be driving along then hit some monumental hump that you werent epecting and had never been there before and your life is never the same again