1. Scattered thunderstorms with a cloudy patch of sky and one ripped open with rain
2. Slums juxtaposed beside Marble mansions and gated communities
3. The hands of God Pouring blessings into one’s lap While leaving the beggar’s pair of hands, outstretched, bare with No crumbs for today or tomorrow.
4. Landfills languishing with uneaten food while every three seconds a child dies from hunger
5. 1% of the world controls 90% of the wealth.
6. Poverty.
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
This seems like a spin-off "definition poetry" and I like this format. It's a sad but truthful message that comes across very clearly. Nice start to NaPo!
name: key/string/perks pronouns: she/her/hers and they/them/theirs
novel: the clocktower (camp nano apr 24) poetry: the beauty of the untold (napo 2024)
Ooh I love the theme here where you're pushing the definition of poetry. Is that going to be running through the whole month or is it like the thing you're doing today?
"I've got dreams like you--no really!--just much less, touchy-feeley. They mainly happen somewhere warm and sunny on an island that I own, tanned and rested and alone surrounded by enormous piles of money." -Flynn Rider, Tangled
Honestly, I don't know if it was meant to be a theme. It was just coincidental I guess in reaction to today's events in my life. But it could be something I come back to. We'll see. XD
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
in your 20s, you will get used to vacancy: a vacant house, vacant bed, vacant heart sometimes, you will wake from dreams rusted in Technicolor, searing your eyelids
you will blink it away as if you stared at the first light streaming through the crack in the curtain for too long
restlessness churning in your bones, buzzing like a hive of bees with their stingers ready but you are used a honey-combed existence, a hive consciousness packed into every brain cell
you will down a cup of coffee as you head out of the door and for one moment, its warmth will be enough to dissolve honey-combs into sugar cubes and the buzzing will quiet
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
"I've got dreams like you--no really!--just much less, touchy-feeley. They mainly happen somewhere warm and sunny on an island that I own, tanned and rested and alone surrounded by enormous piles of money." -Flynn Rider, Tangled
the hardest ground to stand on is no man's land straddling the borders between two regions i still haven't gotten used to navigating
as a kid I didn't know we were broke my parents took the brunt of each blow for those first ten years
we were just like everyone else living in a rusted trailer on a street that you didn't want to drive down even in the middle of the day
police and ambulance sirens were the first lullabies we heard we went to bed every night with red and blue light shows that we watched from a safe distance (Our parents taught us to stay away from the windows)
fists boomed like the stereos blaring late into the morning it was never to early to see teenagers armed with grins strolling down the streets, gun holsters protruding from waistbands
we called these people neighbors and we called this place on home even if the Coast Guard recruiter that came to my high school senior year came to recruit some people for much desired (and needed) tuition money said she worried more about driving down the wrong street than being killed in another country
we lived on the wrong street but as kids, we didn't know it we live on the right street now a house, twice the size of the trailer that miraculously accommodated 4 people in its limited 900 square foot frame
i no longer fall asleep to the boom of fists and music or the keens of sirens or a blue and red light show it's quiet now and I can even stay by the window for as long as i want to now
but when we first moved in, I couldn't sleep because it was too quiet As I laid awake, I saw the shadows of the neighbors sliding across my window like wisps of smoke and for one moment, I was terrified
as if they were Hade's Furies somehow coming for me they were just walking home from a neighbor's house party but when you grew up on the wrong street, that word means very little when someone can shoot you in the back and smile before pulling the trigger
there was no reason to be afraid but it takes years to unravel the gnarled strands of fear encoded into your DNA that kept your family safe
i still feel eyes on my back trailing me like a shadow and my didn't like me going to the mailbox
it's been six years now since we left that place but I never forget that compact 900 sq foot trailer or the sagging floors bowing under the weight or the thin metal walls that simmered in the summer or froze us like we were stuck in a morgue
we didn't invite many people over for company, probably cause they would have taken one look down that street and turned the other way, and maybe it wasn't the first place most people would choose to raise their family, it was the only option my parents had but when I navigate the gray landscapes of my mind, that trailer will be the first thing I recall when I am lost in no man's land territory, suspended between poverty and middle class now I will use that memory and it will guide me home, whereever that may be
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
All of these poems are nicely written, and I think the third one does a really good job of getting into the speaker's head and seeing from one's innocent vision. Sucker-punch of emotions, but I liked these a lot! ^^ Keep up the good work!
name: key/string/perks pronouns: she/her/hers and they/them/theirs
novel: the clocktower (camp nano apr 24) poetry: the beauty of the untold (napo 2024)
I was weeping as much for him as her; we do sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others. — Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
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Reviews: 108