dark poetry

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 9)

Click on the NaPo button for today’s prompt and links to other poems.

Because it’s Saturday, day 9 of the NaPoWriMo challenge, and the 9th of April, my numerically poetic task is to write a nine-line nonet poem. A nonet renders out to about 36 words. It’s a brief form. The first line has nine syllables, the second has eight, and so on. The number of syllables reducing until you get to the nineth line, which has just one syllable.

I supposed that one could write an inverted nonet, which I did, beginning with one syllable and working up, line-by-line, back to nine. I felt like I had the time. Two poems, 72 words, 90 syllables. Not much for a Saturday. So, I also wrote a 57-word poem for Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt.

Never Understood

He had a quick pride which pained him much.
So many loves he’d won and lost.
His narcissism reflecting,
the part he’d never see.
Sadness lived within
his tortured soul.
When he died,
I still
cried.

***

Had
I known
of his soul,
the cost to him
was in no way small.
I never understood
many burdens he carried
they just split his being apart,
making it worse, the curse of his heart.

Look both ways and up and down before asking why or why not.
Mind the gaps in mirrored perfection of human discernment.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 6)

Today, I’ve been challenged to write a variation of an acrostic poem. But rather than spelling out a word with the first letters of each line, I’m to write a poem that reproduces a phrase with the first word of each line.

I chose Find what you love and let it kill you. (Attributed to: Charles Bukowski [unlikely], Kinky Friedman [more likely but with like instead of love], Van Dyke Parks [attributes to Friedman], and Anonymous [possible, but someone said it first]; and if it was Kinky, who used love first?)

Seriously

Find my reason for being, my why did I not die,
What is it that makes me do the things I do?
You may have some thoughts about my dilemma;
Love or hate and genes and things, like moon phases,
And everything about what I was and now I am.
Let us feel, taste, smell, see, and hear all there is.
It is my life, after all, and I must find it or
Kill myself trying because this is too important for
You to take things like love and death so lightly.

Look both ways while searching for all the love to live for
and all reasons to die. Mind the gaps for gods with all the right answers.

Monday’s Rune: War Poetry

But First

To balance my blogosphere life, I shall henceforth post my unprompted poems (or prose), called runes, on Mondays (formerly Thursday) so I can plan to post about every other day.

I claim King’s X for April because I hope to be working my way through 30 poems in 30 days with National (Global) Poetry Writing Month (napowrimo.net). I try to write to the daily prompts/assignments (it’s optional, I’m not that masochistic).

Thus, I shall post every day in April. When possible, I will combine or do a second post on Friday Fictioneers and Sammi’s Weekender. I will also try to read and comment on those challenges when I can.

Why Can’t We Be Friends?

What is the difference between
genocide, slavery, life,
and freedom?

It’s war. Granted. War is bad.
It’s literally hell on Earth.
Innocents and soldiers are killed.
War’s destruction is
without logic or proportion.

But pacifism is worse.
Evil cannot be appeased.
War is the symptom.
Humanity is the cause.
Hate is the disease.

Choose well but take a side.
Peace is a dream guarded
by nightmares. History proves
we always get the war we want.
There may be no winners in war,
but there are losers. I’d rather not.

Look both ways in the real world.
We must always fight for what is right.
Mind the gaps for seeds of hate and find the first casualty of war: truth.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #241 (din)

Click on graphic for Sammi’s blog.

shameful silence

early morning sounds
soft, in silent darkness
distracted by clichéd neon din
imprisoned without art,
terrified by evil’s truth.

Look both ways to see and to say.
Mind the gaps of paranoia while seeking better days.

Inspired by S&G’s hymn to resistance, The Sound of Silence.

Sammi’s Weekender #240 (pavonine)

Click on graphic for Sammi’s blog.

 

An Old Dog Bit Me

My Dog was a big, ugly, fat fucker (BUFF),
boasting an un-pavonine but prominent
forty-eight-foot-tall tail
painted a horrid unreflective tar-black; likewise,
his underside, from empennage guns to radome nose.

Chemical odors inside mixed with piss and puke
fouled the air; noise enough to deafen,
disaster and destruction filled his big ebony belly.

On command, my camouflaged killer would ‘Cry Havoc;’
wreaking horrible death and terror onto the earth below.

Now, we haunt display grounds at air museums across the country.

Look both ways.
What you don’t see can kill.
Mind the gaps and don’t be a target.

Note: Allusion is to “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war,” spoken by Mark Antony in Act 3, Scene 1, line 273 of Shakespeare’s history play, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.

 

A B-52D (circa 1975), also known as a tall tail or the “Old Dog.” It was the B-52 model (there were eight) used in the novel “Flight of the Old Dog” by Dale Brown.

dVerse Quadrille #142 (tinsel)

Thanks to Mish for hosting (and sucking me into this post which I did not plan to do).

Back in town

tinsel tensing nuts in town
leaders, all bozos

and clowns,

suky tawdry for a.g,
macheath and mackie messer,

for all the world to see

liars swear another judge jackleg

threepenny opera

death was healthy,

good is bad, bloodsuckers’ protagonists,

what do you want now?

Look both ways to tell the good guys from the rest.
Mind the gaps in a saint’s past and the sinner’s future.

Click on my cigar for more wonderful poems.

Sammi’s Weekender #239 (smuggle)

Click the prompt graphic to teleport to Sammi’s blog and other poetry or prose.

Egregiously Absurd

Smugglers
of humans seeking better lives, liberty, to taste
freedom, asking only workman’s wages.

They flee to us with wicked problems,
bringing constantly changing confusion,
due to undefinable inequalities of states.

By coercion or consent, trusting snakeheads,
coyotes, or polleros; at great cost and risk,
begging asylum from worse.

We pick them up, send them back;
our failed fences, blank walls.
WTF is beautiful about that?

Look both ways and “Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too.”
Mind the gaps on the high road of morality.

Sammi’s Weekender #232 (question)

Click graphic for new tab link to Sammi’s blog.

The Weight of Truth

Your question cuts to my core.
You long for unnuanced truth bathed in heavenly light.

Who am I, naked, closeted?
Yet, you ask for the dark light, to know my vulnerable,
captive, and bound heart.

Will my truth set you free?
Shall my vulnerability be set back upon me?
My silent deception belies both truth and trust.

Long sleepless nights.
Regret, haunting wonders of who I am.

If I answer your question the world will hate me.
My truth is heaviness mankind cannot hold.

Look both ways before you answer.
Value truth but weigh the gaps and consequences.

Thursday Rune: Today’s No Thing

For a moment,
I close my eyes
and the moment’s gone.
My memories rarely
remain for long.
Soon enough,
today’s moments
are done.

This is Thursday.
It can only be today,
whatever the name.

Today
will never be tomorrow.
Wait and see.

Sun’s third planet
spinning in artificial time,
a wee bit in vast nothingness,
at the whim of some god,
or controlled by
meaningless unmeasured chaos.

I can’t
taste or smell Thursday.
Today sounds are unheard,
there’s nothing to touch.
It’s another day.

And yet,
like a spirit,
unlike
physical, practical things,
each moment of every day
flashes by—
irreplaceable,
never lasting,
instantly
forever gone.

Today is
most valuable.
It’s now.
It’s all we have.
Why can’t it stay?

Look both ways, but all we have is today.
Mind the gaps.
Enjoy life.