#npm2017

[cobanionsmith]

There Is Nothing New Under the Sun

What has been will be again, except me–I am a new creation.

PAD Day 14 (common saying)

[shredsandpatches]

[NPM17] National Poetry Month day 5

Break of Day John Donne

’Tis true, ’tis day, what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise because ’tis light? Did we lie down because ’twas night? Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither, Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye; If it could speak as well as spy, This were the worst that it could say, That being well I fain would stay, And that I loved my heart and honour so, That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove? Oh, that’s the worst disease of love, The poor, the foul, the false, love can Admit, but not the busied man. He which hath business, and makes love, doth do Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

[shredsandpatches]

[NPM17] National Poetry Month, day 3 (belated)

[What horror to awake at night] Lorine Niederer

What horror to awake at night and in the dimness see the light.               Time is white               mosquitoes bite I’ve spent my life on nothing.

The thought that stings. How are you, Nothing, sitting around with Something’s wife.               Buzz and burn               is all I learn I’ve spent my life on nothing.  

I’m pillowed and padded, pale and puffing lifting household stuffing—               carpets, dishes               benches, fishes I’ve spent my life in nothing.

[shredsandpatches]

[NPM17] National Poetry Month, day 6

Tamer and Hawk Thom Gunn

I thought I was so tough, But gentled at your hands, Cannot be quick enough To fly for you and show That when I go I go At your commands. Even in flight above I am no longer free: You seeled me with your love, I am blind to other birds— The habit of your words Has hooded me. As formerly, I wheel I hover and I twist, But only want the feel, In my possessive thought, Of catcher and of caught Upon your wrist. You but half civilize, Taming me in this way. Through having only eyes For you I fear to lose, I lose to keep, and choose Tamer as prey.

[shredsandpatches]

[NPM17] National Poetry Month, day 4

January, 1795 Mary Robinson

Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing, Lords in ermine, beggars freezing; Titled gluttons dainties carving, Genius in a garret starving.

Lofty mansions, warm and spacious; Courtiers cringing and voracious; Misers scarce the wretched heeding; Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.

Wives who laugh at passive spouses; Theatres, and meeting-houses; Balls, where simp’ring misses languish; Hospitals, and groans of anguish.

Arts and sciences bewailing; Commerce drooping, credit failing; Placemen mocking subjects loyal; Separations, weddings royal.

Authors who can’t earn a dinner; Many a subtle rogue a winner; Fugitives for shelter seeking; Misers hoarding, tradesmen breaking.

Taste and talents quite deserted; All the laws of truth perverted; Arrogance o’er merit soaring; Merit silently deploring.

Ladies gambling night and morning; Fools the works of genius scorning; Ancient dames for girls mistaken, Youthful damsels quite forsaken.

Some in luxury delighting; More in talking than in fighting; Lovers old, and beaux decrepid; Lordlings empty and insipid.

Poets, painters, and musicians; Lawyers, doctors, politicians: Pamphlets, newspapers, and odes, Seeking fame by diff’rent roads.

Gallant souls with empty purses; Gen’rals only fit for nurses; School-boys, smit with martial spirit, Taking place of vet’ran merit.

Honest men who can’t get places, Knaves who shew unblushing faces; Ruin hasten’d, peace retarded; Candor spurn’d, and art rewarded.

[cobanionsmith]

Scale

I'm not a professional but I can tell you a heart beats asymmetrically beats per second is universal whatever moves one weighs more or less heavily depending on the volume whatever system you choose longing can only be measured by an absence of what you don't have metric or imperial it truly doesn't matter whether it's odd or even PAD 2017 day 29 (metric)

[hepatosaurus]

national poetry month, day 29

Small Comfort Coffee and cigarettes in a clean cafe, forsythia lit like a damp match against a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone, the laundry cool and crisp and folded away again in the lavender closet—too late to find comfort enough in such small daily moments of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine people would rather be happy than suffering and inflicting suffering. We’re near the end, but O before the end, as the sparrows wing each night to their secret nests in the elm’s green dome O let the last bus bring love to lover, let the starveling dog turn the corner and lope suddenly miraculously, down its own street, home. —Katha Pollitt

[hepatosaurus]

national poetry month, day 28

At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School the football field rises to meet the mesa. Indian boys gallop across the grass, against the beginnings of their body. On those Saturday afternoons, unbroken horses gather to watch their sons growing larger in the small parts of the world. Everyone is the quarterback. There is no thin man in a big hat writing down all the names in two columns: winners and losers. This is the eternal football game, Indians versus Indians. All the Skins in the wooden bleachers, fancydancing, stomping red dust straight down into nothing. Before the game is over, the eighth-grade girls’ track team comes running, circling the field, their thin and brown legs echoing wild horses, wild horses, wild horses. —Sherman Alexie