The Eventual Collapse of the Solar System or Global Warming- Take Your Pick

when my eyes open, all i have, is the sun,
sitting there, floating in space, held together
by conjoined gravity. it isn’t much these thoughts
of black holes, and when my time comes, i will
strip off my strappy shoes and silver chains, and
slip through sun streams.

flying fish, fridays, lucid memories of sleepy
dreamscapes, impressionism, and solitude. selfish
are the flowers that stay in the sun, a sweet something
to relinquish. saliva on the cypress, simple swellings
of southern hospitality.

Now What Have You Brought?
Blood in Baskets
Night-Mares on Lolli-Pops
Never-Ending- Dys-Topia
Anx-Ious Heart-Beating
Will This Ever Stop?

not on your Life,

it only gets

worse from here on out.

Let me be Free
Let me Breath
Die in my own way
Madness is short
In the long run.

Remember magic

is what you wanted

A trade is what You Offered

I will not set you Free.

Your Dystopia feeds me.

Old is the mind
Wiser. Let me

No. Peace is

Not Yours.

Freedom is all I ask.

Freedom is a common lie.

Come and sleep with beatss

That thrash your mind.

No. No. This is not real. These Voices are Ghosts.
TUMBLING, FALLING LEAVES OF BROWN
TO GREEN BLACK HOLES AND SUNSET SURF
BETROTHED CHAINS RUST AND WHAT
OF FREEDOM

oh you say, my imagination is a beast
the inescapable lives i carry, whispering
from black holes and i awake with a slippery sun,
pumping my heart and silver runs cold.


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And here is poem number 5. This is free verse and a bit of stream of conscious. This poem is supposed to emulate Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody as in the movements of the song. The prompt today was provided by Sarah Blake and you could read the full prompt here. So it was a replication of movement, not new song lyrics. I hope that I somewhat accomplished that.

Dawn of the Pure Chicken

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Here is poem number 4. Perhaps to you,  this may look like it took an hour tops. But really, it was more like several hours. It is best if you read the original prompt here. He calls this word blocks and it looks like word art to me, either way I think I came up with something interesting. 

Today's and yesterday's prompt combined two things I love, art and poetry and chances are I will probably explore more of this type of poetry in the future.

thepatronsaintofimaginationinvitesyoutotea

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Here is poem #3 for the National Poetry Month Challenge. This prompt totally blew my definition of what poetry is. I learned something new about poetry- about what it can be and what it doesn't have to be. This is called visual poetry. You can read the full prompt here because I cannot really describe it.

Before making this, I did some studying on visual poetry because I think it was only yesterday while I was on poetryfoundation.org website that I first saw visual poetry. After research time, I hand drew everything then I took a photo. I finally got use my tablet as a drawing aid! Once I photographed the sketch, I went to my tablet and traced the sketch. Once that was complete, I brought it back to my PC and did necessary photo editing.

I enjoyed this prompt and I am thinking this might make a neat little poetry project in the future.

Ruined Fallout

Look around your cacao
gravity, at all your disguised
praise. They’re worth
more than you think.

But if you have triggers and uranium pits
from El Nino, your bleached coral is protected
for much less than you’d expect.

One big tomorrow, our haunted
heart is a unique, personalized cancer
that helps me uncover all the sacrificed
darkness your entitled to. No
wonder souls switched their smoke and ash
to guns, saved with our veteran suicide
on outstanding greed- the most native fire.

Sources:

Advertising letter from State Farm Insurance

Perez, Craig Santos. "Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015." PoetryFoundation.org. Web. 2 Apr, 2016. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/252166


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Day two of poetry challenge. The prompt was different and little challenging, but I think I came up with something interesting. The first part was to find some kind of junk mail, or government document and then take out the nouns. Then replace the nouns with words from another text. You can read the full prompt here. For this poem I used an advertising letter from State Farm Insurance and chose words from the poem Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015.  If you have a chance read the original poem, the link is provided, it is an amazing poem.

Statesmen and Prophecies

mezzanine whispers
prohibit peace of mind, broke
sunnyside over
standpipes- silent mouth holes-
inferior delusions win elections.


Source:
New York (N.Y.). Board of Standards and Appeals. Bulletin of the Board of Standards And Appeals of the City of New York. New York, N.Y.: the Board, (44-45).  1917. Web. 1 Apr. 2016. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433066307426?urlappend=%3Bseq=50>


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First poem for 2016 National Poetry Month.  Here is the poetry prompt generator that I used. It was created by Patrick Williams. My personal prompt was to find 5 words from the provided two pages and make a five line poem with the found words starting each line. Then I was to title it "Statesmen and Prophecies."

Yeah for National Poetry Month

It's National Poetry Month and I know you are all excited about it. I know I am. The folks over Found Poetry Review have created another interesting challenge for this year. This one is a  little bit different from other ones. There will be thirty different prompts, a new prompt every day created by various people. You don't need to sign up just like them on Facebook or Twitter and keep up to date when a new prompt is posted. I am going to try and do all thirty just because I really should write more poetry. I am going to work on the first one here shortly.

Since the nature of the challenge is different, I will be posting poems here first. So if you love my poems, please do come by and check it out. And this should be interesting since that would actually mean I should be posting everyday. Okay mostly everyday because I have some plans this month and I won't be home, so I will be catching up on the off days.

Till next time...

Pennies of a Nation



I.
GIVE ME
your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
(the disenfranchised, the lost, the scared)
yearning- (desperately seeking, needing)
to breathe
free in the forgotten foggy
barren New York Harbor
she screams, now whispers
Blackness strangles her voice as her torch ignites
and she melts

into Pennies
millions of green pennies
float on polluted waters
struggle to stay afloat
And slowly

they drift beneath the current
drown unnoticed


II.
Once
when I could walk
the streets in peace, wave
to my neighbors
I was a doctor.
They took him, one night
but I wandered the streets
hoping
not to find his body
black houses behind weathered
wood paneled windows
hiding neighbors
gun shots rattle the silent streets
where children once
were children.
Hell is only gun shots that resound in the darkness,
hell is not knowing where he is
hell is knowing who they are
and when he came back to me,
we ran, and we ran
our home was nothing
more than just shelter
from bullets.

Michigan is supposed to be heaven
and I just want to breathe
free with the sun on my face

III.
They are the future, their big
brown eyes full
of wonder and questions
full of thoughts and ideas of happiness
and one day
a Tuesday,
I said good-bye and they left
for school-
And a bomb went off.
The enemy, former friends
or sons of long gone friends blew
up the school of innocent
boys. Plumes of hellish
smoke clawed out
the pale blue sky and covered the sun.

Maybe it was a miracle
they came home to me.
we ran, and we ran
our home was nothing
more than just a shelter
from smoky shrapnel.

Florida is supposed to be heaven
and I just want to breathe
free with the sun on my face

IV.
LIFE LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Oh TJ what did you mean?
Who did you mean?

When I penned these
words, I only
meant those
like me, men-
fighting for freedom from the crown
But, I watched this nation
and all nations unfold before my dead eyes
I was wrong. These rights
are meant for everyone
I wish I could tell them all
I wish I could change the world
I wish I could take America
by the hand and show them all I have seen

Some of us
still believe those words
Some of us clamor around
the rotunda in the Archives
just to get a glimpse
of the one parchment
that makes us American.

The ink flakes away and soon
it will be dust, where we will be then?
What will we remember?

V.
United?
We are divided
the right the left the black
the white blaming this blaming that
and the only solutions
are tried and true in high school chem labs

And They Laugh At Us
behind their black masks and black flag
sitting on outdated
Russian and US weapons

And we will destroy
ourselves. Remember Rome
ghostly cheers of a once mighty
nation are silent, the coliseum
continues to crumble in the rain.

Compassion?
(For the meek and mild
and nuns in habits with their crosses,
prayers and food for the needy)

Hatred?
Is Free!
And simple, and easy, and instinctual.

What will our legacy be?

VI.
Pennies wash ashore
on some beach
in Jersey
a young girl plucks one
takes her scarf, wipes the penny clean
then picks up another and another and another
wrapping them in her plaid scarf
warm, safe, free from sand and mud.

Compassion becomes life
liberty comes home
and happiness is to breathe free.


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If you enjoyed this poem, please share with your friends. It was a poem I wrote for poetry class and I feel that instead of sending it away for publishing, everyone should read it for free because I believe it is important.