30 April 



Day 30


From Poetry Society - a summary of April


30



Virus didn't know or care but 
flowered

Scientists and artists
responded in their kind

Time capsules we lived in,
quite apart

Made a loop track,
everything repeated

The children stopped asking questions
The new soon became old

Nature returns-
just look at the dragons

Abrasive edges off -
we love each other now

Druggies in the street, 
nodding off and dreaming us

Online's the only thing 
that's real, I think

Baked so many birds into pies,
definition of normal

PPE for the bride..
all window dressing

We video call
and I can see your faces

Slippery eel politicians
slip back in the water

Seen stars
dug the earth up

Somehow you're returning to yourself-
many meanings of love



30 April 



Day 30


prompt - something that happens once a year


Salmon run

Not April, but May, perhaps,
or full June we find
they come back, strangers

to the vein of river
that rushes through the body town.
We stand , weir-walkers,

shallow ankled,
laughing, but dead serious
as the monsters swim slipstreaming,

current- led towards us.
All year waiting for it,
bunking school and smoking

Year on year of this,
14, 15, older 
when we're old men and women,

when our life flashes before us,
finds us standing over kingfisher
and faint jade in sunshine.

See, Joe has made a spear,
and I've a sort of net,
of narrow gauge, 
but you can't tell with silver

squirming by our bare feet,
muscular as children used
to scrapping

The effort is to get upriver,
and we hope that we can catch it
our hands together, ready,

gone cold white in the water,
moving as we trap her,
first salann of the new year

In the uncertain spring,
don't breathe now,
don't you breathe now 

We're never elsewhere,
never out of water,
kissed the gills on your white neck

or the place where they'd grow smooth,
the scales and skin unblemished,
you perfect in your jean shorts

And he's no kind of hero,
there's no wisdom to be had
in blood or in the pricking of a finger

After this year, 
the shoal heavy with eggs,
I don't think that we'll meet again

or won't remember,
like the stones on the bed,
with blank faces, with all faces

The 3 of us
will wake up nights in sunlight
slowly remembering we were sort of hunters

Look down, look down,  
like God or a lost gang
into the pools where 

we will
curl and jump and fail, 
these hopeful, hopeless generations

29 April 

Day 29 


Napowrimo prompt -pets




All praise you Valentine,
you run around with your posh shirt tail
folded in the up,
meaning business
 I am great
You say,
I am the greatest

You're double fur
like in Cats the unholy musical
You're double fitted,
unzip one coat
You wear another

You are sure of the praise you deserve
You are a boy
And act like one
Quick as the switch your eyes
are mischief

You graffiti our walls 
with your scent, your  tag
Here I am
My place, my pad 
my manor

Arc your leap
in the April morning
like joy
like you
are here
as much as I - 
All praise you Valentine

29 April 

Day 29 


Off prompt - an ode to Boris and Bo Jo Jr



All babies when they're born look like Churchill-
portly, imperious and bland
So it was, for our glorious leader
at the launch of his new baby brand


They said, "it's a boy", (call him Junior),
paparazzi were jostling  for snaps
Could the people be distracted from troubles,
just enough to stop griping and clap?


Though it wasn't first go as a father,
(he'd done it before- once, twice, six?)
he knew that this time was the charmed one,
that goodwill's a way out of a fix.

So while we wait for protection,
for testing and targets and masks, 
Let's praise this convenient miracle
for our great nation's deadbeatest dad

28 April 

Day 28 (2)


in the chamber - a kind of sestina


Because he was only a marriage uncle
and once removed, I write and score the reminiscence
The narrow double bed, its corners tightly folded,
the air refrigerated, an official marriage- long ago her other bedroom
The health and efficiency magazines in the bedside cabinet,
blueprints, and the wondrous Plimsoll line, Masonic secrets


Years served in the boiler room, welded to secrets,
risen to the rank and file of uncle
The ointment and ligament in the medicine cabinet
Her rising, singing in her neat, pink room
This is the minutiae of reminiscence 
The single husband man, strict drawings neatly folded 


Keeping the days edge-neat and folded
Learning the cramped routine of secrets
The skin and bone grown cold with reminiscence, 
when uncle worked for years at being uncle
The room was also repository, not just sleep room
There it is , the memory box , the cabinet


The tens green bottles, medication cabinet,
prescription with receipts, all sleeping, folded 
He keeps the tools of trade, quiet neat, in lullabyes in this room
And blankets for the baby unmade, secret
for he was never father, only uncle
And poor her, couldn't nurse a reminiscence


All the wives showed off bruised reminiscence
and stored their inside faces in a cabinet
It's my money to keep he said,  the distant uncle
keeping his regiments all tightly folded,
The mysterious order of misplaced secrets,
the grand book whispered inside its dusty throne room


This is twice removed, like an escape room
The past hurts, it locks in reminiscence 
Where, if you looked, were secrets-
the odd white teeth , smoke breath locked in a cabinet
Fold the expectations till they're folded
all gums no bite, the inconvenient uncle


He is this wife, this room- locks himself away , a secret cabinet
He is foreman of old knocks and reminiscence
He folds himself in two, this not mine Uncle


28 April


Day 28

Prompt from Poetry Society - Vision (actually a triolet)


The patient sitting (an Agent) in the dark is blinded by devices for the measurement
of eyes, and through them soul. Here is the chart of obfuscation, here is the lexicon of dark
with all the whitespace glowing. It is hard to read and understand, there is no sense
in letters without reading, and the dark is in your very eyes, a weak, short sighted love,
that fades towards glaucoma-blue, a strange enlightenment

27 April


Day 27


Prompt - from napowrimo.net  -  write an unlikely review



Reviews - Money

“I didn’t find it as useful as everyone said; that Assyrian for example, who passed through my village last month and gave me a disc of gold in exchange for two of my most impressive sheep.
I have been unable to make use of this since and it is simply an attractive adornment on the ledge above my fire.”
Shepherd, 47, Turkey, 4000 BC
2/10 – need to work the concept out
________________________________________________________________________
“I, for one have never understood the actual use of the stuff- I like the having, not the spending. I have hoarded a large quantity given to me by grateful peasants and simply enshrined it in a room I call the gold room to watch the way the sunlight catches each coin and marvel in my possessing all of this. My lady wife seems to think I have a problem, but I could part with any one of them, though I have found removing one does disturb the order and the placing of the others and this worries me. I never dust. I want to have my money buried with me, coddling me, keeping my coffin warm, weighing me down.”
Miser 1278
8/10 – for collecting
________________________________________________________________________
“If it’s imaginary, yeah, and it is, kind of, cos it’s just paper and we’re all just getting more paper and working for paper and giving other paper for stuff, then it’s kind of like the world's biggest con and the world’s biggest book with all the pages torn out and if you took everything you had in terms of paper and put it into a pile and set it on fire with lighter fuel and match, then it would keep you warm. So it's useful for that as well, but not for long.”
Anon
5/10 -for the idea
________________________________________________________________________
“It’s a Godsend. Not so long ago, I was trying to decide the value of things as they related to each other. I was trying to estimate the trade of ten red apples – a pig’s flank, a pot, a shoe from an average shoemaker, the equivalencies are endless.  And that’s just basic things. Stuff gets very complicated when you zoom forward millennia or so. What's a song worth, or the viewing of a film, in a theatre in the dark? What’s your hard work worth, what’s insurance to be swapped for, what if I decide to put my dream on the market, what could you give me for it? How many children equal a diamond? And, what’s a poem worth in terms of bread?
Money is great, it’s a go between, it’s a scale, it’s a lingua franca, pax romanis. It’s that good, even the Pope has a bank. It controls the imagination, no more difficult translations, we have prices, stickers now. I exchange goods for services and vice versa all the time. Gold, paper, online, I love it.
Would recommend. “
BTW, what is a poem worth?”

Anon, would be philosopher, 2020
9/10
________________________________________________________________________
“I like copper –
as it aged, it faded green

and gold shone
and silver

Paper was fat in the hand
like a good love letter

But I can’t get on
with all these airborne signals

And it’s hard to feel rich
in zeros and ones”

Anon  -bring back real money
1/10