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April 2024 Contest Winners

Congratulations to our April 2024 contest winners!

Spring Fling  was won by Carrie with the poem Spring Fling

04/24 I Was An April Fool was won by Geezer with the poem Fooled Again...

04/24 Waiting In Line was won by  Mary Beth Magee  with the poem The Last Time

04/24 Are We There Yet?  Was won by Rula with the poem We're Almost There For It

04/24 My Favorite Cookie was won by Leslie with the poem After school treat!

Poetry Month 2024 Imagine Contest Vote

Vote for this month’s image prompt contest winner

Voting ends May 6th 2024.

Vote at the end of this newsletter.

 

Backwards

By: Carrie

G
All the things that I wanna write
C
Have been written
G
All the songs that I wanna sing
D
Have been sung,
G
All the things that I wanna say
C
Have been said before
D A Em G
All the things that I wanna do have been done.

G
I wanna fly a kite
A
At night instead of day,
C
I wanna drive a big old truck
D
The opposite way
G
I wanna laugh when I’m sad,
C
And cry when I’m happy and gay
D A
I wanna do what no one’s done
G
Any other day.

G
I wanna wear all my clothes
A
Wear em all inside out,

C
I wanna be real quiet,
D
When everybody else wants to shout
G
I wanna see the stars
C
When everybody else sees the sun
D
I want my day to end
C G
When everybody else’s has begun.

C D
Wouldn’t it be weird, wouldn’t it be funny and strange
A
If everyone thought like this,
G
Slightly deranged.

 

 

Lost Love

By: Alex Tanner

Should I recall those blissful times
When we like climbing flowers entwined;
Our blossoms scented evenings air
As Love and Lust forsook our cares.

Your laugh was soft and gentle,
A butterflies wings in spring,
Dancing on the sunbeams
Enough to make me sing.

Eyes so bright they sparkled
Diamonds on moonlit snow;
Flashing hither and thither
To make my pulse race so.

We held each other gentle
Yet tight so not to break,
Though deep, our love could never last,
Different paths our lives would take.

For fleeting months we tarried,
Each time we met we knew
This may be the last time
For lovers hours are few.

If I love ten thousand women
Tis you I will recall;
You gave yourself so willing,
For your passion I did fall.

On black nights as the wind howls,
As I lie in a bed so cold,
Your soft voice echoes 'cross the years
To warm my lonely soul.

                                                                                                                                         

Vote Here

Thank you for your participation.

This week the Neopoem is

 

 Whistle Stop Grove by Izzi Reinier

 

Let us congratulate Izzi Reinier on his first contest win as a neopoet member.

The stream (all workshops)

This is the stream - you can see all poems on Neopoet, live, as they are created.

 

Snow Day

bendy buses
squiggle through
swarms of
yellow honks
and packaged pedestrians
amidst
grills and grates
belching steam
and screeches
beneath a fleet
of frozen feet

till

anesthetizing snow

suddenly
silence
stillness
a city succombs

briefly

tacit
relief
from the constant cacophony

untill

(wait for it)

the whirl and whine
from snowbound blowhards
start reving up their complaints
in frighteous indignation

Confessional

I'm a spendthrift
and a hack
and I don't need you
to contradict me on that.

I remember when Self Esteem
was so important to me.

But now the door closes
and I shut it all out,
because if I don't
I'll drive myself mad.

And man, I wish I was mad.

And I wish it would all go away.
I can trace my failures all the way back
to every bad decision, choice, and failure I remember.

QUO VADIS

Where are you going and why are you going there
What is it that’s happening, and why do you care

Why do you go, what is the purpose of your quest
Too also, with the mysteries of love and compassion be blessed

Or to bear witness to a life put to death, yet who also forgave
While you were not there, you ran away; your life to save

By persecution and fear, your faith you had spurned
Yet, in the caverns of your mind, it still burned

Your servitude, put in question by your cowardice
Is rewarded only, when you realize you are powerless

How Strange

I’ve said I love you,
often,
said I love you madly
I love you to bits
love you so much
dearly.

I’ve said I love you sister, Mum or Dad
to family.

I’ve said I love you mate, brother or sister
to friends.

I’ve said I like you,
I’m fond of you,
want you,
want to hold you, touch you, kiss you,
make love with you,
fuck you like an animal.

I’ve said it honestly, lying,
with agenda and without,
spontaneous and premeditated,
to individuals, groups and crowds

The casualties are not only those who are dead.
They are well out of it.
The casualties are not only those who are dead.
Though they await burial by installment.
The casualties are not only those who are lost
Persons or property, hard as it is
To grope for a touch that some
May not know is not there.
The casualties are not only those led away by night.
The cell is a cruel place, sometimes a haven.
No where as absolute as the grave.
The casualties are not only those who started

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life

As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.

The air will not deny you. Like a top
Spin you on the navel of the storm, for the hoe
That roots the forests plows a path for squirrels.

My apparition rose from the fall of lead,
Declared, ' l am a civilian.'It only served
To aggravate your fright .For how could I
Have risen , a being of this world, in that hour
Of impartial death! And I thought also; nor is
Your quarrel of this world.

From Eumolpus-
(To introduce this workshop, I though it might be good to start with a famous poem (I think!) by Soyinka, first African to win the Nobel Prize and legendary for 50 years. I have reproduced the poem as written.
Craft-wise, what I like about this poem is the easy access to the poem through a dramatic incident,

In the still..

All cleaned up
Breakfasted
Showered,
My sometime landlady gone
with canisters of gas to distant friends,
the washing on,
the contact lenses done,

The silence between the piano notes
of Beethoven on the radio,
Allow the daylight in, and
with it, birdsong

The spot of you I scrubbed,
then regretted,
wanting it to still be there

In the stillness,
the breathless air,
A piano scale tumbles
down the stair

And a violin grows a tree in my heart.

Abiku
Wanderer child. It is the same child who dies and returns again and again to plague the mother.
-Yoruba belief

In vain your bangles cast
Charmed circles at my feet
I am Abiku, calling for the first
And repeated time.

Must I weep for goats and cowries
For palm oil and sprinkled ask?
Yams do not sprout amulets
To earth Abiku's limbs.

So when the snail is burnt in his shell,
Whet the heated fragment, brand me
Deeply on the breast - you must know him
When Abiku calls again.

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