Summer Poetry Slam
Give us your summer-themed (or not) poems. Bonus points if they are also Mormon-themed. Any format works. Just go for it.
Peonies
Pink ruffled faces
stand silent in cool water
reflecting on sin.
15 Comments »
Leave a comment
RSS feed for comments on this post.
TrackBack URI
Baboons by Saint Albatross
———-
If you’re in Africa
and you hear a ruckus
you might be hearing baboons.
For baboons, ruckus making
is more than a good time
is more than a lifestyle choice -
it goes all the way down
into their black hearts.
I’d rather meet a tiger than a baboon
along the road.
Never mind the tiger’s predatory art:
the tiger has a golden heart -
the baboon has a black heart.
The baboon is as spooky as
any animal in the animal kingdom.
Baboons are spookier than bats.
Baboons are spookier than snakes.
The baboon has a black heart,
or, you might say,
is intentionally malicious.
A tiger would make a great pet
though he’s a man-eater,
you could tooth him and sedate him -
while no baboon will eat
his medicine,
any baboon you meet
will hide this fact
from you.
The Egyptians were a quiet river folk,
yet they were charmed by the ruckus -
making of baboons.
They believed,
though this is tough to believe,
they believed baboons
helped the great God, Thoth,
weigh the souls of the dead.
So they took baboons into their homes,
into their kitchens,
into their most private rooms.
One of the great unwritten lessons
of Egyptian history is this lesson:
don’t take baboons
into your houses.
It was unwritten
but now it is writ:
keep the baboons out of your
most private rooms.
There are many good bits
to learn from the Egyptians,
but this poem
is about baboons.
The obscenity of baboons
is understood.
That great animal man,
Conrad Gessner, said,
of baboons:
“They are as lustful and venerous
as goats,
attempting to defile all sorts of women.”
Goats, though, give good milk
for lactose intolerant children.
I don’t recommend baboon milk
for children:
it stirs,
them up.
Baboons come into the villages,
when the nights are blackest,
to steal babies
and guns.
A baboon with a gun
is a big problem,
a bigger problem than
a baboon without a gun
due to their affirmation
of ruckus making
and their black hearts.
This goes without saying
but I’ve said it, and writ it,
anyway.
That other great animal man,
Jane Goodall, said,
of baboons,
“I prefer chimpanzees.”
Comment by Thomas Parkin — July 3, 2011 @ 5:39 pm
Comment by MCQ — July 3, 2011 @ 10:05 pm
Me and you could just swap poems, MCQ.
Comment by Thomas Parkin — July 6, 2011 @ 10:20 pm
I’m good with that. Keep it up.
Comment by MCQ — July 7, 2011 @ 8:43 am
This one has elements of summertime, and I have used this to draw out a metaphor about grace/works, the atonement, etc.
The Lanyard – Billy Collins
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Comment by Mephibosheth — July 7, 2011 @ 1:40 pm
Holy moly, Mephiboseth, that’s so moving.
I’ll have another one for you, not written by me, in a few, MCQ.
Here we go … Weather, by May Swenson
I hope they never get a rope on you, weather.
I hope they never put a bit in your mouth.
I hope they never pack your snorts
into an engine or make you wear wheels.
I hope the astronauts will always have to wait
till you get off the prairie
because your kick is lethal,
your temper worse than the megaton.
I hope your harsh mane will grow forever,
and blow where it will,
that your slick hide will always shiver
and flick down your bright sweat.
Reteach us terror, weather,
with your teeth on our ships,
your hoofs on our houses,
your tail swatting our planes down like flies.
Before they make a grenade of our planet
I hope you’ll come like a comet,
oh mustang – fire-eyes, upreared belly -
bust the corral and stomp us to death.
Comment by Thomas Parkin — July 9, 2011 @ 4:37 am
Love both of those!
Here’s one from Wallace Stevens:
Comment by MCQ — July 9, 2011 @ 5:53 pm
Haikus are stupid
Rules about syllables
cramp my special style.
Or:
I’m too damn stupid
to write anything profound
in seventeen sounds.
Comment by annegb — July 10, 2011 @ 9:32 am
Although, I like your Haikus, Mcq.
Comment by annegb — July 10, 2011 @ 9:33 am
I think I saw Billy Collins do a poetry reading once. If it’s the guy I’m thinking of.
I’ve always been an ee cummings type. Here’s one of my faves:
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Comment by Susan M — July 18, 2011 @ 3:36 pm
Good one Susan. Here is my favorite Robert Frost poem. It seems to take place in summer:
Comment by MCQ — July 19, 2011 @ 12:18 pm
The Lanyard is one of my all time faves. I have a recording of Billy Collins reading it himself that I listen to every Mothers Day. I, too, don’t miss the symbolism that suggests these words can tie easily into the atonement.
as for an original:
Four glorious words:
“Brothers, remove your jackets,”
Summer comes to Church.
Comment by Chad Too — July 21, 2011 @ 11:13 am
Nice, Chad.
Except with AC, we don’t hear those words that much anymore.
And even though we have AC, I notice that few men (at least of my generation and younger) wear suit jackets at church anymore.
But it’s a good haiku nonetheless.
Comment by MCQ — July 21, 2011 @ 2:59 pm
Annegb, I hate to count syllables when writing poetry and would have to stop writing poetry entirely if it were required!
Here is a poem about the memory of my neighbor. I had many a sweet Summertime experience in her yard.
Goldie said bubbles can grow into flowers.
I pretend float to the sky and form castles with towers.
The fall to ground another day in the form of sudsy, showers and generously water the bubble flowers.
PS Goldie used to blow bubbles and did say they would grow into flowers. I think I half believed it.
Comment by Barb — August 11, 2011 @ 1:05 pm
typo I pretend they float
Comment by Barb — August 11, 2011 @ 1:06 pm