24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
I ntegers; almost every student’s nightmare!
N ay! They’re not going anywhere
T esting patience, tiring you out tirelessly
“E ndgame am I!” Declare the integers
G ear up! They are not so unsolvable
E ncourage your grey cells to cram some rules
R elax and recharge your self-confidence
S ee; integers ain’t no witchcraft, they’re afterall just numbers!
Hour – 6
Home
Some go out to stay away for a while
Some move out to amuse oneself
But I just have one reason
I go out so that
I can admire my home a little more
I leave for a while
So that I can realize it’s worth a little more
Just to know how it feels
To stay away
So that i can conclude
How badly i yearn for it
So that when I am home
I don’t take it for granted
My home is filled up with compassion
It gives me hope
It has promised me, that I will never be homeless
Since I found my home
In My favorite person
Aditi Dixit
Wildflowers in her hair
she lives her life without a care
For her, I’d hang the moon
Instead she would rather it be set free
So I can sing her lullabies and poems by the sea.
Snapshot isn’t even a term anymore
we don’t even take photographs
everything is generic, staged ‘shot’
truth be told we don’t even use cameras
But at the bottom of an ancient shoebox
there is a snapshot of you, sitting on
the front step of my apartment building
circa nineteen-seventy-whatever
The picture is grainy, in look and feel
taken with my mom’s Kodak Instamatic
printed with a fancy, matte finish
photo itself has a rough texture to it
There is more background than you in
the picture; steps, shrubs on either side
the building itself – all prominent, but
you are centered, as was your way
Yours a classic look of a then typical
nineteen-year-old college student –
jeans, blue denim shirt, unbuttoned
just so, gold-rim, aviator sunglasses
Even at distance your smile is palpable
brown hair cascades off your shoulders
body language, relaxed, unconcerned
elbows on knees, arms hanging loose
At the bottom of an ancient shoebox
there is a curled, coarse snapshot of you
I have taken it out a few times
scanned it, trying to enhance you
you are too small, not detailed enough
so the picture stays at bottom of that box
where such things should reside
it is a snapshot of you, finely detailed
Just not on film.
– Mark L. Lucker
© 2022
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd
Those were the days of wonders
Whose lays I can’t but ponder
When words were true and pristine
And nights were filled with laughter
Then came the wispy fluorine
With bangs of soft oily sheen
And beads that swing in abandon
And thos two pointy collines
And so happened the abduction
That sucked at all the attraction
Yo lazy days of languid vows
And starry nights of passion
So now I gaze with head bowed
At grazing cows and grey clouds
And wonder if I dreamt it all
Those starry nights of languid vows.
Desolate is the small Southern town
battleground for powerful men
a warzone with their decision making
buildings in disarray and crime out of control
but at least we have a nice new stadium
where boys edging CTE can crash into each other
for momentary achievement before
they join the rest of us dying.
My lizards’ love
is not that wary
even scaly, is soft and airy.
Their way of love
is so darned old
just chase, grab ahold
and take control.
Atop faux green leaves
snouts almost touching
vibrant lime faces
eyes casually, lackadaisically looking
wondering what the hell I’m doing.
The crazy way they bob
up and down, dewlap a-throb
bursting red to clearly show
they’re ready for romance, and go!
Situations, I’ve seen many
on vines, entwined, still and staring
once upside down, a feat for any
reptile species, should they tarry.
Love ends and begins yet again
they’ll even choose another man
or two, with dewlaps circling round
for females they are eying now.
But in the end, love makes a thing
a tiny orb, a few she’ll bring
these fragile babies, hard to keep
I’ll love this next one,
from a crack should it peep.
– Sandra Johnson, June 25, 2022
Many a persons had sat on that bench:
The hungry on it did eat.
The homeless on it had slept.
The lovers on the back a heart did draw.
The dog touched it with its paw.
The tired on it did rest.
Warriors from there plotted their quest.
The unemployed sat and scanned the newspaper for vacancy.
The police protected the bench from vagrancy.
The aged reminisce of their lives spent
The children on the bench , their friendships cement.
Each their own story so unique,
But the bench remains there shrouded in its own mystique
Text Prompt
Every year we have a new form prompt, and this year, it’s the Gigan, which is an invented form. There’s a detailed blog post about it here, and it includes an example Gigan, which always helps.
Gigans must be 16 lines in length with seven stanzas (each stanza is separated by a line break). It goes couplet (two lines), tercet (three lines), couplet, couplet, couplet, tercet, couplet.
The first line is also the eleventh line, line six is repeated as line 12 as well.
Optionally the closing couplet should put a twist on the poem, but that isn’t a requirement.
Image Prompt
Photo contributed by Ofuma Agali.