Poem of the day

The 70-Poet Challenge

Photograph image of Dylan Thomas bust surrounded by library stamp dates, with pale yellow background
20 April

Peculiar

by Mary Kuper

Image Credit: 
keyoperator/Grosvenor@SCANNERPC
19 April

Passaway

by Penelope Shuttle

deep sorrow for his passaway

              sorry we lost he

 

after your passaway 

              I give you river, 

              cloud reflected in river

 

You give back river 

              you give back cloud

 

sorry we lost he

 

I give you whirling dervish of house, 

              half-mile of heron

 

You give them back, 

              you are passaway

 

I give you memory 

              of our weekdays and weekends 

                            and all the days in between

 

You give them back 

              with or without sorrow 

                            I can’t tell

 

sorry we lost he

 

I give you hodgepodge of spiders, 

              Love’s dagger-proof coat, 

                            myself when young

 

I give you river and cloud, 

              you return them, unused, 

                            don’t need them

 

              you are passaway

 

17 April

Wars and Rumours

by Toluwalope Ogunlesi

Preamble:

love has folded His sheets of music,

time assembles to distune our talking drums,

songs seal themselves in bunkers of silence,

daylight rushes her still-wet laundry in.

 

Prophecy:

scarecrows beat fear-full wings in the sky's vast

tombs,

birds freeze into poles of torment, riotously hued,

it's going to rain; it's going to pour,

the clouds whisper it, through kola-blackened teeth

 

Visions:

in years to come time will

tell it; unfold bunkers of teeth -

grinning teeth, chipped teeth, set in

a silent, still convoy of skinned skulls

 

Questions:

a canvas citizened by victims,

a canvas mounted on poles of silence

a canvas painted in pencils of (heated) lead

- did the Painter Realise his Vision?

 

Aftermath:

bunkers of silence drum to empty sheets of music

birds rain, lifeless, like kola-blackened teeth

grinning teeth, once hued, smile wet-laundry smiles

songs assemble, file into vast tombs with skinned

souls.