Sunday, April 29, 2012

National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #27

Abnominal

The poem must use only words that contain letters found in the name of the dedicatee. 
The poem should be 20 lines long.
It should be arranged in two-line stanzas, although other arrangements are permissible. 
Each stanza — or every two lines, if another arrangement is used — should contain each individual letter of the dedicatee’s name at least once. 
The opening and closing line should address or refer to the dedicatee in some form, with a strong preference for not using the name. 
However, the address in line 20 must not be a simple repetition of that in line 1; there must be some difference/transformation. 
There are no stipulations for line length or other metrical constraints. 
The title must be an anagaram of the dedicatee’s name.

Home Starts a Lion's Set

You did dare, wrestling with the big guns and the fog
willfully obstinate obtuse, I shall not demonstrate you find it yourself, you said.

We scoured the sour text, drove nails through its palms,
bled it for your bias and hate and genius.

Most of all for brilliance, honed ourselves on it,
come and go come and go, talking of you.

Blighted knight, arrange your merits.
Are they a consolation for your cigarette shortened dotage?

Because I do not understand, how such gifts and expansive scope infirm the glory of an hour,
because I find your air fetid, because I find myself whirling against the Word,

I strain to hear your mermaids singing lullabies,
drown myself, breathe in green sea and foam, exhale modernity.

Did you know the hates we'd glean pressed inside the ink
Did you believe you marred the verse?

Or did you know, taunt us dare us to find lies embedded within lines,
cast your long striding shadow across lands rimmed by disorder?

I've seen you running, long lengths of ankle joined to tibia and femur,
trailing streams of smoke and dissonance, grinding meaning to sparkling dust.

Now never grow old, minor prophet with your hair parted behind
little stuffed man of death's dream kingdom.

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