The Urban Poetry Challenge thread

[sojourner]

Butterfly

Remember to look up at the stars

Not the kind who whine about their first world problems on a million different channels
always me me me

to look up at the stars and not down at your feet

and reach out to the universe with all your tiny fingertips

and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see

in a world where reality TV isn't real
and filters alter everything
teeth tits face fists
tiny hands and truth

and wonder how the universe exists

especially now
when our weaponry of satire is extinct

how the universe exists.
Be curious

but don't forget the NHS
or the cunt in charge of it

And however difficult life may seem

poison on the streets
two women every week
babies being bombed by BAE artillery
young guns silencing the songs that others sung
corruption in the corridors
lungs full of gas
love from Assad

there is always something you can do
and succeed at

even if it's breathing in
getting up
putting one foot
on the floor
and then another

It matters that you don't just give up

did I?

It matters that you don't just give up

be a butterfly

 

[scifisam]

march 2016

hawking's dead but cliff still lives
i'm not sure there are many positives
nigel farage lives - now there's a pity
his slow painful death would not be shitty

Hawking was a time traveller after all then!

 

[May Kasahara]

I'm doing NaPoWriMo this time, anyone else?

 

[May Kasahara]

(sojourner DotCommunist ShiftyBagLady marty21 anyone else, see my blatant attempt to revive this thread)

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

Fuck it, I should give it a go.
I haven't properly written any poetry for ages, I've done what equates to sketches of poems but haven't actually committed to writing them. Maybe I'll work on those...

What's your plan May Kasahara? You got an hour or so put aside every day to write? Got stuff to work on? Going to respond to writing prompts?

 

[Thimble Queen]

Oh I'm tempted to write something everyday for April. Not sure if I have the time though... I suppose they don't have to be super long or perfect

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

Oh I'm tempted to write something everyday for April. Not sure if I have the time though... I suppose they don't have to be super long or perfect

Take ten minutes: five minutes stream of consciousness, five minutes to edit it

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

I'll try to remember to drop some writing prompts off here for anyone who just wants to dip their toe in every now and then

 

[Thimble Queen]

Take ten minutes: five minutes stream of consciousness, five minutes to edit it

Do you put yours on a blog or anything?

 

[May Kasahara]

ShiftyBagLady I've joined a prompt group on FB so am using those. Yesterday's was to choose six assonant words and use them to write something.

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

Do you put yours on a blog or anything?

No, I don't because that counts as publishing and most competitions and publishers want strictly unpublished work. I do a poetry and photography scrapbook and Instagram with poems I like, that's my only 'output' at the moment.
I've been thinking about setting up a poetry feedback workshop because there's nothing I like more than talking about poetry. Think that's a plan for the future though...

 

[May Kasahara]

In the shop with the man's name
you spent fifty pounds on a new knife
with a name that sounds like 'saboteur'.
We joke once we get it home,
show the children its sharp blade,
a slice of light.

You laugh as I avoid the new knife
but it turns first on you,
slicing into your finger like a ripe tomato.
The juice of you is saltier than your swears.

I carry on wielding our nameless stalwart
which, unknowingly sharpened by you
so that it might match up,
turns in my hand
and bites me in sympathy.

 

[8115]

A poem I half wrote around 2014. Needs a lot of work, any feedback welcome.


Alright bitches.

Did you see me, standing on that wall?
How tall I am?

I haven't gone mad.

Snap snap.

Low grade.

Smells like home.


I get cold.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

<another fucking post deleted:ed>

 

[8115]

Even in the time
it takes
to write a poem

smoke a fag

check an email.


A million stars die.

 

[DotCommunist]

O come lucky April,
born on a raft of stale jokes
You'll be here, come what may.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

It's done
All gone

 

[sojourner]

Okay then, let's do this! Napowrimo! First up is this one

Advice For Free

Remember watching Motorhead
in Bingley Hall in Stafford?
The time that fella's ears bled?
Lemmy's warts,
the wall of sound,
and Philthy going mad?

Remember where we stood that night?
And how that fella, six foot three,
came and stood in front of me,
so we just moved a step along
and simply carried on?

At every single gig for years
a giant stood in front of me.
And usually, he'd introduce
the contents of his arse to me,
silently.
Fifteen pints of Guinness and a king prawn biryani.

And then of course I'd always stand
in pre-ordained desire paths,
where every single punter would have to walk right into me
on their way to have a piss or get another pint.
It didn't matter where I stood,
I was always in that line.

But the last gig that I went to,
there's a fella stood in front of me,
he wasn't very tall at all,
he was only five foot three
but in his tiny fist he clutched
a Samsung fucking Galaxy - S9.

He held it high, he held it long,
his phone recorded every song.
He didn't watch the gig with eyes,
his lust for life was minimised.
He didn't mosh, he didn't dance,
he didn't even sing.
And now at every single gig
there's hundreds of them just like him,
obliterating lines of sight with smart-arsing technology.

When they wend their way back home
and watch a live gig on their phone,
and wonder why it sounds so shit,
I hope they will remember the advice I gave for free:

PUT YOUR FUCKING PHONE AWAY MATE
PUT IT IN YOUR POCKET
PUT YOUR FUCKING PHONE AWAY
BEFORE I FUCKING BREAK IT
PUT YOUR FUCKING PHONE AWAY MATE
PUT IT IN YOUR POCKET
KEEP IT SAFE WITHIN YOUR KECKS
BEFORE I FUCKING LOB IT

 

[May Kasahara]

Today's prompt was a Golden Shovel. Never even heard of before, much less written one, but I did write one using a line from Suspended In Gaffa by Kate Bush.

 

[sojourner]

Today's prompt was a Golden Shovel. Never even heard of before, much less written one, but I did write one using a line from Suspended In Gaffa by Kate Bush.

Are you gonna post it up here May Kasahara ?

I understand if folk don't wanna post it here if they want to have it published somewhere, but I would really like to see everyone's stuff, have our own little Urban Napo.

 

[May Kasahara]

Are you gonna post it up here May Kasahara ?

I understand if folk don't wanna post it here if they want to have it published somewhere, but I would really like to see everyone's stuff, have our own little Urban Napo.

Yeah, it's difficult innit - I do like posting stuff as feedback is important to help me determine whether anything should go out for possible publication...but then loads of places say no prior publication anywhere ever

I will post my shovel though just ran out of time last night.

 

[May Kasahara]

You will be pleased to hear sojourner that all this writing is making me want to go out and read at open mic nights

 

[sojourner]

You will be pleased to hear sojourner that all this writing is making me want to go out and read at open mic nights

That DOES please me, greatly You are an absolute natural - you should be out there all the time!

There were no less than 3 other poets at that gig last night and the fella who runs it was thanking me for bringing poetry to his nights. He said no one bothered before I did mine, and now loads of folk are starting to do it. Ace

 

[sojourner]

Yeah, it's difficult innit - I do like posting stuff as feedback is important to help me determine whether anything should go out for possible publication...but then loads of places say no prior publication anywhere ever

I will post my shovel though just ran out of time last night.

I wonder if there's a way to 'hide' this thread, or perhaps if we use the spoiler tags - would it show in searches then?

 

[sojourner]

(2nd poem for Napo)


Origin

This began with whispered words,
bites from shiny apples;

a desire to command, create;
a hunger to articulate intensity,
to mechanise a melody inside.

This commenced with prephonation;
tutoring of simple lips,
tentatively glossolalic.
Patterns forming,
disconnected information circling itself,
pulling at phonetic cords of morphemes

and spitting out bubbles just for fun, in between.

I did not suck my thumb.
I used hydraulic energy
and learned to work the motors of the muscles
in my head; masticating syllables,
exorcising scribbles made of air and formless urges;
engineering frenulous activity

and spitting out bubbles just for fun, in between.

This began and will not end until the breath begins to fade,
'til incantation drains away and starts to dig itself a grave,
knowing that it's naked and emaciating daily;
'til my tongue begins to wilt,
and the bricks I used to build myself
a living wall of symbols
fall apart, decay and die,
and disappear;

until I do not spit out bubbles just for fun, anymore.

 

[sojourner]

ShiftyBagLady I've joined a prompt group on FB so am using those. Yesterday's was to choose six assonant words and use them to write something.

May Kasahara - link me to that group would you please?

 

[Steel Icarus]

No here

To be two places at once, and neither
as cardboard armour hides the truth.
Either a man without a country, or an emperor
of a land I cannot use.

Smiling and coping. Existing, yet not
being.

No-one has been here but me. Impossible
that such a place
would remain unremarked upon, missed
by cartographers on even their most careless days.

Managing and screaming. Soldiering, yet
spir
all
ing.

One face behind another. Am I here
and I am not here.
There is
no here.

False god of a far-flung temple.
Unheralded seneschal
of a fled campestral.

 

[May Kasahara]

I wonder if there's a way to 'hide' this thread, or perhaps if we use the spoiler tags - would it show in searches then?

PM group?

The FB group is Carrie Etter's one

 

[sojourner]

Ooo I like that SI. The spiralling bit makes me want to play more with the formatting so it actually spirals. You used one of the prompts for that poem didn't you? I read that one but couldn't make anything with it.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Ooo I like that SI. The spiralling bit makes me want to play more with the formatting so it actually spirals. You used one of the prompts for that poem didn't you? I read that one but couldn't make anything with it.

Oops, was I supposed to be following a theme?