Phrases upended – Day 13.4.2018 NaPoWriMo

Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which the words or meaning of a familiar phrase get up-ended

 

Elvis (and the cat) Has Left The Buiding

 

My cat, who edits my poems

has only one life, mustering a cut,

knocking over one stool and then the other;

cracking the eggs she hadn’t counted

as she welcomes The King, disguising

this as a bridge ready to cross (if he’s

going home).

 

She knows I despise clichés and she

dislikes the dresses laid out for the lamb:

(this cat wants her sleeper owner still

in her dressing gown at noon.) And, her

life, so salubrious, forget the other eight.

 

She saw the deck was full of party goers

and  soon the roof would be too snow covered

even for a cat, so she slipped away

under the fence leaving me to chew

on this perfectly excellent steak (the

best thing) because the bread, not sliced

and not baked.

 

Benita Kape © 13.4.2018

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Body and Thighs – Ars Poetica

Body and Thighs – Ars Poetica 

 

Hair that shines in the sun.

Strands that lift as in the wind,

a rearrangement, a lyric.

 

Eyes that observe

and lay aside images, selections

that are poems at poems conception.

 

Nose, you smell poems a mile away,

the salt air of the shoreline, the ever –

changing environment: the poem

coming ashore on her new sense of baptism.

 

The mouth whispering

or cursing, or singing

or silent or pausing.

 

The chin, addressing your audience.

The neck, ridged and aching

with poetry’s stubbornness

to survive her utterance.

 

Poetry’s fear in her breast;

her love in heart and her belly.

Poetry’s shoulders: I work past

the frozenness and pain and build

on Poetry’s thighs, birthplace,

energies centre, taking unexpected

muscle weight as knees bend

at poetry’s day to day tasks

or at poetry’s sporting fixtures.

 

Your body a Commonwealth

of poems in training; performance.

the podium of the body. Bodies

lined up and waiting.

 

The winds of poetry always

in your hair. Even when

the head is shaved there

will be poems in the body.

 

See your fingernails.

What poems lie under them?

 

Shorten your nails into a haiku.

Grow them and paint them

and write them outlandish.

Never scratch the eyes

out of the next poem you see.

Caress and manicure right

down to poetry’s cuticles,

the hair on your head.

 

Benita Kape © 13.4.2018

 

And here to dVerse  https://dversepoets.com/2018/04/12/ars-poetica/

But I want to pay tribute to Dame Valarie Adams who is so dedicated to her sport of shot put and is beautiful as a person, a mother, a daughter, a wife. At present competing at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Australia.