Weekend Poem Challenge, You In?

[Katrenia Busch]

Just as Pottery is Sculpted

Just as pottery is sculpted

By a potter’s skill, works, arts—

A vindictive word then be crafted

From one’s bosom, chest, hearts—

As the scenery is molded—

That is to say— from one’s abode—

From the backfill— that once surrounded

A persons works— they have sorrowed

Just as a Sheriff is to county

And the sky is to earth—

The reign of necessity—

Marks innovations birth—

The days— and works deployed

Under the reign— of necessity

Whether embraced— or taught to avoid—

Under this here prophecy:

“The calendar has its course;

That is to say it’s ways—

Each year, month, week— but a source

That is counted into days—

Carefully consider the path of the moon

Watching the pattern of the sea—

The sculpture of this here tune—

Shall guide— you precisely—

If you read each stanza from beginning to end

You will count 149 words— that do portend.”

[Molly Miller]

GHOSTS

I am trying, and failing to backfill the parts of my life that you stole from me.

In Japan, they fill the cracks in pottery with gold,

but the only thing I can find to fill the cracks in my heart

is vindictive rage.

I am looking everywhere for those weak spots

that once allowed me to trust, to love, to forgive.

Those pieces of myself that I pushed down so deeply,

there is only silence and emptiness left behind.

I wonder what it would be like, to proudly proclaim:

“There’s a new sheriff in town,”

and run the ghosts of my past out of their hiding places

in the nooks and crannies of my mind.

I imagine it would feel like freedom,

but what does that mean for a person

who is used to living with those ghosts?

It gets lonely around here

without those ghosts to talk to,

to take up that empty space in my head.

But maybe, just maybe, I’m ready to be left alone.

[X. P. Callahan]

BROKEN SYLLABIC PANTOUM

Who knew you were so vindictive? Now you’ve gone

and smashed up my grandmother’s best pottery.

Do you really think I won’t call the sheriff?

Just watch me. You’ll have your whole life to backfill.

You just had to go and trash her pottery.

How could you not know I’m polyamorous?

Don’t believe me? Just watch. Then you can backfill

your heart with a whole swamp of crocodile tears.

What’s it to you if I’m polyamorous?

You’re the last one who should tell me what to do,

you with your cavernous heart and salty tears

and stories of how everyone’s done you wrong.

You’re the last person to tell me what to do.

Do you really think I won’t call the sheriff?

Go on. Tell your tale of how I done you wrong,

you vindictive loser. You’re better off gone.

"Sheriff, I wish to report a vindictive

pottery crime . . . "

[Andrew Paul Ward]

IN TOMBSTONE

Let the historians of today’s time—

if anyone really wants to be a historian of our time—

Let them know that the zeitgeist of the age is in Tombstone.

Not the vindictive Sheriff in the OK Corral shootout in eighteen eighty-one, no,

I’m talking about the tourists of Tombstone in twenty twenty-one.

Just take one photograph of those t-shirt clad vacationers!

See how they tread all over the lumpy, backfill graves,

One has a can of diet coke in his hand while he reads the stone:

‘Here lies Lester Moore—four slugs from an A44—no less—no more.’

With his phone he takes a picture of himself,

Grinning astride the corpse of Lester Moore.

And to think somewhere in Greece,

There are ropes and tapes and securities all to protect

A single shard of ancient painted pottery:

Painted on it not a coke can tourist, but a Hercules.

https://apward.substack.com/p/in-tombstone

[Bradley Staman]

One word after another

Words pile up, one after another

they try to connect, but like broken pottery

it’s not easy piecing them together

This word goes behind that one and

this one in front of the one before it

one after another, the words come together

The word sheriff shuffles them into place

moving the verb to connect better

with the noun, and backfill another adverb

to add additional punch to the puzzle

drawing the battle lines one word at a time

creating a picture puzzle one word after another

Each word, one after another,

creating a word world taking you away

off into your own strange imagination

A fantasy, a mystery, a romantic dream

or a horrifying, vindictive nightmare

one word after another, the puzzle comes to life

The word sheriff, vindictive at times,

brings the broken pottery pieces together

backfilling the final puzzle pieces into place

one word after another

[Thompson Emate]

The Pottery Mystery

The room was half-filled with earthen vessels,

The sheriff wondered who had made them,

It was evident that it was made by

someone skilled in the art of pottery,

As he and his partner stood wondering,

Someone emerged from a dark corner of the room,

An old lady with a stern look,

A sage had seen it in a book,

He said she had crafted the vessels with a vindictive heart,

They were made from the backfill of her son's grave,

The more she made them,

The more her son’s ghost was on a rampage,

The town was torn apart,

The sheriff interrogated her,

At first, she said nothing,

Only tears streamed down her eyes,

His partner said a word in her dialect,

That word broke the ice,

She told them it was a price,

That until her son’s death be avenged,

Tranquillity will be a shadow in summer.

[Tom Weikert]

The Dusty Buildings

The dusty buildings long for sweet repose

As a castigated child often does

When vindictive mothers strictly impose

The lash of their tongue on their rules of love

Long ago these buildings were made to last

Designed and built with care and attention

But their architects have long since then passed

Their tenets fled with their apprehensions

But, Oh! such happy days these buildings held

And the walls still cherish mem'ries of old

The pottery-boy, when first he beheld

The joy of perfecting that mere first mould

Or the choir girl when she mastered her tune

The mother's sigh as she nursed her first born

The young man prompting his lover to swoon

The Sheriff shining the star he'll adorn

But now the flats are lonely and vacant

And the plots soon the fodder of backfill

All our his'try swept under the blanket

With remembrance of our vigorous will

[Tanja Cilia]

Handle With Care

The Sages tell of two doves that fly;

Their rainbow of love doth span the sky.

The pottery shards in the backfill tell their story;

When keeping up appearances was mandatory

Lives shattered to smithereens, pique, and a fence…

The pressure on the lovers was incredibly intense.

The Scribe who dared to love the daughter;

The vindictive father who sought to thwart her.

Sending his Sheriff, today’s C.E.O;

To search and to capture, to search high and low;

A posse to chase them o’er hill and vale.

Never imagining that true love would prevail.

The daughter, though captive, her hopes never ceased;

She eloped with her lover on the day of the feast.

The dastardly father, killed the man and tore them apart

She died minutes later, of a broken heart.

The gods to protect them and their innocent loves

Made them doves flying free in the skies above.