#napowrimo2025 poems on Hello Poetry

ConnectHook 5d

NIGRA SUM SED FORMOSA

The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it,
for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon;
and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.
Matthew 12:42

She materializes
from ancient Marib and the Horn of Africa
to fulfill final prophecy:

Upping the ante of Solomon’s triple six
Erythrean Makkeda/Balkis appears, manifests, descends
sweeps in amidst clouds of frankincense:
immaculate golden sandstorm
crossing over our threshold
having passed through Arabia
in her palanquin;
with retinue of camels and courtiers
spices and incense
invading, bursting into the Baroque,

King George II freaks out:
how to handle her—
arriving unannounced
in England in 1749 . . .
But Sheba is beatific
under a towering white wig,
enveloped in silk brocade;
Lutheran angels uphold her trailing gown…

Handel, inspired, knows what to do.

Saba: We come to the seventh day
we enter her rest—
a greater than Solomon has arrived.

PROMPT 28: write a poem that involves music at an event of some kind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TGKJ9MgCOQ

#napowrimo2025

ConnectHook Apr 26

Signage Sonnet

A sign is planted bravely on your grass
Informing those of us who live as brutes
That tolerance abounds within your class
And that we don’t possess your virtuous fruits.
But whether you proclaim by sign or flag
Or misbegotten sticker on your car,
We note you fail to notice that you brag;
And make yourself a moral commissar.
Pride is prideful—all arrogance conceit.
Projecting your neurosis has grown old . . .
We laugh at you, not with you. Your deceit,
Ungrasped by you, is easy to behold.
The barren tree you planted in your pride
Informs the world you’ve failed to take God’s side.

PROMPT 26:
A traditional sonnet has a strict meter and rhyme scheme.
Try your hand at a sonnet – or at least something “sonnet-shaped.”

#napowrimo2025

ConnectHook Apr 22

Arrivals/Departures

As the second hand slips
When you’re coming to grips
In a thrilling ecstatic last gasp,
The spasms are treasured,
The nerve-endings pleasured—
An easy, yet hard thing to grasp.

If only the wife
Could surpass this in life;
Transcending mere conjugal motion:
This private emergency;
Slippery urgency,
Panting in private devotion.

On the hot stroke of one
It’s a second to none
Passing minutes on high alert.
When all prudery ceases,
The tension releases:
Alone, as you ready to—

PROMPT #22:
write a poem about something you’ve done
that gave you a kind of satisfaction,
and perhaps still does.

#napowrimo2025

ConnectHook Apr 22

Limericks for Sawako

That Japanese thing about ants:
Yoko Ono (but worse) at first glance,
Is an improvisation
Producing frustration
In readers, when given a chance…

I was hoping to find a bit more
In Sawako’s ridiculous Score;
But her total is zero,
This scribbling hero—
Her poem was truly a bore.

PROMPT #21:
Sawako Nakayasu’s poem 'Improvisational Score' is a rather surreal prose poem describing an imaginary musical piece that proceeds in a very unmusical way.

https://poets.org/poem/improvisational-score

#napowrimo2025

ConnectHook Apr 8

Rainbow Ghazal

It sounded good at first but went too far, their mad confusion.
Now deviants wave flags and shriek. We hear only delusion.

Social justice meets mental illness; a blind date in the street;
Mix and recombine to make a flamingly bad confusion.

These violent clowns could burn it all down and STILL they'd be enraged
As smoke clears on the rubble of their sad confusion.

The worst of all assume they had a monopoly on Progress
But the malevolent misfits only ever had confusion...

Perversity hailed as diversity, victimhood applauded;
Nations subverted and brought to a sad conclusion.

To Weimar, San Francisco, Babylon and Tel Aviv
We could certainly, at this point, make unveiled allusion...

PROMPT #8: try writing your own ghazal
Five to fifteen couplets that are independent from each other but are nonetheless linked abstractly in their theme; and more concretely by their form. And what is that form? In English ghazals, the usual constraints are that:
the lines all have to be of around the same length (though formal meter/syllable-counts are not employed); and
both lines of the first couplet end on the same word or words, which then form a refrain that is echoed at the end of each succeeding couplet.

#napowrimo2025

ConnectHook Apr 6

Minted

Rumors of White Supremacy.
In that row, your column’s number…
Coining new terms in secrecy:
“Boing” (boring minus R) is dumber.

Coiled, then boing like a prompted spring,
Primitive poetic action;
Apes with crayons, coloring;
Hooting in dissatisfaction.

Leaves leave a taste like baseless fears,
Primitive prompts in lyric night.
BOING ! The Jack-in-the-Box appears—
Laughing at your illiberal fright…

I did not have much to work with...
PROMPT #6 :  Find the row with your number.
Then, write a poem describing the taste of the item in Column A,
using the words that appear in that row in Column B and C.
For bonus points, give your poem the title of the word that appears in Column A for your row, but don’t use that word in the poem itself.

Column A:  MINT
Column B:  BOING
Column C:  PRIMITIVE

#napowrimo2025

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