# June challenge, Lessons.



## Olly Buckle (Jun 11, 2011)

Here is the subject for your new June challenge boys and girls, *"Lessons"*, please write clearly and check for spelling errors, you may use both sides of the paper

Seriously, please have a quick glance through the 'stickies' at the top and check over your entry before you post it, I get no joy excluding people from the poll for editing their poems after they have entered.

Good luck one and all, I look forward to seeing the results.

Entries to be posted below in this thread, You have two weeks to enter in.

Closing date June 25th.


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## Heavy Thorn (Jun 11, 2011)

In the Form
by
Michael Traven
_

Lessons_

_In the form of lipstick on my neck_
_of blond hair on my shirt_

_In the form of words I should have kept_
_of words I should have learned_

_In the form of beer still on my breath_
_of ways I could have swerved_

_Lessons_

_In the form of ink put on my chest_
_of violence, hate and blood_

_In the form of men I've laid to rest_
_of tears and prison mud_

_In the form of days I've eaten dust_
_of times I've prayed to god_

_Lessons_

_In the form of chains I finally left_
_of aching hearts that yearned_

_In the form of words she always kept_
_of words I never earned_

_In the form of love that starts again_
_of lessons finally learned_


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## Gumby (Jun 12, 2011)

String Theory


Threads pull taut
within my mind,
to wrinkle the fabric 
of memories.
Pain, stretched thin;
a surgeons scalpel-
dissects emotions,
lancing old scars
with new insights.

I bleed out
through fingers,
to pen, to page.
I fear I've felled a forest,
in sopping up the mess.

_Always cut strings,_
_never pull,_

that’s what mum said
years ago,
when teaching me to sew
the pattern
of my life.

And I,
impatient fool,
have only
crooked stitches
and broken threads,
to show the cut 
of my cloth.


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## obi_have (Jun 13, 2011)

*Screetching and Stomping Lessons
*
One hundred dollars 
come out of each check
just for screetching and stomping,
but, ah... what the heck.


My kids screetch the fiddle
(aka, violin)
and I pray the poor teacher
let's them come back again.


And they stomp and they stamp 
in their new clogging shoes,
and I pop some more asprin;
this headache's bad news.


But I just grin and bear it,
'Cuz I'm a proud dad
And now, three years later...
this isn't half bad.


Their fidd'ling's more fidd'lish
Even "Charlie Daniels"-esque,
And their feet stomp the rhythm,
It's not so grotesque.


I'll keep paying for lessons,
though they cost more than gold,
so the kids can entertain
their dear Dad when I'm old.


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## Squalid Glass (Jun 13, 2011)

*On Learning how toLove*


Lessons that I learned
finally at eighteen – 
a first love I had thought 
would stretch eternity.

_Don’t get _
_sentimental, _
I tell myself in thought, 
yet her lessons were so gentle;
how quickly I forgot

what it was I knew before,
what I had been taught

(from father it was God – 
his grudging hand above,
from mother it was kin – 
their acts of cupboard love.)

But me she taught, with great distress,
a circle to a square,
yet only when I’d acquiesce – 
that is become aware.

For before her lessons
I was drowning lost at sea;
a boy without a dory
full of ideology.


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## Baron (Jun 14, 2011)

*Understanding the Waste Land*​


Dead rock star 
played a rhythm of his own;
warrior of excess caught 
in offbeat blues metaphor,
where fame inflamed a fan flare -
narcotic outlaw
turned hero - gasped his guts 
to feed the fuming 
scarlet whore.

_Babylon wrote her lexicon in red,
strained from souls 
who strayed in her direction,
while all those fallen
looked on her with growing dread _–
Aramaic murmurs, voiced by those
who waited at the intersection,
warned of fiery vengeance 
which would fall upon her head.

The drummer kept a steady beat,
the bass throbbed deep and rhythmic,
a guitar sang a note so high and sweet –

_the singer screamed his verse hysteric_.

Weary warriors dreamt of home -
listened for an anthem of their own
to ease excruciating thrills of knowing
how they fought in vain and couldn’t stop
the blood from flowing.

With all vain hope in concert,
which thirsty people saw –
a Waste Land which perplexed
until they viewed it in the afterglow

of war...


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## Nick (Jun 14, 2011)

*Family Dinner*

The table’s set and ready
but they’re wandering the naked city – 
tugging the string that holds them to you
like the ropes that stain your hands. 

You brought out your old china,
like your family’s family’s past,
that’s dirtied in the wine they gave
from endeavours far from home. 

You can still taste the first,
when they pull out their chairs – 
link their cuffs and call their friends;
business begs honest men of them. 

You sit and wait, list in hand
while they squander the lessons you taught;
cradles lost in an empty sea
of the society that raced you home. 

Wait for their next car on the drive,
and their glance at the ground they knew.
Trust they’ll stay to hear you well
Then walk them to your
Peaking, setting sun.


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## Chesters Daughter (Jun 15, 2011)

Melissa


My empathy rots in the gutter
alongside aspirations
she's cast in the trash.
Sewage that cannot be swept away
despite desperate salted downpours.

The when, how, and why
have been secreted 
away by the past,
the present is misnamed,
for it certainly is no gift,
and the future's been deeply buried
before ever being born.

A queen at seventeen,
applauded by a court of paupers,
their brains as bankrupt
as boarded up storefronts.
Safe in numbers,
they feed off each other's failures,
hearty pats on the back
for those with the most.

With eyes of stone and heart of bone,
she sits upon her mock throne
believing she has all the answers.
She fools her fools,
but hasn't a clue
of what she's done
nor what she'll do.

Deaf to reason,
with royal nose up in the air
and her lips pursed 
in permanent perplexity
she doesn't realize is there,
she waves me away as a poor jester,
for what jokes could I possibly share
with Her Highness 
who never smiles.
Yet beneath robes woven of angst,
I believe she's really self aware.

I'm off to fetch a shovel
to dig up the future 
'fore it turns to dust,
for in a mere three years or less,
her Majesty, the moron, will step down
and my dear daughter
will finally wake up.


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## Edgewise (Jun 17, 2011)

Rules of the Road

Old Mr. Jim sweat
tragic happenstance
from every pore on his
comb-over head reciting
driving school sermons
to yet another class;

30 deep, hole-in-the wall
without air conditioning
in clammy summer; made
the bored, glistening girls
even prettier when they aimed
their cleavage at Mr. Jim.

_Rules of the Road _said nothing
about Mrs. Jim's mangled limbs
twisted in the grill of a Ford pickup
driven by careless kids who stole the road
and never had to listen to Mr. Jim's litany:

Brother crippled for
not rotating his head
the requisite number
of times before turning
left at a three point stop:

an animal holocaust
under his wheels that
left aches in his throat
(and which he urged us to ignore
when we crushed Bambi's of our own).

Mr. Jim himself suffered from a smashed hip,
broken ribs, legs with pins and a middle age
wasted preaching auto safety, like a shepherd
abandoned monthly by his mocking flock.

The stuttering man was cursed,
but for the look of him incapable
of earning divine ire.

Mr. Jim took it all in stride
though his license had long expired.


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## TheFuhrer02 (Jun 20, 2011)

*Doctor*

The doctor droned
with the dullest tones
the lesson for today,
luring his students to slumber.
I, for one, could feel my eyelids
drooping lower and lower.

The lecture was now
on its fourth hour,
with no signs of slowing
or stopping.
The doctor, it seemed,
despite his dreary declamation,
had much exhilaration
to teach today.

From Latin-labeled bodily structures
to intercellular molecular procedures,
all these things 
bombarded my morning.
Pia mater, great trochanter,
calcium-potassium transporters
don’t matter much to me.

And yet I’m here,
listening still,
to my professor’s sleepy speech -
alert for any crucial points
that may appear
in the exams next week.


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## Jeep121262 (Jun 22, 2011)

*The Hard Way*

If you get hungry enough you'll eat it
Echoed in my head as I sat there
Please God, don't let him repeat it
He's hovering over my chair

Don't make me get up and come in there
She shrieked for the thirtieth time
And she tried to break into my lair
But I'd done left the scene of the crime

My parents were ogres and tyrants
Worse than Attila the Hun
I was once put on a hill of fire ants
And left to die out in the sun

Had to learn everything the hard way
Would listen to nothing they said
I wish I could argue with them today
But I can't 'cause they're both...in bed


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 22, 2011)

*A Lesson in Alliteration*

S has something about 
it that makes it stand out, 
be sparing with them.

Sibilant S may suggest
Something smooth and soft
But less is best, lest
You suffer being scoffed.
Its overuse
Is conspicuous.


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## Baron (Jun 25, 2011)

This challenge is now closed


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