Saturday January 30th, 2021

The exercise:

Write a four line poem about: last Saturday night.

Yeah, it's going to be a real subtle week. No apologies, just putting it out there up front.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Ok, so I've looked over all the entries in the four-line poetry for this month and put them together. They're a bit disparate, but I've put a verse in to see if they'll come together or not. See what you think -- is it worth continuing this as a longer piece?


Sunday, 3pm, and the sun is shining
Low in the sky and catching pedestrians in their eyes
I turn the corner, this one, like this,
And the streets fade to gray and the ghosts come out to play

The boarding house is boarded up:
Wall-eyed men ignore me as they hammer nails
Through plywood sheets into rotten doorframes
And shake their heads when I ask if there’s room to sleep.

A tunnel, made of red brick and circular
Leads into darkness but is dry and tall enough to stand in.
Shelter enough to sleep in, and the symbols on the walls
Don’t bother me at all.

The Hulk is a rusting ship, lying dying in a lake
It must have been built there for there’s no way
It could have sailed in unless the water level were once so high
It would have drowned the world around us.

Last Saturday night
I hesitate in the mouth of the tunnel, eyeing the Hulk,
And then decide that here is place enough to sleep
For what shall be my last Saturday night in this world.
I try not to make promises I can’t keep.

Marc said...

Greg - god damn it, I want to say no. But then I got to that new verse and I'm like, oh, shit, that's good. I want to hear more. This setting is a fantastic place to tell a story, and your narrator intrigues me.

It's up to you, obviously, but I think you've got something here. Perhaps you don't have to go for the full year? Just however long it takes to play out?