"After Auschwitz, there is no poetry" - Theodor W. Adorno
hope nailed to the cross
mankind at its darkest hour
there's no forgetting
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Categories:
theodor, abuse, evil, hope, men,
Form: Haiku
Aunty lost three pounds of memory,
it happened slowly, the clock on her mantle
ran faster, the rain began to fall slower.
Her cat was a stranger, then an ex-lover.
1300 grams of her vanished in slow motion.
The gray-matter remained
though it was hollowed out by blind angels.
At the age of eighty-two she demanded a dog.
We bought her an automated one
that moved and barked.
Eventually though its computer-chip failed,
aunty did not notice
she was by then busy
discussing politics with Theodor Roosevelt.
I once asked her what he had to say?
She replied that he had confided to her
that ‘the dead remember everything’
that seemed so sad to me.
Categories:
theodor, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Aunty lost three pounds of memory,
it happened slowly, the clock on her mantle
ran faster, the rain began to fall slower.
Her cat was a stranger, then an ex-lover.
1300 grams of her vanished in slow motion.
The gray-matter remained
though it was hollowed out by myopic angels;
in dimly lit caves
At the age of eighty-five she demanded a dog.
We bought her an automated one
that moved and barked.
Eventually though its computer-chip brain failed,
aunty did not notice
she was by then very busy
discussing politics with Theodor Roosevelt.
I asked her what he had to say?
She replied that he had confided to her that:
‘dead remember everything’,
that seemed so sad to me.
Categories:
theodor, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Aunty lost three pounds of memory,
it happened slowly, the clock on her mantle
ran faster, the rain began to fall slower.
Her cat was a stranger, then an ex-lover.
1300 grams of her vanished in slow motion.
The gray-matter remained
though it was hollowed out by blind angels;
in those dimly lit caves
flew two storks carrying two infants
forever now circling a cartoon pink sky.
At the age of eighty-two she demanded a dog.
We bought her an automated one
that moved and barked.
Eventually though its computer-chip brain failed,
aunty did not notice
she was by then very busy
discussing politics with Theodor Roosevelt.
I once asked her what he had to say?
She replied that he had confided:
‘the dead remember everything,’
that also seemed sad to me.
Categories:
theodor, poetry,
Form: Free verse
brain on hold
bare-footed in a hurry
heading nowhere
Theodor Seuss Geisel - Dr. Seuss - Oh the Places You'll Go.
Here's my favorite page
"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”
Categories:
theodor, journey,
Form: Senryu
Some get hooked on poetry
By reading Robert Frost
Or Dickinson or Poe
Or others whom their paths have crossed.
In college I read Coleridge,
Byron, Shelley,Whitman, Pound,
T.S. Eliot and Wordsworth,
All in Norton’s, nicely bound.
But in truth, what got me started
Was less lofty, though enticing –
More like turning from the cake
So I could focus on the icing.
For my intro into rhyming
(If you don’t count Mother Goose),
Were the silly stories written
By that master, Dr. Seuss.
I was lifted and delighted
By each word upon each page;
Though he also drew the pictures,
It was language that engaged.
Every rhyme and all the rhythm
Seeped by suction to my veins
And they flowed into the depths
Where the important stuff remains.
So to Dr. Seuss I owe a debt.
He changed the way I’m wired
And I wonder if he realized
All the poets he inspired.
Categories:
theodor, poets, thank you,
Form: Rhyme