This week let’s write a poem with the words epigraph, machine and race in it. This is another of those prompts where I randomly choose three words from a list of the top 1000 words in the English language plus a few of my favorites. Post your poems in the comments below.
About Bartholomew Barker
Bartholomew Barker is an organizer of Living Poetry, a collection of poets in the Triangle region of North Carolina where he has hosted a monthly feedback workshop for more than decade. His first poetry collection, Wednesday Night Regular, written in and about strip clubs, was published in 2013. His second, Milkshakes and Chilidogs, a chapbook of food inspired poetry was served in 2017. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he lives and writes poetry.
Living Poetry 
hellbent on power over all
the human race creates
robots and machines
to do their bidding
except sometimes these mechanical slaves go haywire
accidentally chopping off little kids’ fingers in chess matches
“what a piece of work is man”
( a suitable epigram methinks ! )
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Posted by Cressida | July 25, 2022, 9:02 AMLove it, especially the image of the machine chopping off fingers. Well done!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | July 25, 2022, 7:04 PMAck! I thought that was just a brilliant metaphor. Didn’t realize it was current events!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | July 25, 2022, 7:54 PMEpigrams can be epigraphs.
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Posted by ts19page | July 26, 2022, 9:32 AMSotto Sorrow
The day is overcast and cool
leaves drop woefully into the pool
gray-green pallor robes the sun
in some dull crepuscular ill omen,
A day aligned for the forgetful mind.
Work laid aside, book spread along the spine
eyes droop and waver, the indolent heart
slows its race, begins to savor
A bass note, from a machine nearby,
my own work laid aside, no use for industry this tide,
the inner ear scans seas of warning
gaps in rhythm, a glitch of mourning.
Thus defenseless, lay down your day
the best laid plans in disarray.
Huddle there, an afghan for your chair,
and watch the day fade into its lair.
So much was promised to be done
work denied with denied sun, the epigraph
has come undone, the subdued heart can not rise up
as barely damp the chasmal cup,
Idleness goes finest with this flow;
Ah, I have learned
never to put off until tomorrow
what you can do, sotto sorrow,
the day after tomorrow.
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Posted by ts19page | July 25, 2022, 1:48 PMLove the fourth stanza with the Burns reference and the day fading into its lair. Great work!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | July 25, 2022, 7:06 PMI didn’t use the word “epigraph” but I included an epigraph to the poem. Did I cheat?
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | July 25, 2022, 9:02 PMThere is no cheating in poetry. Well done.
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Posted by JeanMarie | July 26, 2022, 11:31 AMI agree, if the cheat works its art.
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Posted by ts19page | July 26, 2022, 12:14 PMPredestination
The human race are not machines.
Grease and grime don’t feed us.
Electricity or coal don’t power us.
Carriage or container don’t move us.
We are flesh and blood bear sins.
There was epigraph written long before our birth.
We are with love, power and sound minds.
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | July 25, 2022, 11:14 PMLove the three line progression of things that don’t us. Great work!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | July 25, 2022, 11:32 PMThanks!
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | July 26, 2022, 1:48 AMlovely!
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Posted by JeanMarie | July 26, 2022, 11:31 AMThanks JeanMarie.
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | July 26, 2022, 4:53 PMLike the implication that Love feeds us!
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Posted by ts19page | July 26, 2022, 12:13 PM🙏
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | July 26, 2022, 4:56 PMInterchange
=========
The interchange before me
like a tangle of yarn
filled with people and dreams
concrete and red iron
reflective signage
grooved roadways
pilings rising from fecund tidal marshes
gleams level upon level
in the afternoon’s light
hard and yellow
an epigraph
this thing of beauty
to the machine of our civilization
a race forward to the future
only imagined
an interchange of what is and what could be
surely someplace higher
all the while
we keep falling back to dark places
the tidelands keeps the time
and the score
far longer than we care to remember
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Posted by Chris Clarke | July 28, 2022, 1:49 PMLikeLike
Posted by Chris Clarke | July 28, 2022, 1:54 PMThat’s a great description in the first stanza. Very well done!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | July 28, 2022, 5:28 PMThis is really great! The flow, like a highway, the marsh with its memory, the fecundity juxtaposed with progress and the metaphors of ‘interchange’.
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Posted by ts19page | July 28, 2022, 5:46 PM