This week let’s write an abandon poem. I intentionally left that sentence a-grammatical. Your poem can be about abandoning or being abandoned and, since we’re all poets here, we all have poems at the bottoms of directories or piles of papers, maybe recover one of them and meld it into the theme.
Post your poem with abandon 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 
when the chips are down
no way out of the maze
completely alone
abandoned by everyone
margaret mead reality pigeons
coming home to roost
realise
you have God
trust in God
talk to him
and know
He is with you
and know
your destiny is more
than being relegated
to the dust to dust
ashes to ashes of the compost heap
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Posted by Cressida | August 8, 2022, 8:47 AMLove the “margaret mead reality pigeons” lines. I assumed it was a reference to something but couldn’t figure it out. Thanks for sharing!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | August 8, 2022, 10:48 AMInheritance
Earth spangled by star debris
lay cooling, spinning toward a forgetting
of first explosions, of rule by fire
With its antithesis and perfect love,
water in shallow seas.
The black of night, silk overhead,
embroidered with incandescence
was invisible, a dark concern
with no eyes to see.
Such imbalance cannot prevail,
light begets light and vision is convergence.
Earth turned and adjusted itself
for that great birth which was to come.
Now planetary night answers starlight
with a thousand thousand cities
inside whose shadowed halls
the great earth child sleeps,
And now and then in apex of midnight
she walks out to spread her arms,
spinning round as if in memory,
all fire and salt and waving water,
All shift and rotation rises up
in her fatherland of desire.
Not one spark abandoned,
not one spiral unstarred.
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Posted by ts19page | August 8, 2022, 7:44 PMLove that second stanza. Great imagery!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | August 8, 2022, 8:03 PMThe hopeful ending is rewarding and especially interesting are the ‘reality pigeons’. I think I would like a reality pigeon myself! (or do they come only in pairs?)
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Posted by ts19page | August 10, 2022, 12:10 PMOne of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night….Margaret Mead.
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Posted by Cressida | August 8, 2022, 12:51 PMYou once bounced on your knees
Up and down on my bed
Love in your eyes
Abandon in your voice
singing songs I played
on a honeyed-spruce topped
modern-day lyre
Now this torrid August day
paper firm in hand
notarized in triplicate
a last goodbye
Indifference in your eyes
Freedom in your stride
I stand abandoned on the hot city street
And on the slopes of cold Roan
I climb among the living spruce
To the platform of the swirling winds
sounding only in my human ears
angelic hands ripping pain from fighting flesh
I let it go
abandoning myself to the true silence
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Posted by Chris Clarke | August 10, 2022, 10:10 AMI like this poem of love and loss, done so well with the spruce reference and especially the wind in the ears as a kind of silence of it own.
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Posted by ts19page | August 10, 2022, 12:07 PMI am thinking of replacing the line
angelic hands ripping pain from fighting flesh
With
angelic hands rending flesh from pain
Thoughts?
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Posted by Chris Clarke | August 10, 2022, 7:19 PMDefinitely better. Tighter that way. Nice revision!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | August 10, 2022, 8:31 PMGreat use of the prompt in each of the three stanzas and a lovely relationship poem. Well done!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | August 10, 2022, 12:21 PMI think that is a better line.
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Posted by ts19page | August 10, 2022, 9:01 PMNeurotypical
She thinks black and white
She knows right or wrong
She is refreshing
when she speaks her mind
She is energising
when she speaks your mind
She is beautiful
when she dances with total abandon
She is light
when she faces the sun
singing to the birds
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | August 12, 2022, 8:43 PMA lovely portrait, especially the last two lines. Great work!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | August 12, 2022, 9:28 PM