Hello, everyone! As discussed in this earlier thread, anyone interested will have ONE HOUR as of the posting of the thread you are now reading to compose and post a poem. Here in the anthology, if you please. The poem must incorporate the following three words -
Transubstantiation
Buttocked
Overbook
used in whatever way the poet sees fit.
At the end of the hour, I will start a poll for readers to vote for their favourite poem. Here we go - best of luck to you all!!
I have two offerings. If they don’t make sense, it’s because it is now 4:20am.
Poem 1:
To witches all priests must act snide,
For transubstantiation aside,
They’ve buttocked no lands,
Common to both clans,
Overbook unreason to both sides.
Poem 2:
Overbook that church on the hill,
Transubstantiation’s the thrill,
That’ll draw helping hands,
To that piece of land,
Buttocked from good men ‘gainst their will.
If I’m only allowed one entry, pick whichever is better. I think that is Poem 2, but who knows.
Survival
They fell on hard times after
the Apocalypse. Little left
to eat after consuming the hosts
found in the church.
It wasn’t the transubstantiation,
moldy wafers to the blood and
flesh of Jesus, but the weak
flensed for the strong.
Dead eyes flat and staring,
they buttocked him, rump
flesh roasted on a spit, thanking
Christ for another day.
There is a madness in the stars,
which fire shine like pale moonlight,
moonlight that lit alight the dust,
which come to rest upon grim headstones,
buttlocked into stony soil,
that before transubstantiation was flesh and lives,
overbook by care and grief,
and madness from never being fully lived.
Rte. 395
the Hoover damn
in midsummer
binds the heat
to a buttocked swoop
of shale
We descend the lip
of this winter bowl
to marvel
at the demands
of ingenuity
either in silence
or inattention
the usual transubstantiation of
of travel
Across the Colorado
the clouds
are overbooked
in small relief
against the
resolute
grid
Where the only shadows
in this Nevada canyon
belong to us
This flight, overbook and forget:
lost in the line and seven hours laid
over in Madrid, where the food
is saffron scent mixed with grease
and American coffee. I don’t speak
a word of Spanish, ask When
will the plane come?
Snowstorm in Boston, ice
and planes grounded; I’m here
for the duration.
Eleven hours, and I can’t sleep,
the Iberian night comes as shuttered
storefronts of Starbucks. The barista
smiles as I curl on plastic seats,
asks something with tiled wolf-grin,
eyes up and down my body, crawling
slow and catching every inch.
Well-buttocked, his leather jacket
on the bedpost, he shouts, at release,
the name of a saint.
Sunday morning, the country has gone
to Mass. During their transubstantiation,
I dress, find the route from his apartment
back to breakfast on an airport bench–
café con leche y churros; it arrives,
steaming and cinnamon, as the speakers
echo to life and call for me to come:
The weather has changed; my plane
leaves at eleven and, ticket-bound,
I must follow it home.
Inevitable
Inspired by gravity water branches out
Ramifying along the past of least resistance
Factitious Facetious
The root transubstantiates
The root is the end, a short piece of land
The branch rises
Outgrowth
Consequence
First recorded in the French
The branch becomes buttocked
Callipygian
Cacopygian
Dasypygal
Whatever
Tacked on
Hanging out
Eating ham
Waiting in the airport bar
Glad to be paid because the plane was
Overbooked
Your ideas are like
a rainbow, and I yearn to catalogue
the subtleties of every shade.
I want to inspire you
as you inspire me
To illuminate the skies with
our double rainbow - the transubstantiation
of other worldly light
through earthly, vulgar rain.
And the sky,
thus buttocked with two radiant arcs,
our universal screen,
reflects to all
our questing, profound,
unchaseable, unlimited
dirty minds.
You can’t overbook this flight of fancy.
I copied the wrong version; mea culpa!! This is correct:
Survival
They fell on hard times after
the Apocalypse, an overbook
of madness. Little left to eat
after consuming the hosts
found in the church.
It wasn’t the transubstantiation,
moldy wafers to the blood and
flesh of Jesus, but the weak
flensed for the strong.
Dead eyes flat and staring,
they buttocked him, rump
flesh roasted on a spit, thanking
Christ for another day.
All the entries so far are great! Mine sucks. Here it goes anyway:
Transubstantiation is not one of my concerns
my life is far more prosaic
I tend to worry more
about things like overbooked flights
when I want to visit out-of-state relatives
or fitting my short-statured yet large-buttocked frame
into a pair of jeans
but sometimes, when the chores are done
and the child has been sent to bed
I stay awake long enough
to wonder why I haven’t been to church in so long
and ponder things like transubstantiation
((I screwed up and posted the wrong version of the third break. Here’s the right one. Yeah, I’m anal)).
This flight, overbook and forget:
lost in the line and seven hours laid
over in Madrid, where the food
is saffron scent mixed with grease
and American coffee. I don’t speak
a word of Spanish, ask When
will the plane come?
Snowstorm in Boston, ice
and planes grounded; I’m here
for the duration.
Eleven hours, and I can’t sleep,
Iberian night coming as shuttered
storefronts of Starbucks. The barista
smiles as I curl on plastic seats,
asks something with tilted wolf-grin,
eyes up and down my body, crawling
slow and catching every inch.
Well-buttocked, his leather jacket
on the bedpost, he shouts, at release,
the name of a saint.
Sunday morning, the country has gone
to Mass. During their transubstantiation,
I dress, find the route from his apartment
back to breakfast on an airport bench–
café con leche y churros; it arrives,
steaming and cinnamon, as the speakers
echo to life and call for me to come:
The weather has changed; my plane
leaves at eleven and, ticket-bound,
I must follow it home.
Transubstantiation is a word
I don’t often have to use
It means nothing to a bird
And a Protestant would just refuse!
While “buttocked” I’ve never even heard
And yet I have nothing to lose
It’s poetry, forsooth, and the words are blurred
Overbook the poets, and we’d all have the blues.
It sucks, I know. Those are three tough words! So much for haiku…
the priest’s almost-feminine voice of my childhood would say
peace be with you
to the rumbling congregational response
and also with you
i remember that mumbled response from my childhood
whenever we were in iowa to visit my grandmother
the shining buckle on the bible belt of the midwest
my father was raised as a catholic
mass two times a week catholic school guilt and all
my mother converted to be able to marry him
my sister and i were baptised long before we could understand
so our souls would be safe and secure in heaven
a heaven probably overbooked with lost souls like mine
one sunday dad woke up and asked mom what would happen
do you suppose anyone would care if i didn’t go
and mom scoffed at him
the original minister of the two-buttocked bar stool
she didn’t so much believe in all the catholic mythology
she has opinions about everything and believes in sharing them
but somehow the church has always been safe
so the story goes that we skipped church that sunday
that we never went back after that
that dad gave up church for lent and it worked out okay for him
we’re still a little careful
it’s not that we believe in the whole wine as blood bread as body thing
but why tempt fate
if transubstantiation is possible you don’t want to be on god’s list
the summer i was eleven i was told i’d go to hell
i took the eucharist from the priest at grandma’s church
not realizing that was sacreligious for a lapsed catholic
to church or not to church was not my choice at eleven
and i was pretty sure i was not bad enough to go to hell
stealing a pack of gum couldn’t get you into hell
lying once about taking a dollar from the dressser wasn’t enough
letting leslie copy my math homework shouldn’t do it either
but that latin mass never again sounded as sweet
peace be with you and also with you
was not as comforting to the me on the outside no longer a you
Though some no doubt will find it odd,
I’d like to spend more time with God
But can’t be buttocked to atone
And all the flights to God have flown.
Saint Peter wouldn’t overbook,
So I in desperation took
A Boeing 747
As my chariot to heaven
(A new and fresher variation
On stale old transubstantiation).
Let’s abandon common sense
And dabble in grandiloquence
Try out our sesquipedalian
Flights of great extravagance
Adopt (because it’s most prestigious)
A phraseology most prodigious
Instead of saying “shapely buttocked”
We’ll throw them off with “callipygous”
Befuddlement our avocation,
Our words require interpretation
Don’t eat and drink, sweet Jesus, try
Instead some transubstantiation
Verba obscura is assured
When Latin is attached to words
Not “overbook” - say “supra libri”
And simple meaning is obscured.
Placing syntax under tension
Surely brings miscomprension
And perhaps a loss of friends
Something that I ought to mention
“It’s getting ridiculous,” Charon said
while shipping water o’er the gunwale,
his fair-buttocked boat sinking with the weight of the dead.
“Humans drunk on wine in church hoping that it’ll get them thru Immigration
because they think it’s a magic hippie’s blood made special by transubstantiation.”
“Now I’m more overbooked than that business with the plague
at least I’m getting rich. And when I retire I think I’ll buy the Hague!”
The knife: checked or carryon?
Did I check it? I always bring the wrong things.
Maybe I’ll get a seat by myself.
They usually overbook. I’ll probably be stuck with that wide-buttocked woman with the colicky baby.
Will there at least be food? Probably peanuts. Well, that and a little transubstantation I’m good.
I should’ve brought food. I always bring the wrong things.
One step forward, two steps back.
ETA: Wow, mine’s the worst, in a class by itself. I didn’t know I would be competing against actual poets!
Kind of rushed the last verse - should be “miscomprehension” - and I wanted to get “condescension” in there somewhere – oh well.
What fun! Great job everyone-- I love seeing what people can accomplish under stress!
Wow. Here I thought I was pretty handy with a pen, but you guys are amazing! I am humbled. Let’s do this again!