CanLit Games

Fold-over Poetry

This is the Canadian Literature Fold-over Poetry Archive.

When you're done reading, you can go home or add a line to the current poem.

Fold-over Poem #22

Everything starts somewhere
Except the times it don't
make any sense to worry about
who's judging your decision

it's a whole bunch of shame for a whole bunch of reasons
leaving him at home so I could go and bed Edith
who came from the coast, looking like a dream
on a navy night we parted

the stars crying their sympathies
tearing down the nighttime solitude with light
empty streets, empty faces passed us by as we parted
submitting a smirk that would surprise a porcupine

smarmy enough to smother the sharp spine
of the gargantuan monster made out of twine

Fold-over Poem #21

I peek, though guiltily.
Into the box so small
Beads, angels, dust, words.
Whatever you need to believe

like an injured thief
it's a necessary evil
apathetic children eating pie
a cow praying for rain

My ribs sticking out like
mama's old washboard
charred and twisted in the midden-hoard
the childhood toys

sdf
Send the Devil some Food

Fold-over Poem #20

As if the lobster knew
i opened an oyster and found a sonnet
I took out the pearl and tried to pawn it
But the assessor informed me in no uncertain terms that it was actually made of plastic.

His tone was bombastic but I found him fantastic
He stood silent waiting for the clock to chime
But it never did.
Until yesterday, when

time is going backwards
I'm getting younger every day!
As I become a child of age
my times continue, as they were first bent in me.

And the pearls
are made of ash.

Fold-over Poem #19

blue ever slips towards green unless and until
the shadow no longer lingers
on the playful pianist's fingers
sticky with notes.

thus one was two but never ever three
and then three came limping
Out of the mouldering woods
Logging in and hacking hard my branch of poetry

twice snapped
sawing six sonnets simultaneously
Listening to the silence in the forest
can the poet be heard?

or is it not a poem without being heard?
rhyming lumberjacks hacking away at their sleeping songs

Fold-over Poem #18

tiaras rove meaninglessly abroad
proposing titles in costume jewelry
with soft turquoise butterflies
scattering like a jigsaw sky

into the mind of the child
an inspiration, a glimpse, a memory, an un/doing
the crochet lines of his sweater
trace a new map of the heart

bust through the semiotic radar
outclassify someone you don't heart
and submit to the readerly text
no more this is awful

t'was ever thus
too many demands on the heart of the apocolypse

Fold-over Poem #16

music, food, love, play on
word play on mr piano man
strong teeth startle notes
blowing loud blowing long

sending sound to ripple through the empty streets
pure life leads to auditory horizons
The morning is ever too early now
No light above the horizon shows

Where it goes nobody knows
The bee sat quietly on the nose of the dog...
the poppy bloomed blood
staining the palms of the neighbour's cornfield

confined by hot enterprising roses
the glass of jello lemonade is half full