NAPOWRIMO #29: UNTITLED (BLACK PSALM)

For 2016's National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), Troy's Work Table is writing thirty poems in thirty days, but only publishing three lines (or less) from each rough draft poem here at TWT.

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Your dark tongue speaks
and the empires of sea, sky, and land
collapse.

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A few lines from another new "Black Psalm."

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Copyright © 2016 by Troy's Work Table.

NAPOWRIMO #28: UNTITLED (BLACK PSALM)

For 2016's National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), Troy's Work Table is writing thirty poems in thirty days, but only publishing three lines (or less) from each rough draft poem here at TWT.

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You forged a crown that favored yourself.

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A single line from a new "Black Psalm," still in the infant stages.

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Copyright © 2016 by Troy's Work Table.

LIVING WATERS: A READING

The Nearsighted Narwhal's signboard for LIVING WATERS: A Reading.

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Friday - 5/15 7pm
Living Waters
Poetry + Prose

w/
David Mecklenburg
and
Troy Kehm-Goins

Music by
Michelle LaMent

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Last night was an awesome reading. It was lightly attended, but the people that were present made for a spectacular and engaged audience.

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Dave and I rocked the microphone with our poetry and prose! And musician Michelle LaMent was a nice fit; she mostly focused on songs that matched the "Living Waters" theme.

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My set list was:

Invocations 
1. “Regional Water Partnerships” (My Two Melvilles)
2. “The Age of Wonder & Progress” (Let There Be)
3. “This Is the Slow Collapse into Fire and Ice” (All the Heroes)
4. “Just Another Day in the Life of the Pagan King” (All the Heroes)
5. “Your First Glimpse of Hel Is Like a Gateway Drug” (All the Heroes)
6. “The Wolves Linger Just Outside Your Front Door, Growling” (All the Heroes)
7. “The ½ Werewolf” (NaPoWriMo #30)

Incantations
1. “Fish” (NaPoWriMo #18)
2. “Black” (“director’s cut” of “Black Psalm i”)
3. “Black Psalm iii (Aquatint)” (Black Psalms)
4. “Black Psalm iv (Parkinson’s)” (Black Psalms)
5. “Selah” (Black Psalms)
6. “Midden” (NaPoWriMo #21)
7. “Octopus Sonnet” (NaPoWriMo #22)
8.  “Athene” (NaPoWriMo #23)
9. “Black Psalm xvii” (Black Psalms)

LIVING WATERS: A READING

"Come explore shadow wells and the wine-dark sea in poetry and prose." 

I'll be reading poems from my latest chapbook Black Psalms. My fellow writer David Mecklenburg will be reading selections from his novel The Nightingale's Stone.

7:00 p.m. Friday 15 May 2015. The Nearsighted Narwhal.

Visit the LIVING WATERS: A Reading Facebook event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/1631263773755766

NAPOWRIMO #11: FRAGMENTS

For 2015's National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), Troy's Work Table is writing thirty poems in thirty days.

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This "poem" was on its way to becoming a rough draft of another "black psalm," but it wouldn't coalesce. In other words, it's a piece for the work table. At some point, it will likely take its final form. For the time being, however, you get two-and-one-half strophes of the require five.

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FRAGMENTS of BLACK PSALM

These are your black ships, your raven-beaked boats. Planks of wood bent and fitted, coated in pitch and covered in tar. Burnt to the waterline by the enemy, the hulls only revealed once the tide withdraws from the shore.

These are your black tents. […]

[…]

The enemy arrives in the early dawn, attacking your flanks, biting at your heels. Swarming over your tents as though ants overrunning wasps.

[…]

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Copyright © 2015 by Troy's Work Table.

NAPOWRIMO #3: PSALM

For 2015's National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), Troy's Work Table is writing thirty poems in thirty days.

Today brings forth a new "black psalm."

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PSALM

This is your black day. You cry out to the heavens and await an echo, an answer, that never comes.

This is the black rock in your hand. A slightly soft rock you use to draw upon the harder, paler stone of the cave walls.

These are your dark shadows that dance upon the walls, dance over the lines you have drawn, paint the night in dappled flickering firelight.

This is your credo, your system of beliefs, scrawled upon tablets of stone.

Someone calls at the entrance to your cave, whispering, nearly without breathing—“Who goes there?” “Nobody,” you reply. “Nobody.”

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Copyright © 2015 by Troy's Work Table.