That nobody can erase —
Let me take Lukas to space,
Where the sun shines,
And the stars cheer on,
Far from the dissonance that wracks my mind — tugging
And me here kept on the ground, continuing on, chugging
perhaps wombats
I bought some magic beans
Upon an astral sea of shining stars
perhaps it was all my imagination
the hill we climb
The tree leaves dance in the wind
The dog walked beside the cat
The Elevator chimes as it opens
the moon is full tonight
The cow jumped over the moon
The grass wasn’t greener
I need to fix my broken nail
Stars glistening beyond the moon
The Beaches white sand
The puck gliding across the ice
Sitting the dark, feeling like a starless night
The chill is alleviated, summer is orange
Although the seasons change, I remain the same.
Lukas returns with the banana
Apocalypse — an unveiling, not the end
Climb the mountain full of wonder
The moon pulled over her silver blanket
The sun gave her a thousand kisses
And I wish we could revisit what we’ve
loved, lost, remembered and regretted.
Cold, crisp wind strikes the heart <3
dot, dot, dot, dot, dot …
Someone up there must be
looking out for me
because things are starting
to look up in my life
Life is not an easy thing in itself,
but the rewards of life are more and more glorious.
And as my crops grow and flourish,
I’ll make sure to care for the soil,
Water the seeds within my mind, so
the fruit becomes full of wisdom. I’ll
savor the bite of this fruit, while gazing
at the hard work I’ve done.
In the end
they all looked at each other
and said nothing
for there was nothing to say
The University Libraries invited members of the CU Boulder community to visit the library on April 12-13, 2022 from 1-3pm to contribute anonymously to a community poem.
Inspired by the 2022 National Poetry Month poem "In This Place (An American Lyric)" by Amanda Gorman, participants will anonymously contribute a line of poetry to be added to one long collaborative poem that we are calling "Exquisite Hope." The starting line will be the same as Gorman's poem:
There's a poem in this place—
This type of collaborative poem shares its origins with the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse game. The game is necessarily collaborative, requiring multiple participants, and is traditionally played with paper and pen. One player writes down a word, phrase, or line and then folds the paper to hide their contribution before passing it to the next player. The result is poetry of chance that a single author could not have imagined.
The final poem is above. Thank you for participating!
National Poetry Month 2022 Poster courtesy Academy of American Poets.