I will be queen no more

I will be queen no more

Today I’ll ab
______________ di
__________________cate
I’ll pass my throne to
the next generation

My hair grows thinner
and it takes more and more hairspray
to keep my crown in place

My neck will be happy
to be relieved of it’s burden
Off they go
these crown jewels

Today I’ll ab
______________di
_________________cate
___________________up
My son will step

My people will have to get used
to a king
(a horse a horse)

I will have to get used
to
to what?
I don’t know yet

I will be a queen no more
I’m still a princess
no more, no less

(My prompt is an historical event: the abdication of the queen of the Netherlands today, who has reigned for 33 years, following up her mother and grandmother. Her son has stepped in her shoes and onto the throne today.)

Lend me your ears

Friends, Romans, countrymen
Lend me your ears
I come to praise words
Not bury them
For the beauty of these words is much needed

But what’s in a name?
The word flabbergasted
In any other language
Looks just as good:
Verbazingwekkend,
Verdattert
Époustouflé
Asombrado
It’s a word you can take out for dinner
With a bowler hat and a bow tie

Oh you darling buds of German language
Who gave us überhaupt and sowieso
Google translate doesn’t do you justice
– at all –
When it claims you can be translated
(anyhow)

Good to see that levenslust
Joie de vivre
And lust for life
Are not designated
To one people
One culture
One nation
But universal

(It’s a draft, but it will stay a draft for I have poetic fatigue.)

Silence

You make me want to shout
Silence!
I’ll kill you

You make me want to scream
Silence!
I’ll kill you

You make me want to squall
Silence!
I’ll kill you

You make me want to …
…
I’ve killed you

The devil made me do it

He made me go down to the crossroads
And sit down on his knees

He made me call the number of the beast
And go down to Georgia
To go running with him

He made me wear Prada
And turn the other butt cheek

Which made me realise
He was an imposter

He could’ve taken me to Auschwitz
And sit down on the non existing graves

He could’ve made me call Pol Pot’s number
And go down to the killing fields
To go running with him

He could make me wear a veil
Have me raped
And get me stoned for adultery

Beelzebub
Has more to show
Than this

Very loosely based on NaPoWriMo prompt 28, this poem started with a some song lyrics on the devil, digressed, entered history and got serious. The title comes from this song:

Erased words

Going

Oh well I’ll just go
getting nowhere again.
I’ll turn
that direction.
digging up the tramrails
and watch.

Good

straight
stomach
your buttocks
back
relax
and don’t look.

News

Someone
near the Leidseplein.
“Have you heard?
Great isn’t it?”
He casts his eyes
Anyone else?

Matter

Someone’s
young
I’m getting
Dressed
with
aubergine-coloured
tassels.
He’s leafing through
turns a page
sniffles.
Finally he gets stuck
with
“Good-luck charm
marital bliss.”

Terrace

“end,
now”,
at the pavement café.
“plenty of things,”
up her chair.
“Take me,
I’m a real greedy.”
she takes
from her pocket
some whipped cream
in her.

Café 1

chum,
you can rely on
a jovial man talking
honesty
in the café.
You can see
an inch.

Friendship

Friendship,
you shouldn’t mess with
you
a painting finished.

Café 2

“ like taxi doors.”
the man
is incredibly fat.
figuratively
nothing special.
But
how neat they are!

Holland

Half-past
all those people
something happened?
oh no,
I feel.

Reading on the street

reading
you don’t see that often.
sometimes
I’m walking
There’s
music
a new-look dress
brushes past
The book
is
“just out”.

(NaPoWriMo prompt 26 suggests to take a poem and erase words from it, thus turning it into a new poem. I took the English translation of a Dutch poem by Remco Campert for this. You’ll find the original, both in Dutch and in English, here.)

Separated

Today my brain left me
I’m not joking
It said goodbye

It said it needed a holiday
some time alone
to think

It doesn’t know
how long it will take
to find out what it wants
or needs

It doesn’t know when it’ll be back
Or if it will come back
at all

Just that it needs some time off
to remember
who it was
before it met me

Today my brain left me
I’m not joking
I said goodbye

(Day 25 of National Poetry Writing Month. Today’s prompt is not up yet but I am.)

Just a thought

When I was walking outside in the parkbook,
Looking at the trees from the treebook,
I heard birds singing songs from their songbook
And sat down on a bench from the benchbook

Thinking thoughts from my thoughtbook
I took a mirror out of my pocketbook
And wondered as I studied my face
Do I spend too much time reading books?

Ratted out

I think I smell a rat
There’s a waft of detachment
in the room

I think I smell a rat
it’s the smell of fleas
jumping all over the place

I think I see a rat
it’s tail lashing out
whipping the mice in the room

I think I see a rat
it’s beady eyes
focused on – garbage

I think I hear a rat
screeching
false notes

I think I feel a rat
scurrying
sniffling
spreading the plague

I think I taste
rat
it’s fluids
on my tongue

(Honouring yesterday’s NaPoWriMo prompt about nature, sort of)

Misfortune cookies

Beware of yourself.

You shall be dazed and confused when you look into the mirror.

Home is not where your house is.

Do not try, for you will fail.

(My take on yesterday’s NaPoWriMo prompt: a fortune cookies poem)

Drunk

I’m drunk

and finally speak the truth
I would’ve done it before
except for
I dins’t know what was going on
inside of me
Did you?

DRUNK!
So I finally say
waht needed to be siad
Whether you like it
or not
Wheter I like it
or not

Drunk 🙂
So deal with it
It’s out there now
on the table
so you gotta relate to it
and I have to too

Drunk
Drunk!
DRUNK!
What fun
it is
to stop worrying
about wahtrever
whoever thinks

Sobering up
but who cares
I said
what I had to say

Sobering up
oh whatever
tomorrow
is another day

(Ignoring NaPoWriMo prompt #20. Spelling was harmed in the process of creating this poem.)