poetic palmer

 i have always loved " the hollow men " by ts eliot, at least as far back as when my dad introduced me to it in late high school. somehow, when the prompt said "respond to one of your favorite poems," i couldn't shake that poem or this idea. i also didn't sit with the prompt long, instead hopping right in to try it out for fun and practice..  i dunno.   it was fun. imperfect as hell, but fun <3 also, who doesn't love sticking it to ai tech bros? i sure love it at any opportunity!  (the prufrock , also by eliot, could have been another contender, but i'm already writing a response to that, or however you'd call it. that project will probably need a lot more work before i share it here, tho.)   day 17 - slop by tophie palmer #napowrimo2026, apr 17  we are the sloppy bros we are the ai bros leaning together headpiece made of trash. alas! our stolen works are mocked our endless models flopped by ridicule and satire, our hard work putrid and plagia...

 yesterday's practice poem is a bit long and rambling—a bit on purpose, i suppose. the prompt was "take this book of flower meanings, find a flower, and riff on its meaning." my resulting poem builds off the myth of the golden fleece/argonauts/medea/jason and the flower colchicum, or meadow saffron.  the flower colchicum is named after the land of colchis from greek mythology, which is where the golden fleece and the sorceress medea are from. in the book of flower meanings from the prompt, it represents "my best days are past," which got me thinking of Jason—specifically an older, decrepit, resentful Jason. in some myths, jason goes back to iolkos and rules as the king there, but that feels so unlikely given how he and medea murdered its previous king...  anyway i had fun with this even tho i wouldn't consider it terribly "good"; maybe i'll come back to it and revise it later, but it was neat getting to "play a character" narrativel...

 so, i left yesterday's poem in the google docs' default font (arial) to remind myself it's unfinished; it hasn't been fully formatted & refined. (this includes the screenshot of said google doc poem for social media.) today, i thought to call these "practice poems," hoping to further ease my perfectionism. we'll see if that all works in the long run, lol  this poem, which actually tried to meet today's prompt head on for once, lmao, was kinda fun. i scribbled most of it out in my note pad after listing various things "that cannot speak" and i felt i'd learned something from, then transferred that to google docs, filled in/deleted a couple of bits, and worked out line length/meter/whatever for a bit. it could take more work, but it  is  a practice poem after all, lol  anyway, enjoy!    day 16 - roadways by tophie palmer #napowrimo2026, apr 16  stretching long, spreading wide, sprawling onward like a single, endless, exhausting web—— ...

 so, we're trying to catch up while still falling behind... it's starting to bother me now, unfortunately. partly bc i'm just in a funk overall and many things are slipping and i'm not giving myself enough grace, but... it's frustrating all the same.  at the same time, this was pretty fun to bang out. i'm reminding myself it's just a draft and i can dig in and rework it later, if i so desire. in fact, i left it in arial (the google docs default font) for the screenshot i used for this poem on bluesky to remind myself of exactly that... idk if it worked, lol  anyway, enjoy!    day 14 - typist by tophie palmer #napowrimo2026, apr 14 (late) i’ve found typing poetry on typewriters to be pretty terrible, honestly. the clicky-clacks are certainly satisfying (as is the hum of an electric in waiting), but what if you make a mistake?  what if it all goes sideways, the white-out spills, or you run out of ideas?   i used to own so many of those anachronisms—stau...

 well, i kind of worked toward yesterday's prompt , then i forgot to finish posting it here. oops..  that said, this was fun, even if it feels unfinished. what i learned from the day 9 fiasco is that "finished" isn't really the point; the point is whether i like it enough to (share and) move on. (o, vanity!) that's def where this one lands: it doesn't feel quite done but i think it's nice enough for roughly an hour's work, and i'm ok posting it too (as a vain bonus!). it doesn't feel quite poetic, i guess, but it's pretty enough and fun, right? right??   oh well, enjoy!  day 13 - bog days by tophie palmer #napowrimo, Apr 13 i don’t remember often, but i do recall a bog. it reshaped my young life unimaginably the summer before high school i recall the day with my father, a boat, and a bridge that blocked our way i recall us having to pull the canoe out and carry it across to the other side i recall being at the back as he pulled it on our ...

 oof, this one nearly took me out. i'm trying to complain less about imperfection, but i was so thoroughly dissatisfied with this for days. maybe i should have set it aside and tried something else, who knows.    oh well! here's the damn poem, lol day 9 - nepenthes  by tophie palmer #napowrimo2026, Apr 9 (late) o, nepenthes! o, anodyne vases! o, holder of fair helen’s heart’s-ease, brewed for that belligerent but tearful fool, that leader of the greeks, menelaus, who led his petty war with ancient troy.  helen helped him with nepenthe after: that egyptian drug of forgetfulness absolved him of his guilt, removed his grief.   but, monkey cup, how long have you caught prey so perched on this long green trickster's tendril?  o, deadly catcher on my windowsill! your slick viscous juice traps bugs and bad dreams, voluptuous vase, broad vegetable lips, broad lush sweet sickly lips eager and gaped, luring your prey down to a drowning death, where a forget...

 well, i should really be posting my #napowrimo2026 poems here, too, shouldn't i? i'll do separate posts with the others, but here's my attempt at today's prompt at least. i'd half given up on these prompts——yesterday's was impossible for me, after all——when i found a skeet by @penacolada2293.bsky.social  quoting a scene from the movie best in show ; i'd forgotten that's where it came from, but when i looked it up on google, the ai overview truly missed the mark on the scene's context——it thought the scene was sincere and moving. which got me thinking.. which led to this poem! anyway, here's the clip for context: day 8 - not talking by tophie palmer   “we could talk or not talk for hours,” she almost said, a slight misquote from a movie the ai couldn’t understand, but the sentiment was there ——a love transcending, beautiful.. ironic. bc we could talk or not talk for hours, and i’d feel connected to you like a thousand suns burning together like...

 here's day 7's poem in napowrimo2026! i couldn't quite land the (optional!) prompt , but we did our best. it all built off the first line, which i'd posted on bluesky as a reply to someone's sunday scaries.   day 7 - calendars by tophie palmer   the cruelty of calendars comes around to haunt us again—— sunday scaries, monday drearies: with the certainty of death, even weekends must someday end—— to our daily planners we must tend. oh, from the glorious freedom of weekend joys and frabjous days, our working week duties and chores are a heavy weight—sagging so and dragging so and nagging so, but again to work we all must go… i put on my tie and wonder again, “am i really doing this? is today another in that long row to follow?” but without fail, out the door i go to my smallness, the confinement, my endless corporate consignment. the free, queer joy of the weekend drawn to its painful, boring close by the milquetoast commonplace facts of compliant straight-laced cowo...

 the day 6 prompt was a bit tricky at first: "write something in a conversational style and include something outlandish, unreal, unbelievable" or whatever. i wasn't sure i could nail either half of that! this result isn't fully to my liking——i tried the first half in the first stanza and never quite edited it out, and some other parts don't sit quite right with me——but overall i like it anyway. walt's a bestie, after all. people think this poem is very sweet, but it's actually meant to be  bitter sweet: it's a fantasy, after all, and the fantastical part is finding validation and actualization at that young age..  anyway, enjoy! :-) day 6 - a fantasy by tophie palmer   my graduating class was so damn large that i brought a book about walt whitman, who even now remains a favorite, by my then favorite author, you know? it had all come together so nicely, weird as the book turned out to be. oh well! it’s on these shelves, somewhere, i think.. my love fo...

 so this one ended up kinda silly, which was part of the prompt after all——basically, "be grumpy and get silly with it." people seem to like it; hopefully you will too!   day 5 - cheap frozen pizza by tophie palmer   it looked cheesier on the box and better, frankly, but oh well, here we are, here we are, oh well, time to eat the wee sparse thing . . . . . . zounds, no! i will not sit so idle! i will not eat without a fight! i will not have my good money so disrespected & misspent! it’s a break in the social contract when packaging misleads, when the box lies, deceives, and cheap pizza promises reign! capitalism has truly gone too far this time! oh, i don't know! I just want pizza  that looks and tastes  the way I was led to believe  by the picture on the box at an affordable price! is that too much to ask? is that asking too much?