April's Diamonds

[Ganyu]

21. Response to War Photography
In the black room,
Death is captured
then developed in stark white.
What remains of Life
is painted in monochrome.
Flesh loses all colour
in this two-dimensional void.
This is artistry in motion,
reality stopped still,
in solution trays of immortality.

A/N: This was the hardest prompt to handle. I'd to write a response poem to another poem. God I hope I didn't disgrace Carol Ann Duffy with this. X:

22. Stardust
All stars eventually die:
their existence culminating
into a lucent singularity,
a final spark,
a nova's swan song
that echoes throughout space,
leaving behind churning
nebulas of stardust.
Stardust –gilded remnants,
precious as a millennium comet –
that people would cling onto
till the end of time,
an eternal shadow.
I hope that one day
I'll leave this universe
in the exact same way
with a big bang.

[Ganyu]

23. Bought And Thrown Away
Sole-worn shoes
left in the corner,
caked in mud,
insides sculpted
by sweat and toes,
laces loose.
Their time served,
now stored in shadow.

On the doormat,
bright white kicks
squeak loudly as
they venture into the
great outdoors,
stepping into spring.

[Ganyu]

24. Odontology of Friends
Baby steps, baby teeth;
Learning how to grow,
how to chew, how to gnaw.
We crawl towards one another,
like converging jaw lines.
Our pearly whites beaming
like the new morning sun.

Tiny teeth falls out as the sky darkens;
a drizzle culminating into a cloudburst.
Our gums are bloody and raw,
as our world is uprooted.
The empty void between our lips,
swallow echoes of broken bridges.
Too late to cherish what is gone,
now is the time to bury the bone.

Mature teeth replaces what we lack,
they are sharper and polished
like fangs that we learn to bare,
bite our tongues and grit with.
Extremely cautious
and never carious,
they will not succumb
to the demonic plaque.
They are our new white friends,
Together forever till dentures do us part.

25. Exercise
An exorcism
of ripping out
the demons of
gluttony and sloth
from your body,
anointing with
perspiration
and lactic acid.

26. The Tempest
In the storm's eye,
two of hearts beating.
Hot coals in the fire,
blazing with passion.

Within the calm,
their hearts rage
like the winds howling
feverishly above the land.

Their love crackles
with lightning and thunder.
Primal elements
tearing the heavens asunder.

Nature's wrath
churns the earth.
In the storm's aftermath,
new mulch nourishes growth.

[EmeraldSky]

Skimmed over the first page of your collection, and I really like these lines from your first one:

They should have known
that when mellow March was gone,
feisty April would come out to play.

That sums up April Fool's Day right there, IMO

[Ganyu]

27. Now Dreaming: D7
Welcome aboard, ladies and gentlemen.
Today's flight will be a little over eight hours.
We are expecting a fairly smooth flight today, with no turbulent weather.
Feel free to move about the cabin as much as possible. The seat belt signs have been turned off.
If you do wish to stay in your seats, please fasten your seat belts snugly tight.
All our flights are fitted with smoke detectors so do try not to get caught.
In the meantime, please sit back, relax and enjoy your flight. Thank you for choosing to fly with Dream Flight.

28. Important People
Me.
Not you.
My friends.
Not you.
My family.
Not you.
Those who appreciate me for who I am.
Not you.
Those who understand where I'm coming from.
Not you.
Those who have been with me through thick and thin.
Not you.

This list
does not have
you.
Unimportance
deserves no
acknowledgment.

[Ganyu]

29. My Haphazard Brain
Like an attic full of knickknacks,
scattered all over the floor in mosaic,
fragments of ideas – little baubles of worlds and characters – lie like
strands of spaghetti buried in tomato blood.
Torn pages from sketchbooks;
balls of crumpled-up doodles;
drawings never coloured;
a script for a song never sung;
a poem unfinished, lacking punctuation;
an anthology of chaos, of thoughts broken down, of writer's block and of distractions.
Overloaded silos of memories,
threaten to short the creative motherboard,
buzzing every second as nerve impulses flicker and connect:
two dots making one line, which in turn joins to another,
laying out the tracks for the train of thought
to travel across the lobes,
and eventually terminate at the
depot of my haphazard brain.

30. Dead End
We boarded the bus
Let it drove us
On an endless highway
Across the country.
Brakes jammed,
emergency lever yanked,
we were suspended in air,
free-falling through glass,
crashed
arrived
before an empty estate.
A village devoid of life,
a garden in full bloom.
When night falls,
sounds from nowhere echo
footsteps in the fog
danger
whisper the winds
We paid no heed
to the warning,
wandering around
in the dark,
seeing visions of
our shadowy pasts,
our nightmares.
No matter where we ran,
we came back to the same place,
like a hamster in its wheel.
Trapped in the village
of the lost,
damned forever
within the veil
between worlds.

Author's Note: 30 days. 30 poems. It's been a creative ride, forcing myself to write. I feel quite satisfied that I've managed to complete the challenge, and I think, this really helps in breaking down the wall that is writer's block. Many of the poems' titles were the prompts themselves, though some I chose to gave a "proper" title (and here I pose a challenge, which is to guess what the prompt(s) may have been :P). Hope y'all enjoyed reading~