Life/Lines - April 13, 2021

Submitted poems for April 13, 2021

A daily poetry practice to generate and sustain the Life/Lines among us, for published and novice poets alike

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Prompt

Write a short poem (rhyming not necessary) that includes each of the following 5 words (anywhere and in any order). Poems should not exceed 7 or 8 lines. 

     process
     preposterous
     belief
     human
     fatigue 

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Today’s words were contributed by the Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellows at Washington University.


 

Poems submitted for April 13

The preposterous belief of white supremacy
It’s hard to process with any leniency
The daily fatigue in history repeating
Black and Brown loves must keep on beating.

Cat

***

As fatiguing and preposterous as it may seem
we are all still learning
how to be human.
A belief that we have the heart
to live into this process
will be everything
that we need.

Aimee Wittman

***

My belief in the goodness of human nature
is a work-in-progress. Some days it leads
to fatigue. Surely it's preposterous
that the world is filled only with evil
and conflict. And yet, and yet, in the daily news
there's another shooting, and the death count rises.

— Mary Ellen Benson

***

It’s Spring again, after All

As our year-long disease recedes
And spring begins the healing process
Flower by flower, balm for the fatigue
Humans stunned by sunshine after sorrow.
We emerge, tentative as spring leaves
Shot through with the chartreuse sap
Wave in the breeze, signaling hello—
The belief of our first-blooming redbud,
Woolly blue violets and dandelions prance
Beneath the wind spun whirling helicopters
The preposterously optimistic maple seeds.

Jo Schaper

***

This preposterous human belief in some
constantly unfolding better story, like a tree
guaranteed to always grow up and out, that green canopy swallowing
the summer light, refracting emerald coins over the evening ground.

Yet every tree, really, involves its own limit,
and I'd like to think in doing so they beg
we take some lesson in the joyful promise of fatigue,
when, knowing we can do no more,
we slow the mad process of our most distant branches
and, unfurling, look up towards the sun.

Gwyneth Henke

***

Fatigue is human
A preposterous process
Belief spawns the real

K. J. Boehler

***

Fatigue.
I feel fatigue?
I am fatigued!

The preposterous process of personal probity
Bends belief in body and being
How I, as human, hope for headway
While enduring endless ennui

— Chad Savage

***

AGONY OF DECEIT

An incumbency of deceit
With all process he’d been due
He had lied about lies with acumen
The belief in a steal
Preposterous, unreal
Fatigue from fighting the lies only human.

TED

***

My belief in the legal process
For OUR justice
In this system wanes, as I watch the continuous
Disregard for human life and preposterous
Three-ring trials and live-streamed drama.
I oscillate between anxiety and fatigue from this trauma.

— J. Thomas

***

There's nothing more preposterous
Than seeing a rhinoceros
Attempt to swim the Bospherous--
For humans, a tough process
Not very usually prosperous.
And so--
Fatigue gave our rhinoceros
Belief that, next to Bospherous
A better life is waterless.

Robert Henke

***

What’s your process, asks the Boss,
Sitting in his Cumulous Corvette,
“Where’d you get the belief preposterous
that you deserve to be uber prosperous,
using both hands to grab what you want,
turning a cold cheek to hunger and fatigue?
Be not contemptuous. You are but human too.

Rebecca Carron Wood

***

April is a month to mourn
a month of human fatigue
Despite being the month of belief
And the beginning of the new year in
Many cultures
The process of celebrations seems
Preposterous
So we write poetry in the month of April.

Jey Sushil

***

This process is preposterous, this human belief in good.
This belief is a process, this fatigue of a preposterous possibility: decency.
This fatigue is preposterous, the human flailing toward light.
The preposterous belief that we can cure hate with love,
the fatigue of waking to find yourself in another nightmare.
This process is what makes us human: a preposterous belief that we are okay.

— M.E. Hope

***

Can you imagine an animal
more preposterous
than an ordinary, everyday
rhinoceros?
What evolutionary process,
do you suppose,
could end with a horn
atop its nose?
Imagine how much
that horn must weigh.
Imagine the fatigue
from toting it all day.
If humans should ever
develop horns on their snout,
our belief in Darwin
might be sadly in doubt.

Warren Hauff

***

My belief is to live with optimism and follow a sensible process to maintain health.
If there is no fatigue, there is not enough effort.
Taking too many chances is preposterous.
Sticking to a safe and healthy routine enhances human possibility and happiness.
Margaret Fourt Goka

***

Had nature ever had fatigue?
like a human being, I wonder.
Sun rising and falling,
leaves turning green, yellow, brown,
crispy then gone.
Does the process ever bore?
That's a preposterous belief, one says,
because randomness governs beneath repeats.
yxc

***

I gaze upward and spot
the burst of small, light pink buds,
an announcement of the rebirth process of spring.
My belief in a continuation presently supersedes
the weighty fatigue of the past 14 months.
Human, indeed I am and preposterous, it isn't
to feel again the bliss of ritual growth.

Lisette Dennis

***

Preposterous Catena Rondo

It’s preposterous, this naïve belief
that process will heal our democracy
while everywhere signs of autocracy.
It’s preposterous, this naïve belief.

That process will heal our democracy…
This idea of human deception
is naive from its very inception
that process will heal our democracy.

This idea of human deception,
an idea in which some find intrigue,
but leading me on to fatigue,
this idea of human deception.

An idea in which some find intrigue…
It’s preposterous, this naïve belief
from which I find no relief,
an idea in which some find intrigue!

It’s preposterous, this naïve belief
that process will heal our democracy
while everywhere signs of autocracy.
It’s preposterous, this naïve belief.
 

***

fatigue grows
as I process
the range of human belief
in the preposterous

by Lloyd Klinedinst

***

unending enmity...
the preposterous belief
in human decency yields
a process that ends
in psychic fatigue

John J. Han

***

Belief in due process defies human understanding
In light of evidence to the contrary at every turn.
Nevertheless we persist...no time for fatigue.
It’s not a preposterous idea that we can do better.

It is preposterous that we have taken so long.

Peggy Jacobsmeyer

***

How do we manage
This preposterous process
Of being human

A myriad of complicated
Belief systems exist that
Try to explain the unknowable
And yet….

Sometime the fatigue
Of trying to find
The right path
Becomes overwhelming

Other times it is enough
Just to open our heart
To being a part of the aliveness
Around us.

Carol Haake
 

***

"I'm only human",
a preposterous comment
spoken only to rationalize
a process to make up excuses
for our silly behaviors and our
stubborn belief that we are entitled.
So fatiguing this is because,
of course, I am only human...

Laurie J

***

Airplane Conversation

I never guessed
when I asked my seatmate, “how’s it going?”
that he would respond with such depth and for so long
such belief in the human spirit
such fatigue with the status quo
such preposterous eloquence.
In the process, I vowed, next time,
to stick to the weather.

Steve Givens

***

Oh, I've been a victim
of the preposterous
primary process.
You think that's human?
What fatigue I've had,
dealing with this dopamine,
every adolescent belief shattered--
exploded, as they used to say.
Well then, I might as well be
inflated!

— Matthew Freeman

***

Having the human being fenced in
in the belief that creativity can be arrowed so narrowly
with a preposterous process of words
flocking together like talking magpies or myna birds
without abstractions' fatigue rigged into a poem's wings,
the musing flight can't last the night without a thunk on the roof
and the abstractions' aloof a pain like a broken tooth
and a lisping mouth pronouncing "forsooth."

— Dan Cuddy

***

It is preposterous when we don’t include God
In our day-to-day process
The belief that a human alone can climb and trod
Through the thick of disease and war is nonsense
Try to become self-sufficient, but you will feel fatigue
In the end when you are on your back
You’ll gaze up and see
That there is God

Maureen Kleekamp

***

a quick refurbish

too bad
so sad
(what a preposterous belief)
that process for relief
is a human blitzkrieg
for big league-fatigue

Terrie Jacks

***

Love Prayer

You left me in process
Belief in a human
Preposterous

Fatigue
Send help

Amen

james goodman

***

How preposterous,
this persistent belief that
Bureaucratic Process can solve
human problems.
At the end of that endless line:
frustration
hopelessness
fatigue.
— Jeannette Cooperman

***

trust the process
the preposterous parts are the most important

cards on the table
structures of belief are always a gamble

keep fatigue to yourself
no body wants to hear how tired you are

(Jay Buchanan)

***

Another day in Minneapolis (America)

A preposterous assertion
Belief in the system
Trust in the process
The human toll keeps rising
Compassion fatigue sets in.
Resist!

***

what ?
belief that the process of human moral growth and improvement
will tire and fatigue?
stagnate?
Preposterous!

d. bates

***

Too Human
There are people who scream preposterous things
At each man who stands up with one
Fist, exposing his belief in a new just
Process – just once could
We let those draped in fatigue
Have a seat voluntarily,
Or would that be too human?

By Diana Haemer

***

As fatiguing and preposterous as it may seem
we are all still learning 
how to be human.
A belief that we have the heart
to live into this process
will be everything
that we need.

Aimee Wittman

***

 

Headline image: Dan Gold via Unsplash