may 28th 2023 - a day at the races 04 - apellant

[skonen_blades]

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 04 from race 04 and my horse's name was Apellant. My horse won! Apparently, the world 'apellant' means the person in court who is the defendant when making an appeal. However, I took it to mean the opposite of 'repellant' just for the sake of this poem.

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Apellent is the opposite of repellent
A black hole
pulling every pair of eyes,
every heart
past the event horizon.

Apellently, he walked through the party
A gravity well for lust,
for dreams,
for love,
for hope.

Igniting visions of marriage, children, suburban life in some
A cheap motel Olympic event in others

Shark apellent bring all the sharks at top speed

Apellents can slide under doors,
through paper cuts,
and in between praying hands

Apellents took my money
Apellents brought me joy
Apellents become mist when put in a cage
Apellents twist sideways and disappear
Apellents are always visiting and never staying

Oh, apellent
Take me with you
Give me a passport to travel to your dimension
Disguise me to smuggle me to your homeland
(Not permanently. Never permanently.)

Show my how you exist
because I can’t comprehend
with my awkward grease stains

Looking across the room at you,
I’m glad you never travel in packs.
Because if you did,
I would throw myself under your hooves
just to be part of the herd.

But you always glide alone
Like a sightseeing missile
Making us all yearn to dress as targets




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