a mug, posthumously

The years have neglected you, cast aside
among the common trash—but I can see
beyond your gaudy flower motif,
the history in your ceramic wounds:

the lipstick from some lover, caked and hard
on one side—the chipped curve across from it;
your smoothed out stubs that denote a phantom
handle where fingers grasped to fight the cold;
the browned ring mid-way down... the last sip
survived by thriving colonies of mould.

The years have neglected you, cast aside
among the common trash—but even there
despite your faded sheen, cracked purple coat,
I envy how your scars betray your past.

Wow! Thanks both...

Rob, I really enjoyed your post and succinct attempt at defining the guts of what makes a poem for you.

I once said in my poet laureate Q+A that poetry can be found in even the most mundane and seemingly unimportant artifacts. After all, we share our lives with an abundance of inanimate objects, they observe us, they absorb scenes from us, we imprint them with little touches of life. I'd like to think that this poem somehow goes toward that same point. I wanted to illustrate a life-cycle, a living breathing existence in things cast away or commonly ignored. I'm glad it worked on a level and that there is acceptance of that concept. I was thinking of starting a new exercise thread that focused on bland and commonplace objects. The first poster would write a poem about some inanimate thing and then suggest the subject of the post to follow. While putting my thoughts down, this poem emerged and I decided it more fitting to have a place of its own

The exercise thread can come later--perhaps...