Aboli Mane is the Poet of the Week for the W3 Weekly Poetry Prompt #89. Aboli’s poetic challenge is to write a reverse poem.
Aboli’s prompt guidelines
Write a reverse poem. A reverse poem can be read forward and backward (top to bottom or bottom to top, line by line). The meaning of the poem changes depending on the direction you read it in.
Examples of reverse poems
‘Lost Generation’ by Jonathan Reed
‘Pretty Ugly’ by Abdullah Shoaib
‘Doppelgänger’ by James A. Lindon
If you want an extra challenge, try writing your poem in exactly eight or twelve lines.
With no idea of how to write a reverse poem, I wrote five poems. All failures. I couldn’t reverse any of them. Not a single one! They only traveled in one downward direction.
At last, I write poem number six HOMELESS which is the one I publish here.
Homeless
Homeless
Go back
You can’t
Stay here!
You must
Move on
Move on to where?
Another street,
Another archway,
Stone step or stairwell?
Move on to Hell
Enjoy the fresh air.
You can
Lay anywhere as long as it’s not there.
In this day and age
There’s no need for it,
Some say,
Put homeless in a cage (aka a prison cell)
and don’t
Care for vagrants well
They should
Lay down on hard pavements
Roofless (except for the sky)
With young and the old
Dossing in the cold,
Huddled, unseen by each passer-by.
Freezing in the rain
Hiding in doorways,
Like untoward strays
Shelter in cardboard boxes
Scrounge for food with urban foxes.
You can’t
Stay here!
Go forward
Lesley Scoble, January 2024
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
My thanks to Aboli for her most challenging of prompts! I found it fascinating but difficult. Thank you David, The Skeptics Kaddish / W3 Weekly Poetry Prompt. for your support and encouragement.
Lesley lives in the City of London Square Mile. An artist, actor and sculptor (her first ceramic sculpture won the V&A inspired by… Award). Scenic artist & book illustrator, playwright, (her musical play, Rapscallion performed in inner city schools andu theatre school); TV dancer; Animator and illustrator for TV production. Set up Pinecone Studios Ltd and IIMSI Ltd drama and filmmaking workshops in London – producing award-winning films made by children.
LesleyScoble.com 
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