Poetry on A Geek's Life

Prayer

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 03:05:40 +0000

Breath by breath, bead by bead,
the prayers of this parched heart rise.
Lips quivering with the yearning of a
thirsty heart, pursed to take the blood
and flesh, blessed, transubstantiated.
Kneaded by hands washed seven times-
stripped of yeast and the things that beguile-
we come to take the bread in hope
to shed our turpitude, arise anew.
In the ritual of rest and reset,
we speak our words into the world,
lingering in the liminal space
between asking and accepting

Kneeling in the Light

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:52:21 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #234. Image source: Rosie Ann Prosser.:

Still, in the silent solitude of repose,
I survey the face that peers back at me.
Three candles flickering in the dark,
a space suffused by a mellow, yellow light
pushing back against the dark.

The ghosts of grief, railing against delight
fight the light, their dissonant sounds
a constant clang. But in light, there is delight
to know this is to rest, here.

4. Morning Breath

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 22:29:00 +0000

For the Day Four prompt, well, kind of. Photo by Abeer Zaki on Unsplash

it lingers on the edge
of my tongue, its heft
hanging heavy, marinating
in its moistness, each letter,
alive, each syllable
yielding to the next,
then fading like the morning mists
wisps, resplendent, gracing the
verdant green but then
losing themselves to the
rising heat. I count to three
and then exhale, each breath
a gift from earth, now returned.

1. Breathing By Degrees

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 10:15:02 +0000

A prose poem for the NaPoWriMo Day One prompt, Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

Sometimes a breath is not just a breath, not just the rising and the falling of the chest, the slow release of the tension of fretting and of wondering, and of wandering. Sometimes a breath is not just the lungs taking and giving, extending life. Sometimes a breath is the sound of battle, the spoils of the war for tomorrow, won moment by moment, because forever is too short and tomorrow is not promised and this moment, fleeting and vanishing is all that is for sure.

On the 49 from Northcote

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 18:40:00 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #188 and the 49 from Northcote to White City:

On the 49 from Northcote,
a young woman sits. She
folds her hands, hangs her feet,
and lets the world without slip by
- grey granite yielding to gleaming glass,
verdant green disappearing behind the whorls
of potted plants. Somewhere outside,
the river wends its way across the plain.
Above, in a fleeting moment a giant
clanging bird roars. Somewhere
on the corner of Shepherd’s Bush and King’s
an old man, wraps his hands around himself
as his breath draws wisps in the winter wind.
As it was in the beginning and now is
the river remains. We all like small lights
flicker, and then are gone.

Before You Call Me By This Name

Sun, 14 Nov 2021 18:10:57 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #186:

Before you call me by this name
and shrink the sum of all my days
down to this facade, this still-life
of sepia pixels flickering like daylight
disappearing before the force of dusk;

Before you place the burdens of
history around my neck, till
it begins to break beneath the weight
of expectation, you must know
that this name is one of a myriad,
each bequeathed by the ones
who came before, a prayer
that we might see, the small lights
in our being.

Still Water...

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 17:16:09 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #180:

We come to water to be washed and be reborn, this hand cupping the curvature of the face, the other dipped, drenched in the very fluid from which we come, the space between the fingers of that hand filled with the water, straining against the strictures of the hand.

We come to water to lose ourselves in the beauty of the simple things, to see the dirt of our days and the detritus of the night loosen, dissolving until we see ourselves pristine whole again, the way we have imagined in our dreams a lip, an eye, lingering still in the mirror of still water.

Homecoming...

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 17:16:24 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #179:

** The scent of life and of living hangs heavy on this place, Here, where the weight of memory and first things lose themselves in the labyrinth of the mind.

First step, first walk, first smile. First words - garbled beyond recognition but finding the connection between the proffered body and sustenance.

First leaving, first returning then leaving - the first steps of a lonesome journey to a far country, of seeking the wily welcome of the open world calling - siren-like - from beyond the walls that time has built.

Becoming...

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 19:01:53 +0000

For The Sunday Muse #178:

In the wisps of the smoke blown in a moment of recalcitrance the man he might yet be lurks. The man he now is and the one he once was yielding in the moment to the future better one. Becoming.

Leaving...

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 15:09:32 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #176:

** When in the stillness of the night, sleep slips away, slowly - my eyes heavy with the weariness of deferred respite - I remember the road from there to here, how it turns upon itself, snaking this way and then that and then disappears.

I remember that leaving is for the living - those who have learned to gift the blessing of forgiving and forgetting to the past.

Being Seen

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 16:11:50 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #175, and the shades of that garden it reminds me of:

** I am dreaming again of days gone by, of nights - heavy with the weight of solitude - lightened by the joy of discovery, a light born of tumult in an age of innocence. This is what the glow-worms in their flitting feel, each shimmer of light a whisper into the night to see and be seen.

Beauty

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 13:33:20 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #174:

The empty glass catches the fading light, its pale blandness turned in an instant into a merry band of colours wending their way around its rim.

In the still moments of yielding to the night we see, through heavy eyes that in the brilliance of the radiant light, and the shadows too there is beauty, everywhere

Self-Potrait

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 13:33:04 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt # 173: Self Portrait with Accordion, (original image by Guido Vedovato) and How To Paint A Self Portrait by Nicole Tinkham.

First form the silhouette,
press the mound of wet earth thin
till it yields, pliant, to the probing
of the finger and the thumb.

Place the eyes, in the space
between the first and the middle third,
let the ears and the eyes align:
two eyes, two ears, one mouth

Un(caged): A Note to Self

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 19:01:21 +0000

For the Sunday Muse prompt #172:

** When the rain comes breathe in the clarity it brings- savour the stillness you remember from the times it came before, the delights the memories of past days and gone weeks and seasons long disappeared, bring you. Cherish the muscle memory of the steps that draw you along this path to the days of innocence, because drop by drop, the sorrows of the far country are dissolving in the rain.

What It means when I step into the shower with my glasses on...

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:38:00 +0000

Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash. For The Poetic Asides prompt #554

Sometimes I think

that my sight is leaving me,

the common, quotidian comfort

of seeing the world that touches me

slowly slipping away, taking flight

but not yet gone; only a little less close

the next time morning rolls my way.

Maybe it is my mind forgetting

where the thin discs

of shimmering glass

that bring the light end,

and where my rods and cones

The Sunday Muse: Times and Season

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 11:56:39 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #141:

Each whirl of the earth

around the Sun’s well

of power and of light

brings us back here.

Like a boat

dragged inexorably

by the rising tide to shore,

the swell of the sea

brings us peace,

to a season of reflecting,

of contemplating and of pause.

Time’s rhythm

like the faint echo

of a distant drumbeat

is welcome whisper

in our ear. Yesterday

30. Forgiveness

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 13:41:00 +0000

For Day 30 of the November Poem-A-Day Challenge. Photo by Marco Ceschi on Unsplash. After Dilruba Ahmed

\\\*

And I am learning

to forgive myself,

to not let the weight

of the worries of the world

hang heavy on my head,

to accept that sometimes

the broken things

around my feet

are the world being itself,

that sometimes beauty slips out

like light through a cracked down

from the riven parts of a fragile bowl,

14. What I Remember

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 07:18:31 +0000

Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash. For Day 14 of the November Poem-A-Day Challenge

Her voice
is an echo
from afar,
the song one
that I remember
her singing
over me.
Sleep -
child sleep,
London bridge
is falling down,
black sheep
have no wool
for you.
The world
has snatched
her presence
but the
memories etched
in the linings
of my mind linger
and remain.

13. A Prayer For The Prodigal

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 04:31:00 +0000

Photo by Olesia Misty on Unsplash. For Day 13 of the November Poem-A-Day Challenge

You have carried yourself
into a far country
untethering yourself
from the strings
of domesticity
and caring and the hold
of warm soup bubbling
over the warm embers
of Mother’s hearth.

You have dragged
your portion of our things
over the misty mountains
into a strange place where
the voice of the Matriarch
is obscured by the cooing of the birds
and the singing of the sirens.

7. This Time

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 08:39:00 +0000

Photo by Douglas Bagg on Unsplash. For Day 7 of the November Poem-A-Day Challenge.

may the ones
that death took
this time
not have been
lost in vain.
may the scars
etched into our bodies,
our minds and our skins
by the daily pressure
of oppression be
a reminder of what was
but no longer is,
because this time
we pressed through
against the odds
and found light
for the future ones.

6. Dreaming

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 16:32:00 +0000

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash. For Day 6 of the November Poem-A-Day Challenge.

and so
I find myself falling,
arms flailing desperately
trying to find solid ground
clutching at the air
as though it, perchance, might
become a rock beneath my feet.
in the moment vertigo wins
the battle for my mind,
I awake with a jolt.
It has been
a dream.

5. Ruin

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 08:26:53 +0000

Dunnottar Castle. For Day 5 of the November Poem-A-Day Challenge, a poem about beautiful ruins.

You come from afar
bearing the gift
of your open self
to this place
from whence they say
the honours of the land
once slipped, hid
in the hem of a buxom
lady’s dress.

What you see
are its tired walls straining
against the pressure
of the wind, clinging
with their last lives
to the cliffs that saved them
from past wars.

4. Self-care

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 13:35:05 +0000

Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash. For Day 4 of the November Poem-A-Day Challenge.

Learn
which voices
to let escape
the guards
around your
ears. Accept
the things
which return,
their hold
unyielding.
Breathe, because
the things the
heart beats for
are the things
which leave
it raw.

3. Dreaming

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 16:48:29 +0000

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash. For Day 3 of the November Poem A Day Challenge. A poem about dreaming.

And still,
I find myself
reaching for the
solidity of certain
earth, my feet aching
for the cold comfort
of the morning sand,
breaking my free fall.
This is a fevered dream
that returns each night
in which i find that home
though close, disappears
in the dim distance.

2. Home

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 16:27:39 +0000

Photo by Lea Böhm on Unsplash. For Day 2 of the November Poem A Day Challenge. A Poem for when the unexpected triggers memories of home.

It hangs heavy

on the heart, its heft

never ever far away it seems,

always lurking, always waiting

always ready to spring to life

to the lines of a song suddenly

borne on the wind, or the whiff

of mothballs, unlocking the memory

of the gathering, and of ritual.

1. Finding Home

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 17:40:41 +0000

For the November Poem-A-Day challenge. A poem about Entering, but mainly about leaving…

On the days when I wake

to a haze hiding the lushness

of the valley below, its shadow

hanging heavy like a shroud

on limbs shrivelled by the ravages

of time, I ponder the bland bleakness

of air heavy with water, how it smothers

life, and the beauty of things.

Each day where the light yields

For Light

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 19:53:00 +0000

Because we really need to #EndSARS #EndSWAT and end whatever silk purse is being made out of the sow’s ear that is that organization. I make no claims whatsoever to this image.

\\\*

The shadow of a long, dire night
has lingered over us, the weight
of the might of the ones who swore
to serve, and to protect, seared into
the small of our backs by their whips
and their boots, the air heavy
with the stench of the dread
which drenches everything
in their wake.

Awe

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 16:31:55 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt # 128:

When Neil and Buzz

reached the top of the world

their feet ensconced

in the very dust

from whence they came they left in awe

at the fragility of things,

at how the pale blue dot

they left behind hung

as though by an invisible thread,

shimmering with the ethereal beauty

of the light lent it by the sun.

Butterflies fluttered

on their insides, their hearts

What Mother Said

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 18:32:39 +0000

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash. For Young J who stuttered (and still does now and again in moments of overexcitement)…

Don’t let this be a big thing. Don’t let the tyranny of a lost word hovering just beyond the reach of your tired tongue drag you to the edge of self-immolation.

Cherish the bitten lower lip, the lisp when the words - like a pent up flood breaching the edge of a levee - finally come.

One

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 17:50:19 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #124:

** The King surveys his realm, from his perch high atop a dry, wizened tree.

This is what freedom is, to roam without a care and be one with the earth.

Light

Sun, 30 Aug 2020 17:47:17 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #123:

Even in the darkness the beauty of lent light shines through, the golden petals of the sunflowers magnificent as they follow the sun. Beauty, hitherto hidden, is called out by the sharing of the light, the sum of its parts many times more brilliant than when it hides alone.

Prodigality

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:01:36 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #122:

** We have carried our bodies to a far country, the weight of the burden of the duty of sons driving us like a ship heave-hoing in a stormy gale to the place where our kin were brought before.

Each day we toil amongst the living to save the ones we hurt by leaving, the labour of our bent backs a libation poured on dry earth, to appease the spirits of the old ones. This is our penance, a prayer sung to the tune of the songs handed down.

Hope

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 19:16:03 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #121. After Emily Dickinson.

** Hope is the thing that shimmers in the distance the faint light flickering in the brooding stillness of the afternoon heat, the persistent promise that this thirst, this longing for restoring will be sated by rain. It is the pulse quickening with the lengthening shadows of evening and the return of familiar sights to the eyes. It is home calling the lost son to return to the dangerous duty of tending.

Weight

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 17:07:52 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #120, and B who in (wo)manfully wrestling pain to a standstill reminds us to hope again…

** Remember, in the failing light of falling night, when the weight of the world feels like a thing around your neck, that we see you, proud against the night- feet planted firmly in the mushy earth, unflinching in the maelstrom. Like the North Star sometimes hidden, sometimes peering out from behind the clouds, a beacon showing home we see you and believe again.

One

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 10:50:35 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #119, Artistic Photography Dreamlike Portrait Photography by Damien Casals:

** You and I are becoming one, our unspoken words a voice, mellow in its timbre, its echo light like a soft hand yet firm, kneading out the noise from the silence that we share. In that silence of being and being present, of returning and reforming, of holding out against the pressure of the world, are broken things becoming whole again, each breath a small victory won by persistence, a fresh shoot pushing its way through the things that rage has razed.

Water

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 15:19:34 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #118:

** In the chaos of water meeting water and breaking free, each splash

a hop of joy freed to twirl and twist and kick and be, a body bent

fluidly flowing like a shout of delirious joy, life echoes.

Breathe

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 11:49:20 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #117:

** Breathe, in spite of beauty, in spite of the frailty of the blue orb floating free beneath your feet, stunning you.

Breathe, because of beauty because the earth hugs you like a mother tethers her unborn child fragile in its parts guiding, calling, growing feeding.

Breathe, because home centres you because wherever you are times and seasons are locked in an eternal dance

Breathe, because.

Disappearing

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 14:08:52 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #116. Image “Seeing Black & White” photography by Susie Clevenger

** Yesterday’s ghouls are slowly disappearing, fading like the night light once bright but now dappled, wisps of grey carried away in our slipstream, lingering like the dust a knight’s steed leaves in the frenzy of flight.

But the promise is a mirage, objects in a mirror are closer than they appear and though we run as though the wind bears us, yesterday’s shadow lurks in the space between the things we leave and the things that disappear

Where I Am

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 09:52:58 +0000

For the Poetic Asides prompt 530 Where You Are, Photo by Reiseuhu on Unsplash

** Here the sun hangs like a weight its heat like a curtain, dense, wrapped around itself like thick clouds keeping out the light.

Dust clouds swirl around hardy rocks, each peak a monument to defiance, to aeons of resistance, to heads held high against the ravages of earth, sand and time.

For a season this, this barren space which survives against the odds is home, reluctant as it may be

How To Taste Wine

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 17:24:50 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #115:

** Let the first sniff hit you, let the faint hint of the juice pressed and aged be like incense wafting up, a prayer to Dionysius for a blessing on this rich red liquid, chilled, swirled and sipped.

Let the low heat linger, let its essence slowly spread, warming the insides of your mouth let its heft spread like a warm embrace across your tongue. Let it rise Let it rise.

Silence, For C...

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:15:41 +0000

For C, and the others 2020 has taken. A response to the Poetic Asides prompt, Pandemic. Photo by Marina Reich on Unsplash ** Where the patter of your footsteps once roamed silence reigns, the joy of breath and thought and sonorous song subsumed by the frailty of things.

Death lingered at your door, too long and then snatched you. In the silence that you leave we remember the things we planned tomorrow.

A Prayer for Lost Loves

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 12:36:10 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #114:

\\\* May the pains of today’s desires lose themselves in the fragrance of a love reborn, the pained passion of unrequited love find itself returned in time like a blossom that speaks, a sacred whisper to the soul colouring everything in the light of a rose, beautiful in its bleeding yet whole, because the Lover and the Loved like thorn and rose find themselves entwined, from past pain and tortured paths, delirious joy arising.

Summertime, for G

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 18:19:24 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #113: \\\* The light in her eyes mirrors the mirth, in the wry smile that still, some days, wraps itself around her lips, a bird, free, born of the wild borne by the wind.

The heavy scent of summer, of flowers blooming and of squirrels flitting between the trees, reaches down into the depth of the memories she bears within, the delight of summers past simmering, then bubbling to the fore though her fingers can no longer coax life from the dry earth or press pleasure into a cone.

Ignition...

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 09:58:00 +0000

For the Sunday Muse prompt # 112: \\\* Sometimes I carry the weight of the world upon my head, its heft held between the twin peaks of forgotten and accepted things, a history curated not by those who waver at the threat of war but those who embrace its vagaries, who daily pour out a libation to destruction.

What seems like the stillness of a boat in quiet waters only hides the furious paddling of a mind being torn apart as it wrestles with the tension between conforming and desire.

Half Remembered

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 09:13:24 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #111:

\\\* what we remember of the past are the things the mind allows, the harshness of being hacked into a thousand tiny pieces assuaged by the desire to forget, to not let the horror of the past hold the present hostage, to find a path that winds through the remains of pillage to a coherent whole.

what we learn in the end is that skirting the hole where our kin should be is akin to yielding to the pressure of a hand pressed against our throat, to feed the pleasure of the ghouls hovering over our history.

Quest

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 14:12:31 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #110,

\\\* The heart ponders what lies beyond the realm of sight, what hides in the place where dreams come from, where the beauty of a still night twinkles in the soft light. From afar it tugs at the strings of the curious heart, in its distance, a promise of salvation from the fires below.

When A Deed Returns

Mon, 25 May 2020 11:21:02 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #109, Image “Snow White & Rose Red” by Kerry Darlington

\\\* The kind hearts of the shy and the cheerful make space for the stranger, a traveller quivering in the winter wind, lost, for a moment.

What lies hidden in the dream is that sometimes a good deed travels the world for a season and then returns twice revived, the shy and the cheerful ones saved in return by the stranger who once wandered by.

Place

Mon, 18 May 2020 09:46:35 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #108:

\\\* Bound up in its faux pillars and its dangling chandeliers are the memories of stolen things, the tears shed here by the lost ones reverberating in our ears. Time disappears here, subsumed by the delight of truly feeling and of seeing, the art of each act a tribute to the ones who’ve come before.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 30: The Thing The Birds Bring

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 10:34:40 +0000

Last day, Yay!!! The prompt for today as this season of NaPoWriMo comes to an end is to write a poem about something that returns. Photo by Zane Lee on Unsplash \\\* The songs the birds bring each spring remind us of the stirring of life, darkness yielding to the lengthening light and cherry blossoms blooming again. Hope is the thing that birds bring that after death comes life, and rebirth.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 29:

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 08:48:37 +0000

Off prompt today:

\\\* After the rising and the falling of the things that surround, after the letting off of blood for forgiveness, after the release of the pressure building up, Breathe

NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 28: Bedroom

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 14:53:48 +0000

Today’s prompt asks us to describe a bedroom from our past, inspired by Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s description of her aunt’s (Emily Dickinson) cozy room. My room in the house on 39th street came to mind. \\\* Long days longer nights rubber balls bounced off walls till smudged, comics snuck under the covers, childhood fantasies of meeting George and the other four of being Super Man and Captain America. Behind all the smell of things lived in. These are the things we can never forget.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 27: A Haiku For A Prodigal

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 13:41:24 +0000

For Day 27, the prompt is to write a poem in the form of a review of something not normally reviewed such as a mother-in-law, the moon, or the year 2020…I went for me, the prodigal in need of forgiveness :) \\\* Offends seventy times seven times but returns for forgiveness. Me

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 26: Questions

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 12:30:37 +0000

For Day 26, on which the prompt is to write a poem based on your answers to an ‘almanac questionnaire’. \\\* I reach out to the sun to quell this longing to be free to feel its warmth on my face like the trees do, stark against the blue skies. The same way the grape hyacinths, teased out by the sense of spring grow out, adding colour to the gaudy box I now call home. The childhood dream was to run free to revel in the clouds of red earth my feet stirred, but fear has me penned in. Hope lingers here. and freedom too.

NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 25: Worn

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 08:13:39 +0000

Off prompt today: \\\* Each night when the day begins to fade into the next I find myself slipping into the haziness of sleep. But the remains to the day fester, rising up from the innards of my mind into the reality of dreams.I reach for rest but find I am worn.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 24: In Praise of a Banana

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 16:16:51 +0000

The NaPoWriMo prompt for Day 24 is to write about a particular fruit, describing it as closely as possible. Here goes, for the delights of a banana.

\\\* Nothing delights a tired tongue on a hot summer day like a banana, the rush of sugar it gifts to the blood like salve on burnt skin. Joy hides beneath its skin and in each bite salvation.

NaPoWriMo Day 2020 - Day 23: Why

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 09:17:40 +0000

For Day 23 of NaPoWriMo 2020, the challenge is to write a poem about a particular letter of the alphabet, or perhaps, the letters that form a short word. Y(Why) comes to mind. \\\* He rests in the shadows of the night his hands like a “Y”, raised in the exasperation of not knowing. Why? Why does day follow night? Why is the quiet of first light ripped to shreds by the blinding light of the noon day sun? Why does pain persist? Is it the messenger of healing or its foe which we feel as it is driven off?

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 22: Distanced

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:30:01 +0000

Day Twenty-Two, for which the NaPoWriMo.net prompt is to find an idiomatic phrase from a different language or culture, and use it as the jumping-off point for your poem. Something about the Kazakh idiom Сенің арқаңда күн көріп жүрмін (I see the sun on your back) which means “Thank you for being you. I am alive because of your help” seemed particularly apt for the times in which we live. Sourced from this list on the TED Blog.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 21: Mistranslated

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 12:08:26 +0000

The Day 21 prompt is to find a poem in a language that you don’t know and perform a “homophonic translation” on it. I’ve chosen the first stanza of Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali’s Umalasi Nomhlambi Wakhe (The Shepherd and His Flock). Doesn’t make sense but.. *insert shrug*

\\\*

I miss being yellow with anger if Anna never sends chillies. I am callow, seasick with a broken mala. My scent attacked Ursa; I see from back here.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 20: Gratitude

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 09:24:39 +0000

Today’s theme is gratitude, with the prompt being to write a poem about a handmade or homemade gift that you have received. Whilst out on a run today I noticed an artist had painted a thank you to the NHS. Here goes:

\\\* For the things the few give the many: Life, Time, Breath. Heartfelt gratitude.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 19 - Found Things

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 13:22:18 +0000

Today’s prompt is to write a poem based on collected things which reminded me of a picture I took a few weeks ago in the middle of packing up my house ahead of a move abroad which is now on hold thanks to the CV-19 induced shutdown.

\\\* I am finding lost joy in found things, each object saved from the detritus of a past life, a reminder to remember, to imagine again past seasons of loving and of losing. Of losing oneself in the delight of being, and feeling. Each page revisited is a present from the past to the present, a tribute to the loves that once lived here.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 18: The Joy In Small Sips

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 08:46:35 +0000

For Day 18 of NaPoWriMo this year, the prompt is to write an ode to life’s small pleasures. My first cup of coffee of the day is one of those for me. Loosely inspired by what is becoming one of my favourite poems, Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things.

\\\* When the darkness of night lifts and I awake to the dreariness of existing in this place, forgetting where Yesterday ends and Today begins to slip into Tomorrow, I reach for this worn mug, its stained sides and chipped edges reassuring in their durability. At first light I lose myself to the muscle memory of returning and find joy in small sips.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 17: A Farewell for My Walkman

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 13:17:37 +0000

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to move backwards in time away.. to write a poem that features forgotten technology. For me, it was my first Walkman.

\\\* Farewell, Walkman protector of my ears and overcomer of my fears with soothing sounds. Farewell, Walkman the opener of my eyes to worlds unknown, translator of songs, from thin tape to all engulfing sound. You may have gone the way of all frail things but you live on in the soundtracks of my life.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 16

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 09:10:33 +0000

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem of over-the-top compliments. Pick a person, place, or thing you love, and praise it in the most effusive way you can. Here goes: \\\* You smile. Your eyes dance. Morning breaks with glorious light. Forgotten, Night’s fears.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 15: Dancing In The Rain

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 09:23:15 +0000

Today’s prompt is to write a poem inspired by your favourite kind of music. Here goes, very loosely interpreted as always: \\\* Breathe in with the clash of the cymbals and then out as the drums begin. Let the patter of your feet lose themselves in the patterns of the music of the rain as they rise and fall, pausing like a runner at the crest of a seventh hill. Let the patina of red earth be washed away. Breathe in and out, and dance, Begin again.

NaPowriMo 2020 - Day 14: Nostalgia

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 10:25:29 +0000

Day 14, off prompt: \\\* Nothing hides yesterday’s sins like nostalgia. Nothing rewrites the memories of things seen like the desire to forget, the ineluctable wish to untether oneself from the burdens of grief, and the weight of things lost. For the daughter kneeling here, oblivious of the paths that we have trod we wish peace, that the things which weigh us down may cease.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 13: Stolen Things

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 12:42:10 +0000

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt focuses on stealing, a challenge to write a non-apology for the things you’ve stolen. Here goes:

\\\* The dog-eared book with your name scratched in its tired cover, the familiarity of its worn pages like the scent of home, a welcome. The picture, battered by the sunlight until it begins to age into a sepia blur, reviving memories of a distant time. The song, your song, repeated until its notes invoke the memories of stolen times and places, Lost but not forgotten.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 12: A Triolet for Resurrection

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 14:48:07 +0000

For Day 12, the challenge is to write a triolet. Not a form I’m overly familiar with but given the Easter season and the influence of Patrick Carey on the form in English (who used it for his devotional writing), it seemed only fitting to attempt something with a faith tilt. Here goes:

\\\*

At first light, she comes to bless

the broken body but finds Light

in the space where his head should be: discarded dress.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 11: Catching Light

Sat, 11 Apr 2020 14:13:06 +0000

The prompt for NaPoWriMo Day 11 is to write a poem in which one or more flowers take on specific meanings. I went off prompt for this one though…

\\\* They say in the brightness of the right light everything is beautiful, the cuts and scrapes that things bear all birthing beauty in the intricate interplay of flickering light and flitting shadow. So catch the light shine, be beautiful.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 10: Exile

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 10:22:10 +0000

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a hay(na)ku, a riff on the haiku created by the poet Eileen Tabios . A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words. My mind went to self isolation as a metaphor for exile: in both cases we have memories of happier times but are restricted in the present to what we remember, not what we can experience. Here goes:

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 9: Perfect Day

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 08:53:58 +0000

The prompt for today is to write a ‘concrete’ poem, one whose words and space are organised to reflect the theme of the poem. I went with the theme of a prayer and a perfect day. If you squint hard enough, you’ll see the shape is reminiscent of hands folded in prayer :)

\\\*

First, awake to the sounds of birds chirping, the lilt of their spring song reminding you of rebirth. Kneel in quiet contemplation- yield to the embrace of the rising sun, let its light call out to the prayer lurking in the dark places of your tired heart. When morning morphs into the heat of high noon, cherish the beauty of the cherry blossoms pink against the skies, and when the day slowly slides into the bosom of the night, offer up a libation of red wine for deliverance from today’s troubles. Tomorrow comes tomorrow but till then revel in your perfect day.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 8

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 13:13:04 +0000

The prompt for today is to utilise a line or phrase from a twitter poetry bot as a jumping off point for a poem. I went with this from a Richard Siken poetry bot. Here goes:

\\\* We know who our enemies are - they are us. They are the memories of yesterdays bubbling up, straining against the resolve of today to begin again.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 7: Lenting

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 14:44:55 +0000

Today’s National Poetry Writing Month prompt asks us to use a news headline as a jumping off point. I chose to go with the one about the chap giving up solid food (and subsisting on beer only) for Lent this year. Enjoy:

** The body aches for absolution, for forgiveness and release from the weight around my waist, this man born by past seasons of surfeiting. So I offer this, a libation of liquid to quell the sounds of my inner monologue.

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 6: Calling My Daughter Aoife

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 15:50:40 +0000

Off prompt today… \\\* You have taken seven years to get here each one a memory lodged deep in the space between the hunger of anticipation and the malaise of hope deferred. Now as I hold you in my hands, and see you, frail yet strong, you are Mother returned. I call you Aoife, for you have brought beauty to our broken places

Poetry As Therapy: A Brief Listening (and Reading) List

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 10:52:18 +0000

My grand plan for Lent this year was to post a poem a day using the Church of England’s #LiveLent reflections as a jumping-off point, but life happened (we lost G and then went into a full COVID-19 related shutdown) and I ended up stuck on 17 days. Poetry as prayer seemed like a good idea given the difficult season of faith I was in, in which prayer felt alien. It is not an entirely novel idea as I found out with more than a few essays reflecting on the subject, two examples being these excellent pieces at Talking Writing and The Millions. There is a rich history of the poetic form in various religious writing and in their associated rites; some might even argue that the enduring allure of the King James Version of the Bible has more to do with the cadence of its words than anything else. Come to think of it, the Psalms sometimes read like the brain dumps of a conflicted person, like transcripts of therapy sessions.

NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 5 - Morning

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 12:05:13 +0000

For Day 5 of National Poetry Writing Month, the prompt is to write something aligned with “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” originally developed by Jim Simmerman. Here goes (very loosely interpreted):

\\\* The sun parts the curtain of the night its light like a knife cutting through the crust of bleary eyes.

In its wake comes the sound of birds waking - a mellifluous melody and tribute to the muscle memory of the cycle of life and time.

NaPowriMo 2020 - Day 4: Dream

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 13:59:48 +0000

For national Poetry Month day 4. The prompt for the day asked to write a poem based on an image from a dream. I chose to go with dreams as a genre of mental experience.. Here goes.

\\\* What if a dream is the whisper of God, his touch, light on the shoulder feather-like, a word in the ear of the worn and the weary: Come drink, fill yourself with this water?

NaPoWriMo 2020 - Day 3: Live Anyway..

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 13:28:22 +0000

For Day 3 of National Poetry Writing Month. Today’s prompt is to make a list of ten words, and use Rhymezone to build a bank of words for use in a poem.. Here goes.

\\\* Without a care the sparrow flits between the trees oblivious of the need to fret for bread or bed but returns each day to its nest, its place of rest from the coming and the going - from first light to the gloaming - and the cycling of the seasons as they decay; birth and death, being and becoming.

NaPoWriMo2020 - Day 2: Place

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 18:07:13 +0000

Place, for NaPoWriMo2020 Day 2, the prompt being to write a poem about a place. My old house on the corner of 3rd and 39th with its stubborn grass and red earth came to mind. I miss it!

\\\* I carry your memories in my heart, the bright tint of your red earth whipped to fine dust by the Harmattan wind, the whistle of your tall pines, the smell of your freshly cut grass in the aftermath of mowing. I remember the sound of cocks crowing the call of the muezzin, piercing the morning air like a knife and cherish the memories of small things, of peace, of beauty and of simple days.

NaPoWriMo2020 - Day 1: Peeling

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 17:48:01 +0000

And so in the midst of all that’s broken in the world, its Day One of National Poetry Writing Month for 2020. Today’s prompt is to write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life. My choice is life as peeling onions.

\\\* When it all falls apart, like a ball of yarn slowly unravelling, the wind whispers in my ear: this is how life is, an onion, complex in its layers each hiding and being hidden, drawing tears as its juices released in a flash rise. In the stinging we remember the promise of savoury things where in the present bland things lie.

34. Flitting

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 10:13:53 +0000

For Lent Week 5, Monday. A response to the CoE’s #LiveLent reflection for the day. Photo by A Perry on Unsplash

\\\* Without a care the birds flit blithely between the trees, their bare branches lit briefly as though by the light of exploding stars, bright colours and persistent chirps in their own ways declaring this is good.

33. Fifth Day

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 18:40:03 +0000

For the start of Week 5 of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional for Lent 2020. Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash

\\\* In the swoosh of the wings of the bald eagle diving to snatch fish from the sea - its sustenance elegantly eked by dint of labour day by day - and the quiet resplendence of the colourful coral, goodness resides; each in its way declaring, this is good, this birthing on the fifth.

30. What If...

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 08:05:37 +0000

What if disease is the earth groaning, these bodies daily breaking its cry for relief from our feet pressed hard against its throat? What if…

25. Rest

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 13:56:15 +0000

For Week 3, Weekend of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional:

\\\* The curse on the slithering snake is to toil ceaselessly, to eke each day’s living from the benighted earth. The promise we hold to is the blessing of the seventh, that after six summers of toil, the seventh brings rest and healing.

23. Impermanence

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:02:51 +0000

For Week 3, Thursday:

\\\* The rush of locusts leaves the trees - once lush and green - bare, each fading away in the impermanence, of fields destroyed; the ground mourning the demise of a raw and an exquisite beauty. This is how the earth groans, curled up in pain at the wilfulness of wanton waste, a silent witness to the marks we’ve missed. We bring our clay, our bodies and and our burdens to this place to this aftermath of loss, and hope for redemption, that this place broken in the moment can be whole and holy once again.

22. Salvation

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 18:50:18 +0000

For Week 3, Wednesday:

\\\* Drop by drop flake by flake the seeds of life are coming and going a stairway between heaven and earth, words watering it with life, calling a harvest from dry things. Each seed is becoming a harvest; of redemption and salvation - joy returning where sadness once reigned.

21. River side

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 08:55:46 +0000

For the Week 3, Tuesday reflection in the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional:

\\\* Trees planted by the river are blessed with the fortitude to resist the howling of the wind the pounding of the waves and the dying the heat and drying bring. Their roots hold together the soil, their leaves stay green even in the season of forgetting. So hold me, tell my heart to trust, to not waver in this season of distress.

20. Earth Song

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 10:42:37 +0000

A response to the Week 3, Monday reflection in the CoE’s #LiveLent series

\\\* Land and plants the Lord God made each one, called forth by the thundering of His voice. First dry land carved from the gathering of the waters then seeds, each taught to yield it’s kind. And everything- the red earth, white beach lush plain and rugged hill sings as one. My God, how great Thou art.

18. Living Water

Sat, 14 Mar 2020 09:30:34 +0000

For the Week 2, Weekend reflection in the CoE’s #LiveLent series for 2020.

\\\* I come at noon the burden of shame around my neck like a shawl hiding me. I come to find water, to sate my thirst to soak my face in its cooling and wash the dust away. But here I find you offering living water. I drink for cleansing for my scarlet to be white and to never thirst again.

17. A Prayer for A Season of Overwhelm

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 22:38:18 +0000

For the Week 2, Friday’s #LiveLent Devotional, particularly apt given the state of play of the coronavirus pandemic.

\\\* Worn and weary from the tears of fitful crying I find myself stretched straining like a string to hold together; one hand sinking into a slushy earth and the other tottering like a tree listing in a storm. As these waters reach my neck as breath begins to slip and my body begins to yield to these dark depths Abba be a rock be a shelter from the storm be my anchor.

15. Baptism

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 16:38:00 +0000

Today’s CoE #LiveLent Devotional invites us to reflect on baptism, and how it is a symbol of our death and resurrection with Christ. Here goes:

\\\* I come to this water, let me go beneath its flood and die, and then arise reborn, raised to freedom and new desires. Let me sense your welcome, your voice speaking once but echoing across the hills and the valleys telling me, welcome lost son, my prodigal returned.

13. Water, Again

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 19:42:08 +0000

For Day 11 of the CoE’s Lent 2020 Devotional.

\\\* I come thirsty for your water, for its wetting and its washing for how it revivifies my dead and dying places making their hard, worn edges into soft and pliant spaes. I come thirsty, head bowed in quiet supplication, to live again.

12. Water

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 19:07:46 +0000

For Day 10 of the CoE #Livelent Devotional, the focus being the second day of creation with water being brought forth…

\\\* First comes light, making lost things found, dark places bright and clear and beautiful again, and then comes water to wash and clean and bring life to all the dead and dying things. May the dark places of our hearts be lit and whole again and our hands clean.

11. Light and Darkness

Sat, 07 Mar 2020 22:30:09 +0000

For Week 1, Weekend of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional

\\\* Into the dark night light shines, bit by bit driving fear away

10. Light...

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 19:43:23 +0000

For Day Nine, the invitation is to reflect on light and heat and the benefits access to electricity brings to people around the world. That immediately brought to mind the Parable of the Lost Coin, and how for all the sweeping and cleaning, the lost coin is found because of the illumination light brings. Here goes then:

\\\* You realise that light is good when the thing you lost is found, wedged between the corner of your bed and the cold wall, that tiny space worn beige by the tyranny of time. When in the shiver of a winter night you wrap your hands around a cup of warm tea, its chipped edge and faded art a reminder of all its seasons of use, you realise that light is good, and the darkness all around fades.

9. Song of The Light

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 20:40:46 +0000

For Day 8 of the Church of England’s LiveLent devotional for Lent. \\\* Tell the darkness there is no room here, that though small and weak and flickering in the wind, your light will be a bulwark, a hedge against the pressure closing in. You’re a city on a hill a light raised high for all to see. Shine.

8. Swords, Spears, Ploughshares

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 23:40:26 +0000

Image Source

\\\* Yield your swords, pound them into ploughshares, and your spears into pruning hooks

from instruments of harm, life begins to spring up when we walk in Light

7. Springing

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 20:00:23 +0000

\\\* It lingers in the air- this faint scent of things stirring, fair and comely things in all their colour beginning to rear their head in the light of the lengthening days. here, earth heeds the call to birth again from death and dying life begins to spring again.

6. Light

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 19:30:03 +0000

For Day 1 of Week 1 of the #LiveLent devotional for Lent.

\\\* Bless our broken and our breaking, these bodies creaking beneath the pressure of a living daily eked out. Bless our riven hearts in all their parts, strewn as it were along the paths we once trod in hope. Let light, by your speaking bring peace Let our shattered things be whole again let hope with light spring, again.

5. First Day

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 10:21:07 +0000

For Week 1, Sunday of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional \\\* Over the cold dark swirling mists, the Spirit breathes then speaks: Light, come forth.

4. Reconciliation

Sat, 29 Feb 2020 22:13:19 +0000

For Day 4 of the CoE #LiveLent Devotional. \\\* All things - the frail and the sturdy, the weak and the strong- hold together, and consist in You Who leaves the saved ninety-nine to find the one; lost sheep who slips into the dark and unclear paths where fear thrives. You offer redemption and finding and saving from the miry clay. Save me.

3. That Laughter May Return

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 20:45:51 +0000

\\\* May laughter linger here, ring loud in this place where the weight of the burden of living once reigned.

May the promise of good news, of sight and freedom come true, bringing life to this thirsty earth.

2. Dance

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 18:05:51 +0000

\\\* I come to lose myself in the brightness of the King, to join the crashing waves the whistling winds and glistening leaves in joyful adoration, to raise a song, like a string quivering at the strumming of the maestro, a tune pregnant with desire its purpose revealed in the reveling of those who hear, many voices, all together resounding as one.

1. A Poem For Remembering We Are Dust

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 17:05:35 +0000

For Lent this year, I’m choosing to reflect via the medium of poetry, inspired in part by Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound podcast and an inability to pray, in any formal sense of the word. What started as a season of uncertainty has evolved into something bigger, hence this, an attempt to use poetry as prayer. These will be a response to the daily reflection from the Church of England’s LiveLent app which this year encourages us to reflect on creation and how we can be better stewards of it. Here goes! NB for a version in which I attempt to read, visit the anchor.fm page. \\\* The bright gleam of sunlight reflecting in the glass and the steel of the hills we have built lull me into forgetting, that this - these monuments to our power and resolve which wrap themselves like a shroud around the horizon, a scar from a wound revived in the present, tethering us to the certainty of the things we think we know- is but a moment, fleeting in its existence.

A Novem For Starlight

Sun, 23 Feb 2020 15:53:44 +0000

For the Poetic Aside Prompt #516 and the Novem poetic form. Not strictly interpreted though… \\\* Come bask beneath the starlight. Yield yourself to Time’s

gift of colour splashed across night’s canvas. Come here,

Hear the whisper of nature’s song. Ponder in awe.

Wafting

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 13:24:15 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #95.

\\\* It thunders, and then it wafts, its wispy tendrils slowly rising like the white smoke of incense from a censer, held aloft by a priest intoning a muttered prayer. Behind, a bridge to the past hides, disappearing, as it were, into the haze of memory; ahead, the future - not yet glimpsed but in the moment frozen - and enjoyed.

Gift

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 11:15:47 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt 93:

\\\* Here, prone beneath the weight of things unseen, the vision has begun to fade, the dream once resplendent in its colour, now faint and grey, Between the leaving and the grieving a messenger appears, a key in its wings, a gift of redemption and rebirth.

Oasis

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 04:41:54 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #92 and Matthew 11:28-30.

\\\* Beyond the drying and the dying salvation calls; the distant shimmer of light cast by the morning sun a whisper to the weary; Come, draw nigh all ye who are heavy laden, who bear the burden of a common life around their neck. Hope and Haven is the promise, if we dare go through the door into the way.

Arctic Eyes

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 12:40:21 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #90 .

\\\* The brilliance of her luminescent eyes lights the darkness all around, twin pricks of desire shining bright, like stars, stark against the tapestry of a night sky. Fire and ice, both together and apart lie here, the wild and the quiet as one.

Abandonment

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 19:11:03 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #84. Image Source. \\\* Behind the grime, and the ravages of time the remains of living now lie, each layer of dirt a sigh, a dirge for the mystery of abandonment, for how easy it is for things once woven into the fabric of the present to slip beneath the shroud of the memories we lose. Maybe this is what leaving is, things returning to the way they always were.

After The Rain

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 17:06:22 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #83 . Image “After The Rain” by Cyril Rolando

\\\*
I tremble
at the echo of
the booming thunder,
the resounding
of its clap like
the roar of a lion
stirred, a brilliance
incandescent in its majesty
as it splits the night sky
like a warm knife
shears butter.

I have shivered
in the embrace
of a light rain
its fluid fingers,
by persistence finding
their way through
my garments till
they meet my
bare skin.

Wildlings

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 20:20:01 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #82.

\\\* Though quiet in their noon day repose, strength hides within their supple limbs, the power of the one - unfettered in its reach - melded to the quiet guile of the other; together - a Whole stronger than its parts - freely, wildly going.

Dancing In The Dark

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 12:54:18 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #81 . Photography by Sarolta Ban (Website HERE )
\\\*
The lure of the lyre -
alive in its reverb - calls out,
inviting beauty and the beast
to dance, to yield to the rhythm
of the wind, as it rustles
in the leaves, swaying the trees.
We all - boar and deer-
of earth born and saved,
gather here, to dance
the gentle dance
of the dark.

Missing Parts

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 04:05:12 +0000

For the Sunday Muse prompt #80 and Wordle 428. Image source.

\\\* I carry a heavy silence in my missing parts, each breath a prayer for resolve to fight the desire to resign myself to the ache of a festering disgust spawned by the echoes of a lie borne up on the winds from the hills into the valley’s depths.

Outside a crisis looms - our house of cards built up brick by brick with the things we want to believe slowly yields to the probing of the truth, until in the way things really are I find myself covered, whole again.

Together...

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 04:30:57 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #79 and Wordle 472

\\\* Sometimes beautiful things can dance in the light - the dainty and the dense chiming together, their hum heavy with intent as it probes the edge between the steady and the sublime. In washing the raw hide of of a dead gazelle with salt there is a saving from its struggle with putrefaction, a prayer for forgiveness, for absolution for the crime of taking by brute force. Here on the edge of the things we think we know the dainty and the dense become as one, both reduced to subsisting at the mercy of the things which hold everything together.

Shelter

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 12:33:43 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #78. Image copyright Erik Johansson.

\\\* Stroke by stroke these words, hewn by force, as though from resistant rock are building a shelter, each one a link to a thought and then a world beating back the clouds which loom, a slowly growing splash of colour holding out against the ashen night without. These words are calling the trees, to stand in defiance against the howling wind and the ground, now covered with frost, to cling to life, through the night, because tomorrow comes, and with beginning again.

Yellow Dream

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 19:38:55 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #75. Image Source .

\\\* A yellow orb,tethered to the earth by slender strings descends, its yellow light a hue cast over this dream in which I find myself looking at my selves; the past and the future holding the hands of the present, tiny figures scurrying up ladders which seem to reach for the sky, reinventing what is seen. Darkness lingers in the corners of this vista but stroke by stroke pixel by pixel, the dream and reality are slowly melding into one.

Remembering

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 17:04:06 +0000

Image source, for The Sunday Muse prompt #74

\\\* Like the slowly louder clunks a train’s wheels send ahead, as it wends its way along ancient tracks, the old man’s memories float slowly to the fore, the streaks of dappled light dancing on the walls behind his face a spotlight, falling on him the same way it falls on a minstrel at a cabaret, drawing a hush out of the muted mumblings of the gathered. Though his wrinkled skin, once soft now lies wrinkled, warped and folded and his fingers once supple now lack dexterity, like a seagull resplendent in its freedom the memories of past songs return, the track and the piano fusing in a crescendo refusing to be silenced.

Stolen

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 11:52:38 +0000

For the Sunday Muse prompt #73.

\\\** Beneath the garb of Prudence and propriety deep delight can lurk.

Free

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 10:52:37 +0000

Photography by Svetlana Belyaeva click HERE for website. For the Sunday Muse Prompt #71

\\\* Where fear once threaded its tiny tendrils through our feet, and captive hearts

We choose to fly free leaving behind the safety of this confined space.

Because though freedom only is a promise, it trumps certain defeat.

Gift

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 17:23:32 +0000

Gift, for The Sunday Muse prompt #68. Photography by Edouard Boubat.

\\\* Against the pressure of the sea and the darkness of the depths, the gift has been formed, layer by layer each crystal a prayer offered up for protection from the predation of the boring sponge, the oyster worm and the scurrying crab.

Each day that water has washed over it - wearing tiny paths across its stubborn skin - a battle has been won; of survival, and quiet reassurance. And when someday, bequeathed by the sea, it lies in the hands of a grateful child, its hardy brilliance will yet still speak, more loudly in its silence than all the things it has survived.

Broken Things

Thu, 08 Aug 2019 12:46:34 +0000

Photo by Thiago Matos from Pexels. For the Sunday Muse prompt #67

\\\*

Even broken things can sometimes find a use: jagged edges catching light,

a half-face teasing memory, and imagination. Life, reinvented.

Harmattan Rain

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 11:28:59 +0000

For The Wednesday Muse Prompt, Summer Rain.

\\\*

It hangs in the air like a shroud, this heavy, brooding cloud of dust through which the sun tries to force its way; the same way a frail old man, bent double at the waist, tries to hack his way through dense undergrowth, by dint of will power and persistence.

Suddenly, like a giant oak falling, squashing dense foliage with its weight, the heavens are torn by rain, and relief. Peals of thunder, flashes of lightning birth many miracles of tiny rivers suddenly sprung, washing away the dust of earth baked dry, after which comes the smell of new, clean things, of rebirth and things made whole again.

Waiting: One Day I'll Fly Away

Wed, 24 Jul 2019 10:28:56 +0000

One Day I’ll Fly Away. Photo by Hayley Roberts. For The Sunday Muse Prompt #66.

\\\*

Waiting here before this wall of burnt brick reaching high above my head

freedom seems distant a mirage shimmering in the distance; promised.

Hope deferred makes sick the longing heart, but in this sliver of breaking light,

the echo of the promise rings, one day I’ll spread my wings and fly away.

Still Life

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 20:49:00 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #63. Image: the butterfly jar by lostinthisphotograph

\\\* The beauty of these golden wings wrestled free, breath by breath, from the confines of a cocoon, finds itself entombed again, the memory of its flitting flight a distant echo now far removed from the frozen present, a life stilled.

Revivifying

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 03:19:51 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt, #61. Photo Artistry by Erik Johansson Master Photo-manipulation Artist.

\\\* Slat by slat, dab by dab this dream in grey is being remade into a sea of blue, its quiescent skin stretched tight like a canvas between the present and the past where the sky meets the earth’s lie. Each slat was once alive, each cell once bursting with the pressure of rich water, drawn by breathing; air and sunlight entwined in a dance whose beat is borne in the body, from seed to fruit to seed by rebirthing. Now this dream of grey, frozen still, is reawakening each dab of colour returning life to where it once was.

Alternate Reality

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 19:24:23 +0000

For The Sunday Muse, Prompt #60. In which I wonder what the reality of what a cat feels is.

\\\* What if what we are Are mere playthings, pawns roughly hewn from stunted dogwood, clinging to life in a season of dearth. What if the feeling of contentment is a mirage, a vision of delusion far removed from the way things really are. What if what we think is the beauty of a garland really is a chain binding us to a different reality, what if.

By Degrees

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 20:38:20 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #59, Photography by Carlo Pautasso.

\\\* Plucked by its roots from a place where it once was whole, it lies now alone, the brightness of its petals a splash of hope stark against the blandness of everything.

The shadow of an impending end stretches from the future into this space between The Living and the bleeding out of life but till it comes, life lingers still.

Freedom

Wed, 22 May 2019 11:44:09 +0000

Freedom, for The Sunday Muse Prompt #56.

\\\* It hovers in the distance in the space where the edge of consciousness meets the taste of remembering. Where air meets skin, and the sound of living is squeezed into a high pitched wail and then regains length, and afterwards dies as they recede into the distance. Each bump on the road, is like a firm word tossed into the wind, each jar as like a current shared between melded parts. From the distance joy, delirious in its appearance calls but here in the lull before the storm lies a fleeting pleasure, a moment of peace before the whirlwinds return

Garden Spot

Thu, 16 May 2019 18:05:35 +0000

For The Sunday Wednesday Muse Prompt, Garden Spot. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash. A nod to the still vivid memories I have of being dragged off to our family farm by my parents in those dire, dark SAP days.

** First comes the rain, and then the wakened worms which turn the hard, sun-baked soil into compliant mulch. Grain by grain, leaf by leaf the beauty of Symbiosis begins to rear its head, the cycle of death begetting life and sustenance for the things we must ingest, for which with backs bent beneath the blazing sun we labour; the reward of another day survived eked out from the hard, earth.

Night Sky

Thu, 02 May 2019 08:23:50 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt, Night Sky

\\\* The starlight sprinkled like tiny slivers of silver splashed against a dark canvas peels back the curtain on a tumultuous past- birth, death, dust clouds swirling, mists of primordial molecules accreting, then Becoming - a message to the future from the past echoing down the aeons like a strummed string. I was here before you were; before your father was, and his father’s father too Now you see me as I was. Ponder.

53 - Prodigality

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 04:27:47 +0000

Photo by Josiel Miranda from Pexels, for The Sunday Muse prompt #53

\\\* You have wandered through the wilds, labouring in the shadows of seven hills through caverns carved by seven rivers to a far place, a distant country. Hurtful words tossed into the wind hang like a broken shroud flapping in the wind, heavy with intention, a reminder of the way things were but now are not. But as you linger on the edge of the sea wondering if you have wandered too far this time I see you and call your name. Come Home.

NaPoWriMo Day 2: Morning

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 19:51:45 +0000

For the Day 2 prompt, a poem about questions.

\\\* What is this which zips around my ears, its sound like the deep hum of an old man hunched down, stirring up the sand. It shimmers in the morning light its back a splash of gold splayed across the sky, against which stand the silhouettes of great metal tubes bending to its will. What is this but the wind, which goes wherever it wills.

NaPoWriMo Day 1: Prayer

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 19:02:57 +0000

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash. For NaPoWriMo Day 1.

\\\* Fold your hands in quiet contemplation, eyelids shut, pressed tightly together, a wall standing tall between the harsh light outside and the quiet darkness within. Breathe, inhale the scent of home, bread and wine, blended into the memories of your youth, when Faith, child-like, bubbled free. You who have wandered seven hills and seven rivers into a far country, drawn by the lure of freedom but now have had your eyes awakened seek redemption. This is what prayer is, quietly heeding the call of the divine

#48. Rememory

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 18:06:48 +0000

Photo by Skitterphoto from Pexels, for The Sunday Muse Prompt #48.

\\\* Maybe it was the slant of the light streaming in, slicing through, as it were, the haze of yester-year’s detritus; the half-drawn blind like a mind stretched thin between leaving and returning, a face half-turned towards the memory of lost songs hovering just beyond the reach of a quivering tongue, and this present brooding. Maybe this is what the burden of life is. To carry, buried deep within one’s heart, the remains of the songs of one’s youth; until in a season of re-memory, they all come back.

Rebirth

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 06:00:11 +0000

Image Source, For The Sunday Muse Prompt #46.

\\\* Petal by petal, life returns to this frigid vista each one a delicate splash of colour against a canvas, bringing life, the way blood revivifies a face just in from the cold. From things once dead, life springs again, reborn.

Freedom

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 18:36:11 +0000

For Prompt #45 at The Sunday Muse. Image “Be Free” by Magic Love Crow.

\\\* Line by line the silhouette of an angel rises up, phoenix-like, in the space where the prophet’s finger parts the sand. This is what freedom is- the delirious joy of walking away from the baying crowd, the space between the lines as alive as the lines.

44

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 18:53:40 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #44 and some words from The Sunday Whirl Wordle #392. Image “Ireland” by Emily Soto, fashion photographer

\\\* Maybe it was the scent of roses- freshly cut, wafting in on the evening breeze that stole my attention; the jolt intruding the same way the reverb of a gentle tap interrupts a deep reverie, a dream receding as though it were a distant vista seen through the lens of a collapsing wormhole. Where cold, hard, and grey once reigned, a wreath of red leaves begins to spring, its colours a bright tide more alive now than it ever was.

Earth Child

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 11:40:10 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #43. Image Source.

\\\* Child of Mother Earth, dust, breath, fire, and water, from clay formed, stitched together by the finger of the Divine. You, who are a string stretched taut between the past and the future unbroken in the present, have simmered beneath the pressure of hell and high water, bearing the burden of a message preserved for you. But now like a bird set free, you must take wing and fly. I call you by your name, Alafiaoluwa, Be peace.

Becoming

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 04:07:27 +0000

Image: “War Horse and Peace Horse” by Sue Halstenberg. For The Sunday Muse #42.

\\\*

You and I like two fiery stars locked in the embrace of an eternal dance are becoming as one, our light growing in Coherence brighter now than it once was. Against the odds war and peace are finding common ground, making all the broken whole again.

41.

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 17:59:08 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #41 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 388. Image Source.

\\\* Green with a hint of yellow, the tender tendril pushes past the strictures of an empty bottle. Outside, the chill from snow piled high smothers everything, its weight like a bland, white blanket inhibit ing life.

The shy and the retiring do not inherit the delights of this benighted world, only the tough who blithely swipe away civility appear to win the trial of perception.

Freedom

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 11:14:33 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #40 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 388. In The Middle of Freedom, Image Source.

\\\* My fingers mould the pliant clay beneath the surface of this puddle into an image of a memory; each mound of earth rubbed round between my fingers a portion of a story emerging like birds set free from a gilded cage. The memory is a chain anchoring the fluid present to the stable past. It pulses like a thing that lives - somehow more alive with freedom than at first it would seem.

Call of the Wild

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 11:57:54 +0000

For The Sunday Muse #39 and Wordle 387 from The Sunday Whirl. Image Source.

\\\* Here in the shadow Of despair, loneliness Hangs in the air like A wet coat, the silence Like the weight of pebbles Beneath which which one sags, Broken at the knees.

Each step towards The distant light is a prayer Of repenting, for forgetting What love in the wild Feels like.

Step by step, walk after walk We are making this world Whole again, heeding the Inner call to become Wild and free again.

Piano

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 19:37:59 +0000

Image Source, for The Sunday Muse prompt #38. After Dan Howell’s Piano.

\\\*

Although her lithe and petite frame Shivers in the chill of the falling rain, Her fingers pound the piano’s keys Into submission to the rhythm of her will And with the libation of her song She sets us free to dance in the rain.

Guardian

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 11:13:38 +0000

“Guardian” by Chie Yoshii, for The Sunday Muse #37 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 385 prompts:

\\\* She perches on your shoulder This invisible guardian of the night Her voice a quiet word Whispered in your ear Barely heard above the din The way text, lightly etched On a slab of stone would look In the shimmer of dusk.

A dream deferred cannot slip back Into a sleepless mind. Once a butterfly’s eyes Have seen the light of freedom; Once its kicks have set it free From the caul of the caterpillar It cannot become a larva again.

Horizons

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 11:27:48 +0000

For Sunday Muse #36 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 384

\\\* The call of the future comes from across the border bringing hope to this poor, tired pilgrim- slouched beneath the weight of an open promise and the remains of failures past.

Tomorrow is uncertain, not promised but staying still wastes today so with intent I risk safety to seek the joy beyond the flood plains of seven rivers and the welcome of a home where hypocrisy is no more.

Wordle 382: About Town

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 09:33:38 +0000

Wordle 382:

\\\*

We brave the howl ing wind, wincing on the odd occasion when its icy fingers somehow reach within the folds of our coats to touch our necks. Along the snow covered streets, the children play, their shrieks of joy as they spin again and again piercing the air a hundred hundred times until they drop with exhaustion. From the coffee shop around the corner, different caramel drizzled drinks bring back their strength. This is the plan, to - with any luck - keep them so occupied that all they can do on the train home is sleep, so we get some peace and quiet.

Wordle 381: Half Dead

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 11:01:24 +0000

For Wordle 381: --- Last night they gathered with intent, forty-eight memo s a lingering stench that could no longer be shrug ged away. Behind the bluster of “doing the right thing” was the lure of the key s to Number 10.

When the frame is badly broken can the picture be restored? Is the crime of lying word s so great that everything is irretrievably broken and no longer of use? Inside, the Wounded lived to fight another day; outside the circling hyenas beaten back for a season will return.

Wordle 380

Thu, 06 Dec 2018 13:06:02 +0000

For Wordle 380:

---

This entity - bare arms rippling with intent- pulls victory out of thin air. Time and time again, the potential for losing one’s head in a flurry of jabs is overcome by the evidence of winning, the one thing missing in this me being a fear that flinches before the rolling fists land. This is how it ends- victory snatched from the claws of loss when we decide.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 27

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 18:37:33 +0000

For S. Six months.

Beneath the light of the autumn sun, perched on the edge of that seventh hill we quivered in the chill of the breeze, basking in the delight of a promise shared. I walked away with your name etched on my skin, a weight borne in my heart like an anchor in an uncertain storm. Moons ago there was trepidation there,but now like a once floundering ship finally headed home, there is a whole, where a hole once was.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 26

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 19:02:10 +0000

Sensed, for the Day 26 prompt. --- Sometimes joy is the rush of wind past skin, as one finds a rhythm in which feet pound pavements, the sight of the night sky tinged pink, like a splash of paint on a vast canvas. Sometimes joy is the scent of bread on a cold winter day, an invitation whispered on the wings of the wind to hunker down before a fire and be. Whether in the brush of soft breath on skin, the quiet reassurance of a song remembered, heard in the bottom of the soul, and the warmth of spices on the tongue, joy sometimes is, what is not uncertain is that home is there.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day24, An Elegy for the 'Feeble-minded'

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 18:05:07 +0000

Image by M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany, SUNY (via NPR’s Hidden Brain Podcast), for the Day 24 prompt. Inspired by Emma, Carrie and Vivian’s stories.

--- They branded them the feeble minded, when all they were were the wronged ones.

Once a face begins to fade into the fog of otherness, doubt begins to assail the humanity of the other.

We wished we spoke for you when they came - before your lives were stashed behind that cordon of red brick

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 19

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 19:46:50 +0000

After the sun, for the Day 19 prompt. --- A lone man stands in front of the bus shelter, his bag slung across his shoulder, hands stuck deep in his pockets, staring out towards the square, at the space where the bus should be.Behind him, four bicycles lie in various states of harness. Before him, the square liessuffused with light. The calm, strange for this time of the day, is broken when as though dumped from an arriving train, a flood of people begins to traverse the square. After that comes the rain, after which it becomes clear that the quiet that came before was only the calm before the storm. Alone, his bag slung across his shoulder he stares. The square lies suffused with light. Calm, strange day. Then the rain.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 18

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 22:47:44 +0000

After Eduardo C. Corral’s Ceremonial, for the Day 18 prompt. --- Here I am lord, crouched behind the door of this sanctuary, wedding dress crammed into a closet, clenched fist clutching a rosary hoping the bite of its ragged edges will bring absolution for this fleeing. Like a dream hovering just beyond the reach of remembering the taste of sugared rancid sweat lingers. This war within, between the ghosts of things once thought and things now heard rages. These thick thighs and belly fat belie the assignation of beauty. Prayer cannot assuage this tumult, this self flagellation. I pinch and pull, cry myself hoarse In deliruim.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 16, Springing

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 20:22:11 +0000

Photo by Ruxandra Mateiu on Unsplash, for the Day 16 prompt. --- Where once we Wrapped ourselves in heavy Furs and coats

We now skip Free, drawn by the warmth of the Reborn sun.

The scent of Daffodils, chirp of spring birds Unfurls joy

Spring has sprung And like children, giddy with Joy, we play.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 15, Cry

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 22:29:51 +0000

– Cry for the riven country. For the ones for whom doom descended from the skies in Douma, spreading death in the wake of its yellow green tendrils.

Cry for the dead and the dying. For the ones culled from the living, whose blood, like a libation rejected pools at the altar of the sixth fleet.

The whine of drones, swish of tomahawks and boom of hellfires pounding earth into tired dust assail their ears, lighting up the night sky.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 12

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 19:33:49 +0000

A Haibun, for the Day Twelve prompt. --- The greyness subsumes everything, water filled skies allied to grey granite blocks defining the sky line. Sometimes, a mist will drift in from the sea, shrouding the city in a gloomy pall. The winds howl incessantly, its fingers reaching through every gap and every crack spreading chill and forcing a quickening of the footstep of all who brave the elements. The defining characteristic though is one of just getting on with it. Sometimes - for two days of summer as we say - the sun comes out.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 11

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 23:07:15 +0000

Image source: Huffington Post. For the Day 11 prompt. ---

Time tinges the Future with death and demise Certain end.

Each day is A war won by birthing the Self anew.

The claws of Time etch themselves in our skin Separating

Desire from Response,bending will to reality.

The world ends Not with a bang but with a Whimper*.

– \* T.S Elliot, The Hollow Men.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 10, Transubstantiation

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 16:46:33 +0000

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash, for the Day 8 prompt, revisited.

--- Sanctify my body as I pray; with clasped hands, bowed head, kneeling here, before this altar of remembering.

I come for the broken bread, blessed, become shredded body. And wine in urn, become blood, spilt forty times but one.

Sin seethes beneath the surface of this body, this flesh from earth descended, unravelling like a thread roughly yanked from frayed yarn.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 8, Transubstantiation

Sun, 08 Apr 2018 22:33:37 +0000

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash, for the Day 8 prompt.

--- With bowed heads and clasped hands we come In quiet supplication, knees bowed, flesh unstrung- Hearts humbled, at the feet of the priest For bread broken. Blessed. Becoming crackling body And wine. Slipped into silver urn. Spilt blood. Divine liquid.

Pange, lingua, gloriósi Córporis mystérium, Sanguinísque pretiósi,

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 7, Father

Sat, 07 Apr 2018 22:11:09 +0000

My father looms Like a colossus in my mind His voice, tinged with righteous anger The lyric of my powerless youth But now in my season of adulthood, I see him as he is, A man who tried his very best But was human too.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 6, For The Ones The Genes Took

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 22:17:45 +0000

For the ones the genes took. Photo by Wendy Scofield on Unsplash.

We prayed the Jinns would not take you That when the dust from your fighting feet, and the chill of the terror of the night would lift you would return in peace.

With our knees we ground a hole into the ground from constant supplication, in hope that you would be whole again but the genes would not let up

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 5, Foot loose

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 19:54:49 +0000

Image from Great Inspire, for the Day 5 prompt, only partially fulfilled. ---

Come let us dance our discordant thoughts to calmness, joined by the rhythm of our joyful hearts, and a song welling up from deep within.

Like a bird loosed from the tenuous grasp of gravity’s hold, let us float away. With the spring of defiant Freedom in our steps.

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 4, What It Is

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 23:10:26 +0000

For the Day 4 Prompt, a challenge to describe an abstraction with concrete nouns. Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash --- What it is is something smouldering A tiny reed, slowly taking flame That perchance with time might Burst into a raging flame

What it is is a call and response A place remembered and returned to In a season of despair

In its light one sees the self in all its glory warts and all, and learns the painful truth that one is human too

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 3, Name Dropping

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 20:05:53 +0000

For the Day 3 prompt, A list poem of band names. I fear my choices betray my age (and my penchant for Christian Contemporary Music). Photo by frankie cordoba on Unsplash. --- Six Pence None The Richer for you corrodes my conformity into discordant notes.

On Black Street s, six degrees north of Building 429 a Rush Of Fools Switches foot and stops to breathe again.

DC Talks to the Newsboys Ignoring Caedmon’s Call Until the Third Day when the Second Chapter Of Acts is unleashed.

#NaPoWriMo18

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 22:26:42 +0000

Offshore Nigeria, back in the day. For the prompt Rise/Set. --- It is now a mere three days to the start of National Poetry Month this year, three years since I last participated. Back then in addition to the prompts from the NaPoWriMo website, I had La Reine and Tolu for company, two poets who are far more deserving of the label. I plan on jumping in this year, the idea primarily being to participate, rather than hammer out high quality poetry. Fingers crossed.

#2 - Weathered

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:08:30 +0000

– Aberdeen’s City Centre is a panoply of old, weathered buildings, seasoned – as Yusef Komunyakaa so eloquently puts it in his poem, Ode To The Drum – by wind, dusk and sunlight. To that trio of elements, one would have to add snow and rain, given they are hardly ever in short supply in this corner of the world.

Before oil – and some would add, the EU – there was fishing and an entire industry of fish processing in and around the harbour area. These days, gleaming buildings - and car parks - share the skyline, a curious juxtaposition of old and new, brick and glass and perhaps the reinvention of a city.

#1 - Bob, The Brave and Bold...

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 22:17:19 +0000

Bob the Brave would fight Brexit’s worthy cause. His Achilles Heel? An expired MOT

--- For Robert, who wants to take Spain on, on behalf of Gibraltar

Wish

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 15:00:54 +0000

St Albans Cathedral, one December day. For the prompt, Wish:

For fulfilled desires, For the Loved Ones to return Again in peace. Wish.

Rhythmic

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 18:50:57 +0000

Image Credit Seb (Unsplash); for the prompt Rhythmic

– In the wake of the rising sun comes the call of dawn; a song drawn from the chirp of birds, the flutter of leaves, the creak of stirring bones and the lap of waves carried on the breath of the morning breeze.

Here on the edge of the morning in the quiescence of a lingering dream, the memory of the patter of your feet lives on. In the sumptuous symphony of nature’s call and response, the perfect fit of the lilt of your voice and the wind in the trees You return.

Against The Odds, A Haiku

Wed, 15 Feb 2017 20:02:48 +0000

For the Photo Challenge, Against The Odds

– Sometimes, between a Rock and a hard place, beauty Springs. Against the odds.

With Grace

Thu, 09 Feb 2017 19:39:59 +0000

For the prompt, Criticise.

To chide with Grace and Encourage, not criticise Everyday I pray.

Tremble

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 19:33:29 +0000

Image Source: Worthy of Elegance (Unsplash); for the Daily Prompt, Tremble

– Inhale the scent of Mint, wafting up. Tremble as The warmth soothes your bones

Walking Away, Lovingly

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 17:27:50 +0000

Source: Chobir Dokan

For the prompt: Lovingly

The glint in her eye Belies the set of her jaw Lovingly, she leaves

Craft

Sun, 05 Feb 2017 05:51:39 +0000

Image Source: Mabel Amber (Unsplash); for the prompt, Craft

Without, bland and cold; Within, the Joy of crafting Brightly coloured things.

Clean

Sat, 04 Feb 2017 22:41:58 +0000

For the prompt, Clean

– With deep contrition I pour out a libation. I wish to be clean

One-Word Inspiration: Solitude

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 18:56:02 +0000

With a riot of Colour, the breaking dawn births Peaceful Solitude

For Day 3 of the Everyday Inspiration course, and the prompt Solitude

Resist

Wed, 01 Feb 2017 22:31:14 +0000

Beach Boulevard, The ‘Deen; for the prompt, Resist

With fear in their wake, The crashing waves come ashore Shaken, I cower.

Pressure makes broken Things whole again, digging deep I resist in Hope

Joy, Three Things

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 19:06:49 +0000

For S, and the Discover Challenge One-Two-Three

– How easy it is To laugh, to bask in the glow Of infectious Joy;

How the patter of Your feet, like the sound of rain On a sun-baked day

Brings relief, and hope That tomorrow will come in Peace, and you’ll return

01 - Hike

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 20:14:47 +0000

For the prompt, Hike. Image Source

– Crisp air, fallen leaves- Crunched to dust by pounding feet, Delirious Joy. Hike

Here And Now...

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 17:54:46 +0000

For the Daily Post prompt Here and Now: \\\* Between Here and There One waits; Tomorrow’s Promise? Beginning again.

#81 - Winning

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 19:23:58 +0000

For Mag 309:

In the set of her shoulders and the glint in her eye- is the quiet reassurance of certitude; and of knowing.

That as certain as after day comes night, And with the wind comes chill, She wins…

In the end.

Dear Future Me

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 13:08:02 +0000

For Mag 308:

Dear Future Me, I wanted to tell you that whatever happens tonight- on the corner of L and Ninth; you will survive.

That this too, this sense Of worry wrapping itself like a wreath around your windpipe will pass, whether lost in the exhilaration of assent; or obliterated in the loud clang of a cataclysmic bang.

That this sense of free fall, of uncertainty gnawing at your insides will give way to the clarity of certitude; that the restful stillness of truth will triumph over the ambivalence of baseless hope.

Spring[ing]

Fri, 22 May 2015 23:00:00 +0000

[ Source]

---

The sense of something

Brewing; Hope’s shoots, soft, tender-

Beginning, Again

A Pilgrim's Prayer

Tue, 12 May 2015 05:00:00 +0000

For Mag 269 --- Here beneath The glow of your halo, Mother of God, With clasped hands And humble spirit I bow in supplication, Bringing a prayer For redemption, for Absolution from this Weight, this burden Of deferred hope.

The crash of thunder, Flash of lightning, Fire and smoke, Echoed across seven hills Is etched in my memory A callus chafed raw By this journey, This unceasing battle Of Self and Spirit Of good ambushed by doubt

Transmogrification

Wed, 06 May 2015 20:54:45 +0000

For Mag 268: --- The dinginess within cannot hide the beauty that lurks here, hidden beneath the patina of age and wanton neglect.

Haste hinders the unveiling of poise, of grace carved out of ugly rock, of error transmogrified* by intense, pregnant intent, into a towering edifice of strained sinews and abs chiseled to perfection.

This is no drowning Narcissus sinking into a murky river of swirling self indulgence; this is David, bare and broken saved by the master’s hand.

NaPoWriMo Day 30 - Times and Seasons

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 20:42:52 +0000

With time one learns there are no real endings, only times, and new seasons…

--- NaPoWriMo is a wrap for this year, even though I never did get round to completing the Day 14 challenge. Big ups to La Reine and Tolu who challenged and inspired along the way… Bring on 2016!

NaPoWriMo Day 29 - Giving Stars

Wed, 29 Apr 2015 20:26:23 +0000

[ Source]

Four stars for the Chelsea boots in brown; five from Wood, for their soft leather and inner cushion, for how easy they fit his wide feet and how they arrive in time for spring and the promise of new beginnings.

One star from Miles, for how they fall apart; split at the heel after seven months of use; for how they’ll harm your feet, and fall apart as though sawn in two.

NaPoWriMo Day 28 - Bridge

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 23:25:00 +0000

In the unknown you clutch vestigial memories of night journeys and of trains and being surprised by grey granite segueing into lush greenery

but once you cross the Bridge across the Firth of Forth Hope awakens ‘Cos you’re Home.

On train journeys, coming home and the Forth Road Bridge for the prompt for Day 28 at NaPoWriMo, a truly gorgeous sight on a (rare?) sunny November day as I found many years ago…

NaPoWriMo Day 27 - How To Make Small Talk

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 12:05:09 +0000

Pause, On the corner of Kings’ and 23rd North West and smile, let your face crumble like a cookie dipped in spring milk.

Tell her the musky scent of her perfume reminds you of spring wafting in on the wind heady, yet subtle, hardly felt.

Moan about the weather, of snow pelting down like hail of sunshine shoved into a corner by clouds and then nightfall

When you find she’s clutching Chaucer to her chest and McEwan in her bag, read her a line from Komunyakaa: ‘I took seven roads to get here and almost died three times’*.

NaPoWriMo Day 26 - The Leaving

Sun, 26 Apr 2015 19:47:13 +0000

For Mag 267

You and I are sweeping up the shards of something blithely broken, something shattered into a thousand jagged things, by this weight, this unshifting burden of this we, we nearly were.

There is leaving, and then this, Leaving, headed west, chasing closure, across the valley, beyond which there is no returning.

NaPoWriMo Day 25 - Delirium

Sat, 25 Apr 2015 21:42:22 +0000

[ Source]

You feel the fever the morning after the strangers leave, engorged by their suckling of your life sap. The gift they leave is the delirium. Dry skin, heavy head and the shivers; the sense of warped time and a bubble of discomfort They rob the future of the joy of present presence- one dies every minute but for those who escape there is only the burning burden of relief.

For World Malaria Day… And the one child every minute stolen from our future by the disease.

NaPoWriMo Day 24 - Shall I Compare You to a Harmattan Day?

Fri, 24 Apr 2015 21:52:00 +0000

Shall I compare you to a harmattan day? You are far more refreshing, than palm wine. Strong winds do bear the Sahara’s clay But in your shade, is rest divine.

For the NaPoWriMo Day 24 prompt - to write a parody of a famous poem; in this case Shakespeare’s sonnet number 18. Catching up..

NaPoWriMo Day 23 - House, Of Cards

Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:15:00 +0000

[ Source]

If words were everything We would be halfway To the moon and back, A streak of light, white-bright Against the night sky Driving darkness far away Into the distance Of a forgotten age.

If promises were The elixir of life We would nymph-like never age, Never yield to the chiseling Hand of time, etching its Designs into our very bones.

Word by word they have built up Grandiose things, carcasses that Loom large, Colossus-like over us; Selling us bamboo dust for sandal wood, Trading Hope for the control A snake charmer’s pungi wields.

NaPoWriMo Day 22 - Basking

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 16:25:23 +0000

[ Source]

--- Rabbits nonchalantly nibbling at grass, whiff of daffodil scent, beer-bellied men, bare chested; women, pale armed seeking sun. Spring’s sprung and like moths to flame we bask in its warmth.

--- For the Day 22 prompt at NaPoWriMo; and Earth Day.

NaPoWriMo Day 21 - For Justice

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 17:25:22 +0000

For Prompt #21 at NaPoWriMo - Erasure, and an inexplicably unsettling Ted Talk by the International Justice Mission’s Gary Haugen, even though this probably doesn’t count as an erasure poem.

– I’m not much of a crier- In Rwanda tears just aren’t much help Compassion - cum passio - mean(s) to suffer with Up close to human suffering.

Your first introduction Might have been We Are The World. A mom from Zambia, three kids, Widow, coals on the cooking fire Completely cold, watch Peter suffer, grow cold.

NaPoWriMo Day 20 - Lessons Learned

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 23:38:23 +0000

A bloke can do no worse Than believe his own hype Unless it is to hope That a grand Messianic gesture Might turn the ebbing tide of Love, Where a simple one would do.

For everything there is a time And a season for everything under the Sun But what virtue does Hope have unless She stir in dire times?

NaPoWriMo Day 19 - A landay for parting...

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 17:55:13 +0000

Parting is all we know of hell* Heaven the delightful linger of the touch of love’s spell.

--- For the Day 19 prompt at NaPoWriMo; not quite a formal landay but this will have to do :) *Paraphrased from Emily Dickinson’s My life closed twice before its close (96)

NaPoWriMo Day 18 - Answers...

Sun, 19 Apr 2015 19:27:48 +0000

With these two feet I begin This journey, of probing and inquiry A thousand miles stretched taut Like a string. Losing itself in the Distance between here and there A road untraversed separating This beginning - hallowed ground And that distant pleasure dome.

One cannot escape the lure Of mystery dived head first into, The call of the unknown, enthralling, Siren-like, borne on the wind like Pollen from a flower to its receptacles; A birth,new beginning from wanton waste.

NaPoWriMo Day 17 - Cobbled Together

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 02:42:44 +0000

If you came in late Naiman’s banned from Hearthstone- Attempted to judge this lady in Ten tailored jogging pants.

Fold up the paper map You should get lost This May you can get A lot of writing done

– This has been cobbled together from tweets by @BillSimmons, @DailyDot, @DamiOyedele, @Esquire, @NYTimes and @BLoreWriters in response to the Day 17 NaPoWriMo prompt to write a “social media”-style poem, quoting from friends’ texts, tweets, FB status updates, twitter accounts, and blogposts, and the back of the cereal box on your breakfast table.

NaPoWriMo Day 16 - Questions for *Ella

Thu, 16 Apr 2015 07:04:52 +0000

Sometimes a thing is just a thing with no stakes* And the ardour of a mid summer’s night kiss just a fling, A memory lingering long after the act like shimmer of dusk on a lake.

Sometimes the moment is all there is to everything, A gift to savour, like the sparkling stones a river brings To its delta, ground round by their unseen journey.

When the hoops begin to multiply, and everything becomes a drudge Does it mean the dream has begun to fade, and that our scars and secrets are in the light?

NaPoWriMo Day 15 - Why I Write

Wed, 15 Apr 2015 20:07:21 +0000

Sometimes silence is the song a caged bird sings, the fading echo the flailing of a broken wing leaves, as it creaks beneath the weight of life’s hammer blows.

Sometimes silence is the shrill scream rushing air makes as it leaves a pierced balloon as it runs amok in its death throes before nestling limp like a wet sock and disappearing.

Sometimes pain will break you and the linger of unrequited memory will haunt you, seared as it were in the very fabric of your mind’s skin.

NaPoWriMo Day 14 - Game Theory, A Conversation

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 18:48:12 +0000

A conversation… c. 2009, stumbled upon.

I once had serious game you know.. It seems you’ve still got it man. 3 conundrums? Nah… It’s all seeped off, all that is left now are the dregs. The dregs? Explain! The jaded bottom of the game jar, festering with settled solids. It may be the most potent, no? That would be the strongest, I can imagine. Maybe, but its not available in copious quantities. It has to be miserly dispensed to prevent extreme intoxication. Better for the gamee, no? Maybe, but bad for the gamer. It severely limits the gamer’s options. Options confuse. Pick and choose which gameee u want and then systematically feed her your most potent game. all or nothing. That my dear is a high stake game…works on paper – not necessarily in real life though. Hmmm… In life should you game as many people as you can? Maybe not. Perhaps one should only game the one we think we’ve found, a contradiction in terms maybe? Exactly! So no need to have loads of watery game. I can tell you it doesn’t always work. Hmmmmm. In theory, boy meets girl, he’s interested, asks her out, not hangs in there interminably for the emotional satisfaction whilst offering no commitment. But sometimes you lose, no? Yup - most times I suspect, u lose sometimes. But it’s the ‘ultimate good’ scenario – cos there’s minimal collateral damage. when its all done and dusted – dude takes the risk of asking and losing if required. leaving her wanting more is a risky strategy, in my opinion. yup.. the truly nice guy doesn;t work that way.. if he’s in, he asks, if he’s not he defines the context of their connection and they move on if required…its not even a nice question, I think. That is a Man. yup.. i think so.. that is what a Man and a Woman do…but a boy would play and a girl i think we play along. very true. so….if a gamee wants a Woman and he himself is a Man, then no need to waste time and protect against collateral damage that is my opinion but then again easy does it yeah.. its often easier to just go with the flow.. sometimes I think that women actually want a gamer who does that. who goes with the flow? or who plays with them?. I dont like obscure, undefined, fluid, grey, nonsensical relationships. but then why buy the cow if the milk is free. Hehehehe. which is why i think the staying celibate thing makes sense – never mind what the bible says. it is a waste of MY valuable time. lol… true. and a waste of my valuable LOVING abilties and oh how can u compare women to cows? its called a metaphor – not a simile, however abstruse. I dont like ur analogy. its not a comparison of their structures.. but a comparison of their producing ability. maybe i should have used a tree then. why buy a mango tree when u can get the fruit free. its still offensive…. because the only thing a cow produces is milk., and u are saying the only worth of a woman is what she produces u should want the cow just the cow. But the metaphor is saying the only thing u value from the cow is her milk. u are missing my point.. real dude wants the cow and the milk. raz dude wants the milk only

NaPoWriMo Day 13 - Questions in Thirteen...

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 17:15:02 +0000

Does it pop and fizz, And crackle like a log flame Entrancing the mind?

Does it arrive like Dawn, sweep away the dark night Promise a new start?

Does it intoxicate Like the aroma of sweet wine, Bringing delirious Joy?

Or is it there in the Quietness of steady habits Neither loud nor brash?

Oh that some sage could tell.

NaPoWriMo Day 12 - Bliss in a Bowl

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 08:12:02 +0000

Spice - lemon and herb, sun-dried. Chicken - half, skin crisp. Taste - Bliss, in a bowl. --- For the Day 12 Prompt at NaPoWriMo… Was always going to be about my favourite meal, and table 11. :)

NaPoWriMo Day 11 - Crossroads

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 06:19:19 +0000

[Image Source]

You try to hide your fear behind a veneer of strength, try to put up a facade of calm but beyond the outer strength is the odd tear that slips, unguarded.

You stand bewildered at the fork of the road. Left? Right? Blending into an instructable sameness, certainly uncertain of where your Redemption Days lie.

To the confused, every coincidence is an omen, the whisper of God rustling the leaves one way, or another, but what if like lemmings one must jump?

NaPoWriMo Day 10 - Stalemate

Sat, 11 Apr 2015 08:37:02 +0000

John Sargent, A Dinner Table at Night (1884) Source A t first you ask to talk, but B urning deep within is the burden of words, a C acophony of voices in your head, D riving despair like a stake into wetted E arth, a haze that settles in and just won’t shift. You

F ind a time and place to have the talk, you G o with the flow, tell it like it is, whilst H e squirms beneath the weight of I nnocence lost, guilt like a pall of smoke drifting in. He J okes about not meaning IT, but there is a K nowing that transcends the clarification of intent, that L ooms larger than any image words alone can paint;

NaPoWriMo Day 9 - What Mother Said...

Fri, 10 Apr 2015 04:50:29 +0000

Shed Tears; Let pain like a malevolent fiend- Draw blood. Let go; Let the waves of a melancholic nostalgia break you. Pressure makes you whole again. Blame Fear; Blame Pain, blame sorrow deep within- Still Sing.

An old (anti-valentine) piece from 2010 re-broken for the Day Nine NaPoWriMo prompt… I’d let you decide what shape this calligram represents.. :)

NaPoWriMo Day 8 - For H, Something Stolen

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 16:14:59 +0000

For H - untitled, off prompt…

I said I wouldn’t cry Wouldn’t let the quivering of my lips win, break me.

I said I wouldn’t bend, Wouldn’t sag beneath this weight this unrelenting burden of grief

A harsh wind clasps Me by my throbbing throat Enrobing me in the scales Of its cold, wintery fingers.

Something’s stolen you From me, and all I have left Is hope, that when tomorrow comes The Sun will shine.

NaPoWriMo Day 7 - Money

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 19:31:10 +0000

[ Image Source]

For sixty six and three some quid, Éloi* would have my heart But I’ll be damned if I accede With nary a fulsome fight

--- For the NaPoWriMo Prompt for Day 7, Money; a nod to my current love-hate relationship with work! * Éloi (or Eligius) is the patron saint of metalworkers, and by extension corrosion and materials engineers.:)

NaPoWriMo Day 6 - Morning

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 17:46:30 +0000

Sól’s halo kisses the quiescent sea, its morning shimmer her hello.

--- For the Day Six prompt at NaPoWriMo. Not so much a love poem as a short celebration of morning…

NaPoWriMo Day 5 - Erasing Dickinson

Mon, 06 Apr 2015 05:00:00 +0000

Jacob Wrestling With The Angel, Rembrandt (1659)

[ Source]

A little East of Jordan, Evangelists record, A Gymnast and an Angel Did wrestle long and hard Till morning touching mountain And Jacob, waxing strong, The Angel begged permission To Breakfast – to return! Not so, said cunning Jacob! “I will not let thee go Except thou bless me” – Stranger! The which acceded to Light swung the silver fleeces “Peniel” Hills beyond, And the bewildered Gymnast Found he had worsted God!

NaPoWriMo Day 4 - Love

Sun, 05 Apr 2015 08:18:38 +0000

[ Pixshark]

I have your name etched on my skin, its lines and curves and slants edged in rich, deep black. I carry your face in my memory, nestled like a flash of bright white light saves the sameness of a dark spring night.

Your name is a call and echo, one that I murmur like the repeating melody of a descant; the twang of a bow’s string reverberating in the stillness of the valley air, the thud of an arrow steered unerringly as it rips into a doe’s ribcage.

NaPoWriMo Day 3- For Forgiveness

Sat, 04 Apr 2015 06:36:20 +0000

Forgive me if I disappear here, if like a dying Shooting star my flight expires in a flash of light, yielding To the encircling murk, this shroud that slowly stultifies.

Forgive me if my quivering lips neglect to tell my tale Of broken shattered things and distant pains that still remain And this unyielding weight; of things quotidian and unseen.

Why can’t skies have clouds and stars\* and enthralling moon light too? Why must a pilgrim find his way, on slippery pavements too?

NaPoWriMo Day 2 - Dog Star

Thu, 02 Apr 2015 22:29:41 +0000

[Source: Wikipedia]

The Dog Star flickers, Its garb a rainbow plume The view ethereal.

--- For the prompt Constellations

NaPoWriMo Day 1 - Call Me Ishmael

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 22:30:06 +0000

[ Image Source]

Call me Ishmael.Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sailabout a little and see the watery part ofthe world.It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth. Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Déjà vu

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 03:29:52 +0000

For Mag 246: Highway

A sense that Time has Stood dead still, yet hurtled by; This us, déjà vu

Passing Time...

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 12:53:12 +0000

For Mag244 - Passing Time,

Daylight drives The delightful linger Of last Night’s Dreams Down deserted streets.

The memories of lost days Are all that we have left, Distorted by the Edge of Now, As it pales Into the grey haze Of accreting history

Here, on the edge of Reality is a sense Of treading water, Of marking time Of trawling a parched, Bland land, Of War And peace, and silence And of Endings

Wishing on a Re-memory

Fri, 14 Feb 2014 02:14:06 +0000

For LK, and the Mag

I wish there were no ifs Or buts, or lingering maybes - But only the delirium Of the re-memory of your face, Etched in my heart like The ravines a swollen river Carves in broken shale.

I wish there was no ochre coloured space; this drizzled, empty place, stained with this ache from the itch of a thousand broken pieces

Oh that there were between you and I - a half uttered invitation. I would cross seven mountains, seven valleys and seven swollen river beds too, to pour a libation at your feet, and revel in this delirium…

White paper....

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 14:20:42 +0000

I want to cover you With words. Ink dots Jumbled together Until they blur Into a scrawl, confused Like the light From a thousand scattered beads

I want to hide myself Within the haze Of my re-memory - To somehow, between life And the afterglow From my tired brain, Re-create the time and space That reality stole.

But your blank, pure Whiteness mocks me, I find the things I want to say don’t come

Forgetting

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 18:54:42 +0000

Image Source


I catch myself sighing -
Laboured breath held,
And then expelled
Like the unsteady,
Weary chug of a steam
Locomotive as it drags
Its weighty backsides
Up a steep incline.

My dreams, a hurried,
Harried concoction
Of fevered, whispered
Half phrases and fearsome
Visions of a searing inner fire
Haunt me, my mind
Slowly numbed
by the intense,
Unforgettable clarity
of a growing insanity
And the delirium of delusion.

The first time I saw you
You were a distant-
blob of light, bright pink,
shimmering red, blazing sun-
shine, driving dirty,
grey snow into the
corner of Kings and Guilds.

Between there and here
Is something irretrievably broken
a gangrenous, festering sore
That refuses to heal, its ochre
Colour, the colour of dried blood.

I catch myself sighing,
Laboured breath held
And then expelled slowly
Like a puff of cigar smoke.
But in the distance,
Like a storm cloud bringing rain after a drought
Is the redemption of the forget-ting

#148 - Homeward

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:35:51 +0000

For prompt 148 at the Magpie Tales, a repost.


[![Andy Magee - homeward](/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/andy-magee-homeward.jpg)](/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/andy-magee-homeward.jpg)

Though tears like a river course down like rain, And your heart by cupid’s fiery barbs is rent. Although your cracked voice breaks out in wails, And hell with all its fury and fiends seem sent. Be still, Stay strong, you’ll make it home.

Though fear like a cloak your mind enshrouds, And rabid voices, your reasoning besiege. Though Night descends, your dreams to hound, And heart beats resonate to a symphony of rage. Be still, Stay strong, you’ll make it home.

Amnesia

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:55:25 +0000

For Prompt #145 at the Magpie Tales, and PawPaw, who left too soon.


His broken memory
no longer can relate
to her gentle touch-
Or the quiet reassurance
of her gnarled fingers
atop his wrinkled skin.
Or the long faded recollection
of the taste of smoked bush meat
chased down his thirsty throat
by frothy cups
of sweet palm wine.

He no longer can
remember the smell-
of moth balls – hanging
like a pall, around her clothes
a wispy cloud driven out
from before the eastward Sun
as it streaks across the sky.

But the dirty red chair
constant like the sun remains-
a signpost to a past
he can no longer reach
A place where once
Upon a Life there was a love
And a bond so strong
Though he barely remembers
He still can't quite forget

#130 - Osmosis

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:08:41 +0000

Delirium, for the We Write Poems prompt Osmosis;


You catch her eye
on the corner of King's
and Guild's, rush
of bright pink, blush.
Gaze, furtive.

A coy smile
works its way
across her face,
before she disappears.
A bird, startled as by
a twig snapped underneath
the lumbering feet
of her unwary hunter-
Half dream, half mirage,
half stolen, garbled-
fairy tale.

You feel the fever-
dry skin, throbbing head.
Unrequited memory like
the force of a hammer
against rock, a blunt axe,
Patagonian rosewood, a caged bird,
tethered to it's roost.

Your siren's sung-
her half song, half lure.
And like five bowstrings
plucked till worn-
all you have
is the unsated thirst
of your delirium.

Breakfast (or a crappy ode to coffee)

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 22:34:32 +0000

For the prompt Breakfast at the Magpie Tales

Breakfast, 1921, Fernand Leger


hold your head-
steady between your hands;
bow your head
as though in supplication-
and let the strong,
sweet scent
slowly wafting up-
hit you.

see your face-
faint silhouette,
three day stubble,
matted hair-
and tired eyes
reflected in the cup
and bow in reverence
to its quickening
power.

wrap your hands
around its base
and feel the warmth.
drink deep, swirl it's dregs
in your mouth's
backparts
and let the waves
of unfettered joy
course through your veins

give in -
and kneel
in full surrender
to the joy
of your dark,
black cup.

Far far landing...

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 17:57:29 +0000

For the prompts Far far landing on We Write Poems and Mag 130 on the Magpie tales


the distance claimed you -
seven rivers, seven valleys
and seven mountains too.

fuzzy memories,shadows
wrapped around browned skin -
like a caul - hide you;
till like a distant
shimmering mirage
you fade into the space
where sky meets earth
and where like a pilgrim
I have been drawn
by the call of the muezzin.

the old women
by the river tell tales-
of muttered blessings
of redemption, and of rebirths
where like butterflies
shedding their cocoons
we may arise in peace
on that far flung,
far far landing.

A Dinner Table At Night

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:20:17 +0000

For the prompt at Magpie Tales. I couldn’t shake the impression of distance from my mind (he is looking in her direction, whilst she is looking into the distance)

A Dinner Table at Night, 1884, John Singer Sargent


There is silence here -
There is fear, and the dense
Stultifying pall of hurt-
and of memories unresolved.

I have been here before-
On the cusp of this uncharted
Sea, tottering on the edge
Of this yawning chasm, willing
Myself like a puppet on a string
To not tip over, to not
Be swallowed up in the flames
Of the Sango death ritual;
Like a mannequin sinks-
Weighed down by a necklace
Of milestones - into the depths
Of a cold calm sea.

Water drops glistening
In the subtle shade of red lamps,
Wine shimmering in the barely there light
Cannot fade the gloom;

And in her eyes as she looks away
For one last time
Is the cold detached lost-ness
Of a tomorrow that will never be.

If I had the chance to tell you one last thing

Wed, 30 May 2012 05:12:50 +0000

in the space above your head I see his face- And the memory of The us that once was Floods back, In a moment.

I see his eyes And the glee And I recognise Like the inevitable cold sweat of a bad night’s dream that we have leapt across the edge of the river of no return

If I had the chance To tell you one last thing I might tell a tale Of a thousand parts Or sing a song To cast a spell so Time would stand still Or maybe silence May be all there is To see and be.

Strange Bedfellows

Sun, 27 May 2012 19:35:15 +0000

For the prompt Strange Bedfellows at Sunday Scribblings:

Stuck in the middle, Between the Me I used to be, And the Me I want to be, Is the Me I am now. And like perfect strangers - Waking up in the same bed After a liquor doused night and debauchery to forget, They can’t relate To just how different They really are.

Holding Pattern

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:42:11 +0000

There is treading water. And then there is lostness and the bland, depressing sameness, of everything.

There are bad night’s dreams. And then there are visions of the night - in which one writhes and like a knotted string snarled back upon itself one- finds himself at the self same starting point.

In the beat of the drums of the delirious priest and the frenzied dance that is our Faustian pact, Hope like a stubborn root - peeks out from between a rock and a hard place. And the unwilling lethargy of a quiescent dawn is forgotten, as it fades like the memory of a quick frolic in the shade of water side palms dies in the heat of a baking desert sun.

She had Me at 'Duh'

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:22:32 +0000

Source

To the woman in the green dress: Oklahoma City, December 24th…

She had me between ‘duh’ - and the nonchalant, sultry blur of her unruly hair; and the pouty, smouldering incandescence of her blood red lips; shimmering life-like in the dull, barely there blues and reds and flickering purples of the BeeJay’s mirror ball.

We were like two large - lumps of rock; boulders locked in the unwilling, eternal waltz of gravity; stuck in distant orbits around the crowded dance floor like as around a stranded, listless star. In the interludes between the mindless drone of the DJ’s songs, and the rude, insistent scratch of his beatbox our eyes weave and bob, like corks floating in a sea of ice cold beer.

Before dying catches us...

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:05:25 +0000

Before dying catches us and the banal, quotidian joys of a simpe life expire at the hoot of Charon’s ferry from across the styx, and the memory of the faces, and the names of the ones we once held dear fade away, lost in the eternal blackness of demise; before the grim reaper suprises us with the rude, ineclutable finality of death; we must not forget

The Way We Once Were...

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:46:27 +0000

For the beautiful ones who almost were…

We may never ever again be the way we once were.

We may no longer dance the cha-cha and sip palm wine in the shade of the coconut palms as Coltrane serenades and the sea breezes ripple through the flimsy thatch that breaks the fall of the gently falling rain.

We may now never know the blessing of the Old Man’s Libation, or see his scrawny fingers split the kola nut or the unerring aim of the red spittle from his toothless gums

Season of re-memory

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:28:38 +0000

‘Inspired’ by an old man I spotted sitting on a bench at the corner of George and St John’s Street, soaking up an unexpected blast of sunshine whilst muttering to himself. Image (c) TrekEarth.com; Source: www.trekearth.com

The old man sits cross legged in the rain. He bows his head, and wraps his hands around himself and begins to sway. He sings a song and mouths the words from a sombre lyric that only he still remembers. The tears - tiny rivulets of liquid; crystal clear flow down his face, and down his beard as he rocks to the rhythm of his sombre song. I imagine that he remembers and that the tears are tears of memory, of many yesterdays, of loss, of pain, and of nostalgia. I imagine that when his tears cease to fall, and the rivers on his face dry out he will arise in peace until the season of re-memory

Re-birth

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 01:15:00 +0000

I have died- Seven times but one; Crushed beneath the weight- Of pain’s unrelenting Hammer blows.

Straight right. Left hook. Right uppercut. Left jab. Right hook. Left uppercut. Cheek bones splintered- Lip leaking blood, Teeth- Bludgeoned until loose.

Head spinning. Time, space Distance blending- Into a confused blur. Then over-hand right - And sight mercifully fades- Into blissful blackness.

I have died– Seven times but one; But like a rubber ball Squashed flat against a hard place, I rebound seven times, Reborn.

For Ella*... An Epilouge of sorts...

Wed, 11 May 2011 19:30:48 +0000

August 2010 to April 2011

Word for word, We beat the love Out of each other *

Like hammer - Blows crack rock, And water- Wears granite Smooth- Day by day, Our rage poisons- Everything.

Memory is - A wound kept raw; closure is An uncertain salve.

The End. Sigh *Line shamelessly purloined from Yousef Komunyakaa’s Once the Dream Begins.

Secret.....

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 07:09:20 +0000

For the prompt Secret, at the Writer’s Island.. Better late than never.

Words - More words. Hand motions - Quickening to a blur.

Straight faces - Eyes fixed forward - Pretending there is calm; While like a seething, shifting mess Pain hides; Behind bitter sweet memories - Filed away, locked deep - In the dank, dark recesses Of a shattered hope.

The lord giveth, The lord taketh We like homing pigeons return; To the same shattered places.

For Gracie...

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 11:11:52 +0000

For Gracie, who the genes took…

You never saw the thirteenth summer through- before the genes claimed you.

You always were - the sallow one, knuckle- kneed, paper thin, but - the lights in your jaundiced eyes shone: through pain and fear, and hope and tears.

The strength in your voice never dimmed, never waned, until the genes - like a belligerent marabout’s curse - turned you, to a mound of red- dead earth

A Fisherman's Invocation..

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 23:30:25 +0000

Source

Written in response to the prompt of the week at Writer’s Island….

Gin poured on earth - Salt water, five lobed kola nuts With palm wine. White loincloth over Bare skin, white cockerel held Over head spun- Seven times, Till faint.

Water, waist high Dirty brown infused with oil – Coloured sheen. Orange plumes belch- ing black smoke;

*Yemanja, the fish have fled; The mangrove swamps have become A deathbed. There is no fresh fish - Pepper soup, no cassava plants Left unshrivelled; No respite From the stench of putrefying life.

Questions..... For *Ella

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:08:14 +0000

Do misty eyes mean Pain festering deep Lean souls starved - Hope blithely crushed And purloined?

Do memories mean Wounds left raw, rubbed sore, Chafed red - careless promises Blown away like ripples on a lake by a belligerent hurricane?

Do clasped hands hide scars And wry smiles hide gloom

What Mother Said...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:21:12 +0000

Source

Shed Tears; Let pain like a malevolent fiend- Draw blood.

Let go; Let the waves of a melancholic nostalgia- Break you.

Pressure makes you whole again.

Blame Fear; Blame Pain, blame sorrow deep within- Still Sing.

She smiles.........

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:19:18 +0000

She smiles; Pearly teeth Glistening in The golden light Of the setting sun As it dips Beneath the trees That frame this Swiftly fading vista. The rings In her ears Resonate to A hidden rhythm Chiming to an- Unspoken song – One that I feel in The hidden parts of - My enchanted mind. Her eyes, Filled with mirth, Flit in the shades; These slowly Lengthening shadows; Drawing me From this earth To a distant place - Some vale where My pains regress, Where I have been Only in my Midnight dreams. Her hair Stands firm, Unfazed by the Swirling winds, Defiantly proclaiming Her pristine- African-ness Her skin - Ebony black- is Stretched taut Like a canvas - kissed By the gently dropping rain, And caressed By the drooping ferns. The lush green leaves on which she seats pale, losing their colour Acquiring a pallor Blighted by her light That floods my sight. Her feet- clad in scented sandals would deign to- walk this filthy earth. I, alas Like a man bewitched Can only stand- Enthralled, Drawn- By THAT smile that steals my all.

Thoughts of a Pilgrim...

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:49:00 +0000

I, like a tired weary pilgrim, Trudge this earth, these stony paths so grim. Seeking, with ponderous wandering steps, Salvation from a marauding death.

I, like a penitent prodigal son, Cling to the fading final notes of my long lost song Hoping that someday, somewhere within this earthly dome, I may find the beaten path that will lead home.

I seek a hidden ledge on which to leave my heartfelt plea; Some place where my bloodied sacrifice I can leave. Where my guilt ridden heart can find peace and be held Close to my father, speaking words only he must hear.

The Sadness in Her Eyes

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:46:00 +0000

The sadness in her eyes breaks me, Willing me to reach across the breach of hurt; To hold her hand and tell her it was all a dream.

The painful lustre in her eyes, As they glistened in the candle light that night Would draw me into granting a reprieve that is not mine.

She seeks a place to leave her wish. Where, at the feet of a gentle wizened priest, She can be relieved of a flagrant breach, a love once spurned.

The Wastelands...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:05:00 +0000

Sometimes I wish I could fly and take myself away, to a distant land far removed from the scorching sun that bakes my earth into a stony hearth and burns it into a barren wasteland.

Sometimes I wish I could run Fast enough to escape this darkness that coaxes me into a frenzied song and to a fevered dance; of mindless tongues that sear my lungs and wear my tired soul.

Finally Free

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:38:00 +0000

Today
I killed you;
Ripped apart from the very roots
The vestiges of everything
We once held dear.

Yesterday
The yawning chasms
Finally took their toll, Harshly jerking us awake
To the rasping rhetoric of a Reality birthed
By things that would never be.

I have been
Broken like a gourd,
Crushed like the petals of a rose
Dismembered by feet in haste and shredded into bits
By hands too calloused
To care.

A Haiku for a New dawn...

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:13:00 +0000

Yesterday, YOU broke
My wild, frantic grab for hope.
But I did not quit.

Yesterday the skies
Seemed bleak, left gloom, made me cry.
I can smile again.

Yesterday brought tears
Shattered faith, left me in fear.
But it’s over now.

Yesterday my feet,
Walked down roads despoiled by filth
I am stronger now.

Today, the sun peeked
Through dross piled high at my feet.
I can hope again.

That Tomorrow comes,
And with it flows hope, new songs.
I can laugh again _
_

When Tomorrow Comes....

Sat, 23 May 2009 09:45:00 +0000

Wrote this for Chiedu Ifeozo’s Poetry for Charity Volume 2 Project….All proceeds go to nominated charities in Nigeria. You can buy a copy here.

The skies are dark, pregnant as with an impending storm,
The wind is fierce, strumming out a strident wail,
Our tin shed creaks, as like a ship by wind assailed,
Whilst we all cringe,
In fear of what the storm will bring.

The rains come down, like hell’s pent up rage by fiends released,
Accompanied by hail, that batters down our scant solace,
Our threadbare clothes, no respite from the cold can bring,
As we sit mum,
Remembering when the sun last shone.

Untitled....

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:05:00 +0000

Dancing to the heady beats of many drums;
Beguiled into believing I’ve filled my place,
I glide then bow, to rapturous applause.
When all I have done was save my face.

Deep down I know it’s all a sham, a façade,
That gloomy place where make believe is hailed,
And truth is lost in a swirl of dust, a charade,
Where light, like sight, is blurred by drums of ale.

A haiku for unrequited love

Fri, 08 May 2009 23:57:00 +0000

Wanting more I pined. Though I knew t’was all in vain, I did not give up.

Loving you I hoped, Someday you would see my plight. That has never been.

Spitting words, I wished My missives would arrive in peace. But they never did.

You said to leave us As we were. Just friends. No strings That would never be

Forgive me if I’m Recalcitrant, hard to shake, I am flesh and blood.

The Promise

Sun, 03 May 2009 18:50:00 +0000

I promised you I would wait, All those many years ago. Alas my steely resolve is faint, And my strength is all but gone.

The space I meant for you alone, I’ve somehow rented out for lust. Things I should tell you alone, I’ve muttered to ears in throes of lust

Images of you, once crystal clear, Have blurred with time to rusty flakes. The flames of love you once inspired, Have somehow being replaced by fakes.

Selah...

Sat, 02 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

When its all been said and done
And the sums have all been done.
When the music has been stopped;
And the dance floor has been cleared
Will I have danced in my own place,
Or merely saved my face?

Selah

Finally Home.

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:48:00 +0000

For TheB, and all the other broken hearts…

Risposta Ad Una Sfida - A response....

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:03:00 +0000

Totally beserk she plies her trade,
Enchantingly verbose, weaving her tirades.
Mired in Nigeria, books became her fad.
Inspired blocks of verse, besmirching her façade.
Titillating? No mark that a charade.
Enchantingly refreshing, she makes the music fade.

On being so predictable....

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:44:00 +0000

“You really are so predictable”, she said,
One hazy African harmattan day
Remiss for words, all I could do was peer,
Through horn rimmed glasses; hand me downs they were
From father, who had it from his father, my grandfather.
A legacy of Lugard’s Nigeria.

You see I’m from another time,
An age when email was not the norm,
When people talked at the village square.
And drank and sang, and danced till their feet were sore.
And fathers, spoke with sons, as did their very own fathers..
A legacy of years gone by

To Zoe.......

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:24:00 +0000

I wonder why I lose my cool,
When your pretty face I see.
I wonder why my heartbeats increase,
And why I just act like a fool.

I’m usually as cold as a tool,
As steady as Polaris keel.
I, whose composure is a well honed skill,
Have suddenly begun to drool.

I want to hold your hand someday,
Walk you home, through thick and thin,
Tell tales of love that leave me flustered.

A poem..... and an unusual source of inspiration..

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:48:00 +0000

Good Naija Girl posted a poem about (I think) some dudes’ overbloated impression of the effect they have on women folk….Fortunately or unfortunately, I fell headlong into the trap…. Some background: My eminently royal ‘wowo’ness was strolling ‘jejely’ on the road yesterday o, when my eyes locked with some snazzy babe across the road.. Evidently she was as suprised as me, cos the books she was carrying slipped from her grasp…. Like all peeps ‘hounded’ by an overactive imagination, I went ahead to invent a different scenario in my head, that had me being a super cool, unsettling influence..I even gave her a name…. Enjoy…

Dance of The Mountain God..

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:34:00 +0000

Another one from my poetry scrap book.. Wrote this one while serving the fatherland in Kwara State.. This was inspired while watching some “white-garment” chruch devotees dance and clap from the window of the class where i was invigilating an exam… Enjoy it….

The Dance of the Mountain god…
The claps begin,
Slow, petulant,
Like tiny drops of rain which then increase,
As feet pound the rocks, oblivious of the pain,

From the archives.....

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:47:00 +0000

A poem I wrote many years ago – when i was still a beardless teenager way back in Nigeria.. Enjoy…

Waiting for forever.

We had our hopes, we had our dreams, We somehow believed,in words and swords, We somehow believed, that one more coup, That some more troops, Would consign to the past, the pains we felt forever.

Somehow we believed, in sugar coated tongues, In “fellow country men”,In “khaki covered men” To wipe away the past, like a bad night’s dream forever..