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

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 ...

April 6, 2018 · 1 min · AJ

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 5, Foot loose

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.

April 5, 2018 · 1 min · AJ

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 4, What It Is

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

April 4, 2018 · 1 min · AJ

#NaPoWriMo18: Day 3, Name Dropping

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.

April 3, 2018 · 1 min · AJ

#NaPoWriMo18

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.

March 29, 2018 · 1 min · AJ

#2 - Weathered

– 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.

January 11, 2018 · 1 min · AJ

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

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

April 4, 2017 · 1 min · AJ

Wish

St Albans Cathedral, one December day. For the prompt, Wish: For fulfilled desires, For the Loved Ones to return Again in peace. Wish.

March 10, 2017 · 1 min · AJ

Rhythmic

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.

February 22, 2017 · 1 min · AJ

Against The Odds, A Haiku

For the Photo Challenge, Against The Odds – Sometimes, between a Rock and a hard place, beauty Springs. Against the odds.

February 15, 2017 · 1 min · AJ