Napowrimo

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.

Snowed in, somewhat. For the Day 2 prompt. I ache in the winter when it rains. When the wind, like the fingers of a malevolent one probe beneath. Deep down in a place sometimes lost where memories once lived, lies the linger of disquiet.For forgetting. Some days the smell of fresh wood wafts in, borne as though on wings of the wind. Then, these bones - aching in the cold - rejoice.

Off prompt for Day 1, Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash --- Let us begin again at dawn. With the stirring songs of the Skylarks ringing in our ears, the dappled light of the rising sun, smell of moist earth and the distant lap of a gentle wave calling us. In the shadows of the stations, along this winding tortuous path we have climbed this mount, where like a seed once dead is reborn, we arise again.

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.

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!

[ 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. ...

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…

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’*. ...

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.

[ 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.