A poem a week for a year. |
Anything to break the drought... |
Sorrow Sorrow hides behind a smile, keeps no account of bygone wrongs, takes no heed of present guile, finds its ease in sad sweet songs. Sorrow does not seek redress for rights restrained or payment lost, it bears with patience such excess and reckons not with hurt or cost. Sorrow sees with honest eyes this fallen world and all its pains, speaks not of blame and fault and lies, waits only for release of chains. Line count: 12 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 52 2023 Prompt: Sorrow. |
Bubble and Squeak The best thing with leftovers from Newcastle to Dover is named bubble and squeak, it fills yer tum and yer cheek. Mashed taters from dinner (it won’t make yer thinner) and boiled cabbage too, fried in a pan, then you’re thru. Whatever else you can find throw it in, you won’t mind, onions and carrots, all will avail, some (strangely) use kale. For breakfast there’s no finer thing the frying bubbles, they do sing while the cabbages can squeak and mouths be too full to speak. Line count: 16 Rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 51 2023 Prompt: Leftovers. |
![]() Daisy Dear Daisy dear, what have you done? Now the night has hidden sun, wake you thus upon the darkness, so the witching hour to harness, breathe you deep of unknown magic, deaf to consequences tragic, release the poisoned pollen horde, into the chilly breeze it’s poured, smoky reds and billowing blues, these the colours that confuse, and drifting on musk-scented air, search the souls of creatures there, turn their minds once bright and strong, to an evil, vile and wrong, grim their faces, bereft of sun. Daisy dear, what have you done? Line count: 16 Form: Trochaic tetrameter rhymed aabbccdd For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 50 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Thanksgiving This Gifted time Of words unfettered Teeming from my age old days Winter harvest unforeseen Such twilight shadows Guttering Life Life Guttering Such twilight shadows Winter harvest unforeseen Teeming from my age old days Of words unfettered Gifted time This Line count: 16 Form: Joseph’s Star (syllables 1,3,5,7,7,5,3,1 centred) For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 49 Prompt: Write a poem in Joseph’s Star form. |
End of Innocence Lost now and gone forever, childhood is our Eden, slipped from careless fingers when reaching in desire for knowledge. Sweet memory stands at the gate, presenting slivers of nostalgia, wrapped like gifts in coloured paper, our dreams of yesteryear. Yet the way is barred, return forbidden, our feet locked into step as we follow the path we laid with choices. We cannot unlearn what we know. A new day dawns with hope, Light floods the bare horizon and darkness flees the skies. Oblivion may be rebirth. Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 52! Prompt: Write a poem about something that has ended. |
A Moon Lampoon The man in the moon Came down too soon And asked the way to Norwich*; He went by the south And burnt his mouth By eating cold pease porridge.** I looked for the place He’d come from space And found a great big ladder. It would make me proud To pierce the clouds But not would leave me sadder. For many a mile I climbed that stile To and through the clouds I went, And the stars drew near, The moon quite clear, But space smells of bacon scent.*** To the moon I rose, Grounded my toes On that vista of blue cheese. Walked from Wensleydale To Roquefort’s vale And Camembert’s fields of ease. Oh, I cannot tell About those smells Of mighty Gorgonzola; Saint Agur did pong And Stilton’s strong**** Amid the streams of cola. Then I came back home No more to roam, Down ladder long and dreary. I had feasted well, So strong the smell, That friends they won’t come near me! Line Count: 36 (including the first stanza) Rhyme scheme aabccb, syllables 5-4-7-5-4-7 For Promptly Poetry, Week 51 Prompt: There's a ladder, you can't see where it goes because of the clouds. Where might this ladder to the sky lead? Notes: The first stanza is actually an old English nursery rhyme to which I have devised an answer. * Pronounced Norridge by the locals. ** Pease porridge is made of peas, although “pease” is the old, singular form of the word. *** Astronauts report that, after a space walk, their suits smell of bacon, admittedly overdone. **** All these cheeses are blue with the one exception of Camembert, which is weird enough to be welcomed among their ranks. I have sampled them all and can attest to both their wonderful, subtle tastes and powerful perfumes! |
Fruitses Fruitses are bruteses they slop on our faces, messy and loosish, they scrunches to juices. Lemons be sour they makes us to pucker, smell like air fresh’ner, and lead us to pluck ‘er. Apples be ‘arder they crunch all the louder, cinnamon be partner, made Newton the founder of gravity. Pears is not doubles, they tend to the sing’lar and give you no trouble, down your cheeks they be dribbler. Blueb’rries ain’t blue they’s purple you see and that’s what they’ll do, stain lips purple to be. But clementines is hard to rhyme, and difficult to say in time, especially since they just little oranges. And there ain’t no rhyme for oranges. Line count: 26 Sorta rhymin’ verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 50 Prompt: lemons, apples, pears, blueberries, or (and) clementines. |
Cloudy Cumulus like cotton wool fluffy, soft and billowing, the stuff of dreams and light, is what we mean by “cloud.” Cirrus is drawn upon the sky in pastel strokes of chalky streaks high up across the sky, cross hatch, scribble, patterns. Nimbo drapes the sky in grey, rain or snow it promises, a swathe of gloom above, featureless and plain. Stratus weighs upon the earth, heavy, dark and moody, lays claim to world above, yet mostly only drizzles. Then there’s family combinations, names and titles intertwining, cumulonimbus, altostratus, stratocumulus, cirrostratus, cirrocumulus, nimbostratus, altocumulus, cumulostratus, names to conjure, words and mists, ethereal and vaporous. Line count: 24 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 49 Prompt: Title your poem "Cloudy." Whether you stick with weather imagery or explore emotive ideas, try to keep the title in mind as you write your poem. |
Elemental Seasons Spring peers from the wings, smiles, retreats, appears again, crocus pushes through the melting snow, rain grows the puddles to rushing rills and sunlight crowns the damp grass with bright reflection between the showers of indecision. Summer reigns the drying earth, brings new growth to maturity, the grass pales in the silent heat, foliage darkens with intensity, soil hardens in the furnace days and the shouts of children in the shade greet the humming mowers. Autumn drifts in as a fire, painting the leaves with colours of flame, drawing the dust of harvest through seared nostrils, leaching the blue of skies to cirrostratus, shaking the fruit from wearied branches, ‘til the first frost silvers the lawn, draws patterns on our panes. Winter arrives in the wind, with the sharp scent of cold plucking at the skin, the nights hard, long and testing the house, morning sounds dulled with muffler snow, light strained through the clouds of breath, and the days, though short, pile in the corner uncounted. Line count: 28 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 48 Prompt: Write a poem about all four seasons. |
Last Warrior to the Fray A bookstore, you say? Well, once the treasured dream of half the women in England, Nell, but now with a sell by date, surely. Who buys books today, now the computer reigns supreme? Oh, I understand the romance, the unspoken delights and secrets stacked on shelves of silence, the cracking open of a pristine spine, the smell of a damn fine read, been there myself with money for two and fifteen that I longed to own. I remember the hours spent searching for nothing in particular, just a passport to another world, and I mourn with you the passing of such things once thought immortal. You’ll have my blessing in your endeavour for I can wish you only well, though I fear the future frowns upon dinosaurs like you and me. May your books and store survive e'en so, the times of famine recede, perhaps, like vinyl, to flourish again when nostalgia drives the train. Line count: 26 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 47 Prompt: Write a poem about a woman who works at a bookstore. |