A poem a week for a year. |
Anything to break the drought... |
Rainbows Rainbows speak of Pink Floyd and the Dark Side of the Moon, of interracial harmony and kindergarten too, of unicorns and teddy bears, candy stores and prisms, but if you talk of feeling, the one that gets to me is gratitude, a simple thing, for a promise He made to all. Line Count: 10 Free Verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 15 2020 Prompt: That feeling you get when you see a rainbow. Note: And that’s as much as my diabetes can take for one day. |
Anonymous Benefactor Moved by sudden impulse, we left the tropical heat and dust of savannah life, to wind back the years to the island of my birth, the place known as home, as it was to me, who had never settled in the African sun, rootless and yearning for I knew not what. But home it was and became, accepting me with open arms and cold and rain and snow, land of my people, loved already for they echoed my inwardness and quiet. To my family’s town we drifted, looking for a place to stay, and fate led us to my grandmother’s house where, for a time, we stayed to watch over her declining months. Yet funds were low and work was scarce, until a day when a letter arrived, postmarked London, though we knew no one there, and, upon opening it discovered a banker’s draft for just enough to carry us through. No name was attached and, to this day, we know not why or who and how it should be, but I suspect that, somewhere in that vast metropolis God moved His servant to order the draft, addressing it then to us, strangers from a strange land that he or she never knew, the address, no doubt, being culled from some phonebook kept in heaven for emergencies. Line Count: 44 Free Verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 14 2020 Prompt: A day someone surprised you with kindness. |
Pine Forest Pines massed tall and true past seasons spread at their feet wind sighs as their voice. Haiku, syllables 5-7-5 For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 13 Prompt: Write a Haiku inspired by an aspect of nature. Make the title the topic of your poem. |
Jon As my oldest friend, he is the link with long ago, our childhood in the heart of Africa, transplanted seedlings in a foreign soil. shared interests and wild imaginations, grew in innocence and freedom to go our separate ways, he to the south and I with a northward trend, to be lost in the hectic journey of life and learning and being. Forty years of silence broken now by electronic words spoken across the endless miles, the vast rift between continents and hemispheres. Nothing has changed - the photographs he sends cannot dislodge my view of him as once he was, pink and white under the eternal sun, still the same imagination and memory of better days, he remains forever young. Oh, he’s just as boring as ever he was, once he gets going on his latest news, but hit the right note and he reveals the child still living within. We’re both happiest when the talk turns to “Do you remember when?” and “You used to say…” The truth is he is my rock, the stalwart, solid sentinel in the stream of passing time and, it may be, considering his tenacity in continuing our sometimes sporadic conversation, that I am to him the same lifeline to our shared history. It would be nice if it were so. Line Count: 40 Free Verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 12 2020 Prompt: Think of a friend or family member who has played a huge role in your life. Write a poem about that relationship. Note: This proved an extremely difficult task for me. I have already written a long piece on the greatest influence on my life, my English Literature teacher in school, Johnny Bridle. I tried to write a poem saying the same thing but, having said it once, I found there was no more to say. So I needed someone else and then Jon popped into my head. He was not exactly a huge influence on my life but, as the sole existent link to my childhood plus his retention of the same crazy ideas he always had, he is something solid to hang on to in the chaos of life. |
I Wish I Never That descending bass note tells us where we’re going, bringing us to earth (this is not going to be a happy song) and, with a name like Darkness, could it do anything else? So it begins, one of Sting’s most insistent bass lines, wedded to Copeland’s ringing chimes and drums, the scene is set, dark, mysterious and so different, growling in the background, remorseless as a river, rolling onwards as if forever, deepening our unease. When the words come, a chant of regret and despair, the echoing voice piercing the bleak atmosphere, yet building upon the repeating foundation - I can dream up schemes when I'm sitting in my seat, I don't see any flaws until I get to my feet. Ah, creation in the ink-stained hours of the night, to dissipate in the harsh glare of the morning sun, leading us to the inevitable desire for permanence: I wish I never woke up this morning; Life was easy when it was boring. To wish life away, to remain in dreams, harking back to a time of simplicity and certainty, surely the cry of the star trapped by fame, yet the secret longing in every heart captured in these complex times, the modern maze. So the song continues to harp on our awakened yearning for something we never knew, a peace and escape into the light of a world that doesn’t exist, searching for a key to a door that’s wide open. But it’s never that easy. Perhaps it takes a drummer to write something so compelling. Line Count: 30 Free Verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 11 Prompt: Listen to one of your favorite songs and then write a poem directly after based on the feelings and emotions it brought about in you. The song I chose is called Darkness, by The Police, not a group I took much notice of at the time (late seventies, early eighties) but one that I have come to appreciate lately. This song is a fairly obscure track on a late album that I never heard until recently. Ever since then, it comes back to haunt me every now and then. I happen to be in one of those times at the moment, hence my choice. The most interesting thing about it is that it was not written by the usual song writer for The Police, Sting, but by its drummer, Stewart Copeland. I think this is the reason for its inexorable rhythm and beat - the main interest of any drummer. So the music sets the tone and this is completed by the dark lyrics that evidence a willingness to look at things from a different point of view. The whole song is very different from the norm and this is what first attracted me to it. The three symbols that comprise the logo on the video are interesting. With nothing else to look at while listening to the song so many times, I have come to the conclusion that they represent the group itself. On the left we have a fairly simple figure representing Sting and his bass guitar (or maybe microphone). In the middle is Copeland himself, portrayed by the complexity of the drum kit around him. And then, a slightly more complicated figure than Sting, is the lead guitarist, Andy Summers. Note the wahwah pedal at Andy’s foot It’s a theory, anyway. And so to the link: |
Night Sacrifice I lie in the velvet dark, awake, the words drift through my head. Arrange, repeat, for memory’s sake, by morning, sleep has killed it dead. 25 words, rhyme abab For Promptly Poetry, Week 10 Prompt: Write a poem that is exactly 25 words long |
Nostalgia for an Age I Never Knew The Mole and his new friend, the Water Rat, in prospect of a picnic on a warm, summer’s day in England, being types of the gentry of the early twentieth century, so attractive in its decency, good manners and simplicity, a picnic by the river bank no less and, having asked, the Mole, regaled with a list of necessities for the perfect meal in a hamper, is overwhelmed by the Rat’s largesse. Here lies the true charm of the book, that evocation of peaceful times in the summer-warmed fields, simple pleasures for a simple time and all cares and woes carried away by the laughing river and two friends, content to be lazy, whose highest ambition is a sandwich and glass of lemonade consumed in the sun and the shade. It was another age but one that lives forever in our hearts. Line Count: 25 Free Verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 9 Prompt: Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you. Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line. Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely. Somewhere at the bottom, place a note telling us the line and the source. A minimum line count of eight, please. Note: The book chosen was The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, from which I picked this sentence (I know it’s long but it doesn’t make sense if shortened): 'There's cold chicken inside it,' replied the Rat briefly; 'coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwichespotted-meatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater—' 'O stop, stop,' cried the Mole in ecstasies: 'This is too much!' |
Everyone is asking me the most difficult questions today. First, Daily Poem wants to know how I relax (so I told 'em), then QOTD asks for a line to introduce the year 2020 (so I came up with something). And now Lilli wants me to start a fight with everyone in the world. Doesn't everyone know that we Brits are trained not to talk about sex, politics and religion? And what else is there to argue about? Because it's Lilli, I'll make an exception. It can't be about politics, that being the most volatile subject of all, and it certainly won't be about sex. Which leaves religion, so here goes: The Great Bookie in the Sky You’re so sure that there is no God And that anyone who thinks there is must be a fool. Not only that, you’re happy to declare this whenever it suits you, no matter who you offend. Well, my oh so rational friend, I’ll not argue the case with you, (only a meeting with God can change minds) but I will give you something to think about on those off days when you’re not so sure. My good friend, Clive Staples, always began by assuming the other guy right, and taking the matter from there, and I propose to do the same. I’ll kick off by saying that, if you are right, then after you die there’s nothing, not even a you to see that there’s no void, no emptiness, no nothing at all, for you are nothing too. As am I, at your non-existent side, being as nothing as you, not even noticing that I was wrong and it no longer matters what we believed, or did or said or made or declared for we’re all nothing now, whatever we’ve been. There’s no prize for being right, even if you could accept it, and I don’t pay for being wrong - neither of us could care less. But if I’m right, you, mon ami, are in deep, deep doo doo. Only a fool takes a bet he cannot possibly win. Line Count: 32 Free Verse (of course - it’s what I do) For Promptly Poetry, July 27 2020 Prompt: Write a poem where you tell someone they are wrong and why. |
Bottle What’ll open a bottle? I’ll tell you so you’ll know a lottle. Note how the top is bent over edge, then crimped into teeth on the ledge. Don’t twist it, it’s not made to turn, the secret you’ll just have to learn. I happen to know it’s old school - removing the top needs a tool that’s metal and triangular in shape with a handle that you might want to take firmly between finger and thumb (not toes because they are too dumb).. Then, placing the handle beneath the edge of the ledge or the teeth and the opposite edge of the tool (I’m sorry but this is the rule) resting atop the top of the pop, raise the handle to pull at the top. It’ll fly off without further ado and you can pour refreshment for you, fresh in the knowledge at last that you’ll not die of thirst in the past! Line Count: 22 Rhyme scheme aa,bb,cc, etc. Form I haven’t the faintest idea - call it comic. For Promptly Poetry Challenge, 2020 Prompt: Write a poem on how to do something mundane. Minimum line requirement: 12 |
** Image ID #2226154 Unavailable ** Portal Somewhere in the forest stands a door, standing free, enigmatic, without walls, questioning, stirring something deep within us, a whisper of portals, gateways and other worlds. Lewis was right, we’ve made a modern mythology that links as a chain of mystery our reading and learning and so to our souls. Who can see the door without being moved and drawn to open it, to see what lies within? In whose heart does the word “Narnia” not speak itself from a childhood memory? Twice was this symbol, the portal to nowhere, employed as an image to inhabit our minds, once for the Telmarines to return to their land, and at the end of the world as a gateway to heaven. All life has rushed through that doorway, the story contracted to a single moment, meaning condensed to this narrow entrance, constriction in the hourglass of being through which we all must pass, one way or another, the blessed and the damned. And here in the forest stands a door, silent and brooding with what lies beyond. Who can resist the urge to try it, to turn that handle, to view the mystery it hides? ![]() Line Count: 26 Free Verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, 2020 Prompt: a minimum of 12 lines inspired by the image of a door in the forest. |