Fire-dwarfed we all sit, stand, wait, drawing along timelines scythe-eyed for news or perhaps revelation that this is all just a dream, a joke. Dust-tongued our words dry up like sand through an hour glass. All gone and past leaving only empty air. A promise cracked apart. History pour out, breaks the damn of grief and dark-vowelled words, replacing now with then as what will be already spread its roots in the tear-culled.
Was I a plaster you slapped on to cover the burns left by your family? Something temporary, to hide the harm. Was he water? More than you’d seen all in one place and so inviting you were willing to drown. Did you lose me on purpose? Or did the currents just pull us apart? Either way, did you notice that I was gone?
She was legs, hips, breasts, and bone. Same as a cow, worth less perhaps. Dredged up words from the dark well of your mouth, not ancient, just old. “Ace” a hiss, curled around the syllable. Careful, you are wearing history with no place here. Tonight’s Quadrille prompt from the bar is the word ‘Ace’. I did a bit of a google search and discovered that in the middle ages, the word ‘ace’ could be used to be ‘of no worth’ or ‘bad luck’.
If I was her I would be somewhere else. A marathon in front of where I am now and the path would not look so broken. I would know how to walk it without creasing at the knees, each time the ground shakes. I would be someone worth taking a chance on.
We did not so much fall as… saunter vaguely downwards, wrapped up in each other. You brought the sky along, strung like a child’s balloon. We did not so much fall as… Drifted like seeds let loose, wandered a little lost, wrapped up in each other. Settled, we marked here a strip of green we’d found, we did not so much fall as… Play house and families. Make believe until made real, wrapped up in each other. Whispered this is what souls are made of. We did not so much fall as wrap up in each other. Day Five’s prompt is to include one of the following (1) the villanelle form, (2) lines taken from an outside text, and/or (3) phrases that oppose each other in some way. Now I’m aware that this is not a perfect Villanelle. I was halfway through the draft before I’d realised that I’d forgotten about the rhyming scheme but since I’m not a fan of rewriting to make something rhyme I decided to …
I’m weighing words. Counting them like beach glass. Trying to judge how you might distort the light through them. Most I will slip back inside my hollow throat. Swallow, like tablets or seeds. Ignoring the fizz as they hit my gut, sprout up, and wrap around anything else there is to say.
Does it count as taking your time, pausing between each item fingers on clasps, heartbeat a tempo dancing beneath the skin in a skip, skip rhythm I felt against my breastbone. Slid my foot along the seat of a chair like the one I sat in, bare skin cold against the plastic. Counted the buttons, two, four, six, stopped when they ran out and fabric hung loose from my shoulders. Open. Parted my thighs the same, slow, or maybe fast, the motion of it blurred in memory distracted by your face close to mine. Open mouthed. Kissed you, slowly. Open legs. I won’t say what we did next.
You have to swim here. Kick to keep afloat, and scoop the water into yourself, with arms winged either side of a weightless body. Dug out by the flow, a pool deepened by cascade. A bridge masked by track and concrete. This place is thick green almost jungle. Clear right to the sand, easy to pretend I know this place. Too well to be tricked. Safety in confidence I say. Water washes all clear away, but to where, and when, will it come to shore again? A prompt mash up tonight. Ending on a question for NaPoWriMo Day Two and ‘Cascade‘ for dVersePoetsPub poetics night.
Slip your hands beneath the ocean, sift the sands, though the debris laid to rest and the bones of forgotten things boiled down to soup stock in the murk. There is still a thread there, find it. A silver of something live, whispering as an eel beyond your fingertips. But you are not the trap or the bait or the line. You are the caught thing, the lost thing, the forgotten thing. Slip your hands beneath the ocean and find yourself.
They name me jealous one. Plait snake through my hair, till it rises about my shoulders a mane of venom. Perhaps this is true enough. They say I crush men, the ones who come to me through their own will and actions. Lay the cruelty of betrayal at my feet. I am not my sisters, blood avenger, unceasing in pursuit. I am an emotion painted upon every action I set forth. I am furious and bright, burning beyond recognition till they shield their eyes and call me ugly. I am a woman of power. I’m so excited that it’s NaPoWriMo again and I get to drive in with the Early Bird Prompt. For anyone who doesn’t know what NaPoWriMo is, it’s an annual poetry challenge that takes place over April. The idea is to write a poem a day for all of April, resulting in 30 poems in total. (31 if you include the Early Bird Prompt). The NaPoWriMo site provides prompts if you want to use them but …
