All posts filed under: Poetry

Out In The Garden – #DVersePoets #MondayHaibun

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The peas have podded. I’m not sure if it’s the snap, or your bog standard, good old trusty garden type, but they’ve podded first with the white petals of the flowers still stuck to the green of their shells. Inside the crop is still too small, too young. I checked today. Popped my nail into the seam, slit through the flesh, cracked it open. New growth, old book. They both sound the same. They are not ready for harvest, but when you bite down they explode. They taste like spring, or summer, or something else that’s hot days and sudden rain storms. They tasted like they should do. New and fresh. It’s been a wet one, this spring, this downpour of water thickening the green.

Mired In Translation – #WeekendWritingPrompt

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In some cases, the letter won’t translate. Specified language is always a little tricky, not like asking for directions to the swimming pool, or how much for the loaf of bread behind the counter.   You craft an art-form of assumptions. Cut loose the odd words, ones which clearly don’t fit in the rigid confines of business, ones surely not meant. Leave a framework of mundane.   Puzzle a meaning from the scraps, a rhythm for the found poem butchered out of miscommunication.   Send a response in English, cringe a little for the recipient, know they will likely do as you and turn to an app, a browser tab, punch in the words, frown at the nonsense.        

Without Roots We Rot – #DVersePoets

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You spend so much time picking petals.   Pretending enough will make a flower of your own.   If you’d spent as long studying the structure, stem, stamen, stigma, you might have seen.   Seeds.   Instead of stolen petals you could have grown a garden.   Not as easy maybe, but more beautiful than you know. Tonight, the bartender at DVersePoets has thrown us some beautiful pieces of artwork to inspire poems. I highly recommend checking the rest of the piece out as they are all incredibly thought provoking.

In Time – #WeekendWritingPrompt

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For a millennium you were glacial. Slid oh so slow through dirt, and stone, turned mountains into valley paths, cracked plains, made them seas.   We watched the snow fall, smother you until we forgot, blinked stunned when the sun shucked your coat and the light made you shine.   Change creeps closer in millimetres, presses the before away carefully, slips itself into spaces that hastiness would break. Word Of The Day Challenge: Shine

Wrung Out

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Today is a tumble dryer day, where I fall from the drum crumpled, creased, confused, humming with static, limbs limp with heat, and one sharp shock from folding altogether.   I have finally decided on a name for the collection of poems that I’m planning on publishing at the end of this year. All In The Blood. I’ve written so much about myself and my family that it seemed like an apt name. Now all I need to do is finalise the poems, the order, the cover art, and the publication date.  

All To Market #DVersePoets #TuesdayPoetics

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When the backboard drops they spill like water over a fall, woolly bodies frothing from the flight decks, feet upon each others’ backs.   There is a boy behind the hurdles, already knee bent in anticipation, fingers spread for the catch.   Outside, a woman is selling cauliflower. Holds the head of it like a newborn between the palms of her hands.   A farmer rattles pounds in his fist, counts his luck, passed it on to the winning bid.   In a corridor there is a circle of bowed heads and five pence jumps, till the circumference is a singular.   A lone man is loading up, clicks the gates on what he brought, tries not to fumble the catch.   Someone whispers at an absence, shakes a head at suspicion, does a math of miles inside their head.   They wait to hear the hammer fall.        

Walking These City Streets #DVersePoetics

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We walk till our soles protests at every stop-sign and crossing place. Like stitch splitting when you slow for breath, the burn thickens.   We are far from home, further still from familiar, so we cannot pause on this side-street, or linger on a corner place as we might do elsewhere.   We can stretch our steps, gnash the concrete paves into cobbles and pathways. Break highways down to track.   Trip over the ache beneath onto older ground. Learn how to read reassurances of new landmarks.   Wander until this is home.

When Our Monuments Burn

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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.