Sometimes I catch you dancing in the corner of my eye, using one blue iris as your personal disco ball to quickstep through the haze of my peripheral until I notice the tip of a finger, the point of a shoe, the shadow of a smile. I have yet to turn in time to catch the music, beat too quick for me to match your tempo. You’re gone before my feet even hit the dance floor and I won’t find you by searching. There’s never been enough of you to recognise. Daily Prompt: Hidden
In some places the growth regulator has worked. The barley perches waist height, perfect cover for the pigeons that dive-bomb grey feathers all a flutter, deaf to the crow banger’s crack, crack, crack as they land in the elsewhere places of stems grown too tall not to loose their balance. In the shadow of the sheds there’s warmth yet, the sun is sunk but not quite set and the sky has turned to rust beyond the track where the tractors wobble outwards for one last relay before dusk can claim day. I’ve mixed two prompts tonight. DVerse Poets Pub’s challenge to write a poem about landscape while using verbs in an unusual way (I’m hoping I managed that) and today’s Daily prompt: Traditional. So here you have traditional Shropshire scenery with a twist.
I’ve started gathering my grandmothers on my fingers. Ba was first to claim her place as right-hand woman. The signet ring’s a little worn but sharpened almost to a blade’s edge. Her wit used to have the same bite if you weren’t careful. She’d slash you with her words and have you bursting with laughter all in a matter of seconds. Something of a frail bulldozer, unstoppable at times, but even her initials grew faded past the point of a stranger’s recognition. Granny Kitty is a new addition. I don’t know how she’d fair with the idea of taking up residence on a middle finger but she wasn’t one to back down when the blood began to rise. ‘Up like a light’ my mother says. That was the Irish in her, and the feminist who brought the shields to defend her granddaughters going to university. Independent, clever, funny, tenacious, but most of all loving. The dandelions and the daffodils grow still. Even without Spring. It’s a free-for-all at the dVerse Poets Pub this week and …
Some days it’s like you’ve only just slipped through my fingers. I’m still grasping for the tail-end of a thread, trying to haul you back up, back to me and everyone you left. I feel guilty for the hollowness in my chest, as if I don’t deserve to miss you this much. I don’t believe I deserve to miss you this much because I should have realised the acres of spaces you occupied inside my head and heart before the phone call rang in from your mother and every worst fear was came crashing in like thunder. For John
We’re not always in harmony you and I. Some days my notes fall flat, slip down the stanzas, don’t match the tempo thumping on right next to me. When I feel you vibrating in my bones, so close it almost hurts, yet my own sounds come out as broken scratching things my throat aches to match you. My lungs burn to swell and bellow. To reach the stage you’re standing on unaware I’ve sunk behind the curtain. But I know I have to wait the darkness out. Fight to find the spotlight again. via Daily Prompt: Harmonize I’ve not really been writing over the last few months so I’m not sure how this poem will go down. I might be a bit rusty. For some reason I just haven’t been able to sit down and write properly for most of 2017 so I’m hoping this post will mark the start of getting myself back into the habit of getting those words down on paper and doing something with my time. Constructive criticism is always …
Later, when the tulips had dropped their petals. Later when the cards had been tucked away. Later when the phone stopped calling. Later when the house was cold and empty and the latch on the gate caught in the wind… That was when the tears came. Night is a solitary endeavour. When the world shrinks to the size of a skull. Memories are painted on the darkness, dissected in the gloom, relived, reviled, returned to the boxes where the came from at the break of dawn. Doors hang looser on their hinges, those memories of chanced lost, wonders of what could have been. Break my mind with words when the darkness is deepest and the hour is lost. It’s day one of NaPoWriMo, [National Poetry Writing Month]. I haven’t used the prompt for today with this piece but I might put up another poem later if there’s time. I managed to forget that today was the start of NaPoWriMo until a few minutes ago so I’ve had a slight panic seeing as it’s half nine …
The fair was in the centre of the racecourse and every Easter we’d beg our parents for pounds while Granddad clambered to stand on the back of the 4×4 and Granny passed around salmon and cucumber sandwiches, sausage rolls, cups of tea, and packs of ready salted crisps. Some years we would squirm away from sun-cream and hats, while other were spent huddled beneath umbrellas, or listening to the rain hammer on the roof and windows while the horses continued to gallop past the windscreen, mud splattered and steaming. You and I counted down the races one by one, until the vested interests of family friends had run their laps and someone was free to wander away from the track to the spinning swings, and the carousels and hook-a-duck where we laughed and screeched and groaned when we lost. Now I am older the fair seems smaller and we do not beg for pound or wander down the bank towards it. But it’s there in the distance, glinting and burnished like a penny in a puddle, …
I’ve always been short, short person, short stuff, short arse, elbow rest, lean on my head, talk over the top of me, clamber over boxes, steps, stools, ladders to reach those things you can reach. I’ve always been short, not going to get any taller, stopped growing now, stopped growing up at least, bought new jeans this week two dress sizes up which is a pain because these jeans are a 10 and my wedding dress an 8 but there’s room to breath and wiggle a little so perhaps I’m more 9 than 10 and as a 9 maybe I can suck in… or go to the gym and use the membership draining my account each month. I like to work out sometimes, I like yoga when there’s the room, but really I should go, less to loose weight more to tone and focus on staying fit instead of spreading outwards because I’m short and I’ll always be short so best not match my height with my waist and try to find the stuff to …
You lay on your back in the hallway, head towards the door. So the light from the stained window could fall across you face and paint your skin shades of blue. From the top of the stairs I watched you sing songs to the sunlight, while the birds whistled outside and the rest of the world fell silent. Written For The Daily Prompt: Abstract
Can you build a place half ruined? Leave some of the rooms unfinished? Carve a fort from Shropshire sandstone, keep the windows soaring and wide so the light pours into libraries endless and stacked high. With shelves and shelves of volumes. Every room another genre and books that never end and cushioned seats to loose yourself in so time becomes impotent and each day is just that, a day, and each night just darkening hours. Leave the walls to fall into the gardens running wild with cornflowers and daisies, a vegetable patch behind the old well, and orchards filled with plums and cherries, pears, apples and damsons, the trees old, huge and untamed, perfect for climbing. Can I build a place like that? Sprawling and beautiful, creeping and quiet, a castle, a keep, a place for words and gardens. Tonight’s poetic challenge is to create a building with our poems. I hope you like my booky castle. If you want to share your own perfect building or just check out the other entries, then …
