All posts tagged: Carol j Forrester

Bluebell Wood

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In the woods there are houses and bricks like broken teeth, pockmarks in the bramble thorns and climbing ivy, vines like fingers, tucked in deep on walls battered and spat into tumble-down ruins sinking further into the banks where the river coils and drifts between the reeds and weeds and the washed up refuse of someone’s empty pockets, as the sky passes over those flickers from the undergrowth until it all, eventually, grows still.   I was really stuck for what to write for this prompt and in the end this was about all that I could manage. I’m not sure if it fits exactly with the style of ‘ecopoetry’ but I’m hoping I managed to get the mix of human and nature into this piece.  

The Women I Come From

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1. The women I come from learnt how to thicken their skin. How to tan it, and beat it, until inch by inch it covers all those soft spots we might have thought to share.   2. The women I come from never learnt how to bow their backs so far that vertebrae fossilise into constant arches that creak beneath the weight of someone else’s moral compass. 3. The women I come from learnt how to carry their secrets close. How to tuck away their thoughts into deeper shadows until the faces we painted on become the only ones we knew how to wear. 4. The women I come from have hearts cocooned in armour. They are riddles without answers twisted into people. They are worriers, and they are lovers and they are more fragile then they act when they take all of what they are and entrust it, to someone else. I was a bit at loss for which poem I was going to chose to write a response to for tonight DVerse Poetics. In the …

Sky High

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Captain Martin Renke did not like strangers aboard his ship. He didn’t trust strangers, and being stuck with someone you don’t trust twenty thousand feet above the ground in something that for all intensive purposes should not be flying was a dangerous thing. Dr Grass was a dangerous thing. The scientist was escorted aboard the ship an hour before dawn by a retinue of armed guards, most of whom were only one twitch away from unloading their clips into the back of the man’s head. ‘He’s… odd,’ their commanded had explained. ‘Really odd.’ Then he’d thrown the papers stamped with the royal seal into Renke’s hands and left. Grass had been smiling. Three hours later Grass had stopped smiling and was puking over the side of the ship. Tucked away in his cabin, Renke ran his thumb over the seal and examined the papers. ‘Murderer,’ he read. ‘Yeah. Aren’t we all.’  

Rock’n’Roll

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You’ve grown older with these years. Sagged into them, your worn out chair, too comfortable to discard. I have too. Now there are knots in these bones. A lattice work of knuckle and knobble and I cannot help you to your feet propel you across the kitchen sidestep, kick, flick, turn and lift! jitterbug us into three am. I cannot swagger with the same strength of 1970s rock’n’roll disco room dance floors. We are old together it seems. These feet became stepping stones. Smaller ones, with laughing mouths who clutch the knuckles and knobbles without thought. We were always old to them. They are young, and so very youthful, and I will show them how we danced. This Tuesday’s DVerse Poet’s Pub prompt is a corker! Write a poem from the point of view of someone who’s not your gender. Check the challenge out for yourself and see what the other Pub Poets have in store!

Blogging 201: Give Them What They Want! Where to chaps?

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I have a tendency to ramble on. I know it as well as the next person and I like to think I’m okay with that part of my personality. It makes me, me. It might be a slightly bumbling, tongue tied ‘oh god did I just say that’ sort of me, but I still think she’s an okay person. Today’s challenge for Blogging 201 [and yes I am aware that I’ve been a little lax on the previous assignments] was to ask our audience what they wanted to see on our blogs. So I did two polls. One for the assignment, and one for me. The option for a monthly feature on different creative writing bloggers is something I’m actually quite keen to do, so if you want to get involved or have any suggestions please leave a comment below.

Windows

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‘When did you realise for you the first time that you weren’t immortal?’ The blonde’s face flashed into his mind and he thought about the way she’d spoken with a smile, showing off the bit of apple stuck in her teeth and the crooked incisor that he’d noticed her poking at with her tongue during their entire meal. ‘Pardon?’ he’d replied, staring at her over a forkful of salad. ‘What sort of question is that?’ She’d blushed and shrugged. ‘It’s just a first date sort of question,’ she’d said. ‘You know, a sort of tell me who you are type question.’ ‘Oh,’ he’d said before eating his forkful of salad and forgetting about it all together. Now, now he was thinking about it though. Or more accurately, about how he’d never assumed that he was immortal until the day he’d found out that he actually was and being immortal was nothing more than a massive ball ache for all those involved. ‘Here we go again,’ he sighed, gripping the window sill with both hands and …

April

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April brings storms that rattle and shudder against windows with winds that howl and whip past the trees. Pressed close enough cheeks can feel fingertips of something, someone not quite there. Pattering and scampering outside along the whirls in the glass traced on the lazy afternoons. In this room, in this house, all gods are welcome. With hands around latches there is no need of prayers to call them here. In the morning the carpets will be spongy, damp beneath feet, and the curtains slick to the touch. Tonight however, calls for bare faces turned upwards open to the skies.

First Sight

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PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright – Georgia Koch “Your grandfather used to run coal up and down this canal,” said Elizabeth’s grandmother, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her coat and they squidged through the muddy footpath side by side. “My father was a farmer just over there. One day there was a knock on the door. There he was, covered in soot and wrestling this poor, soaked ewe into submission on the doorstep. Well he looks up at me and says mam, you need to fix your bloody fence. The canal is not a ship dip trough. I dam near asked him to marry me then.” (100 Words)