This tether will not lead me to anything, least of all you. But still I keep it clasped between rope burnt palms unsure of the slack where once there was a taut pull, desperate and pleading, but slowly fraying in the places I chose not to look. With the Daily Prompt no longer running I’m looking for some new places to hunt for inspiration. Does anyone have any recommendations for poetry prompts/link ups that take place during the week?
You arrived too early, at the point when my heart could only shudder not flutter. So unused to feeling anything besides the grinding of pieces forcing themselves to fit into places grown too small. Instead of heat pooling somewhere deep there was fire along my hairline inside the back of my skull, with some primordial lesson still drumming in the shadows of my DNA. A tempo of hammering, lungs creasing and collapsing feet turned to lead still beating with the panic of my pulse as I let the miles run out of count beneath me. Catching my breath was a year long exericse which when marked only came up with a half score of ‘could do better if she applied herself’ and ‘doesn’t seem to really understand the subject matter discussed.’ Daily Post: Premature
Despite the warning signs I pressed myself against your skin, let the acid burn away my fingerprints until only teeth were left to identify the body by. You were poison and venom, though it’s unclear how the first dose was administered. If you closed your mouth around my throat or if I sank my fangs into you. What doesn’t kill you can make you stronger. Or shift the basis of your DNA until the mutations become the building block of something new and half done. When I recognized us for the first time I didn’t know my own face. Something that toxic could never be real. Daily Prompt: Toxic
I knew we were wrong when the doors closed on an empty theatre and every mistake I’d ever made came up in black and white on the screen behind you. Power-point has its uses. Explaining how to make someone more lovable is not one. Daily Post: Lecture
There are days where parakeets won’t stop squawking, monkeys are rattling cage bars like tambourines, chatter and laughter from hyenas is overflowing, elephants have expanded from trumpets to brass bands, pythons pay xylophone across giraffe necks, riverdance is hammered out by gazelle, hippos have taken up a baseline that’s rattling my bones while lions sing tenor like a welsh church choir and all at once sound becomes this physical thing battering me in submission. This zoo inside my head doesn’t know silence, it doesn’t even know quiet or tempered or hushed, all it knows is the racket threatening my eardrums from the inside. The one that won’t stop despite my screaming despite my pleading. It doesn’t understand that all I want is for it to stop. Written For The Daily Prompt: Zoo
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 …
I have a fear of heights but not just that, falling, edges, steep drops, most aspects of going downwards too quick, too fast. So I’m confused, as to why this new edge, this metaphorical one, leaves me so calm. I suppose you, might have something to do, with all this… tranquillity. It’s difficult to fear falling, when you’ve got use to being caught.
We parked up three exits pasts Memory Lane, you pushing keys on an old Nokia brick, waving it across my seat for signal while I sipped water, bottled and lukewarm. I didn’t say this was a waste, though it was of something. You- You and your chase for old conversations, old moments, an old haunt you forgot and then remembered. I stayed silent, sipping water and watching you wave. Written for Inspiration Call: Creative Talents Unleashed list three.
You are as easy to read as my mother’s little green book the day it came out of the washing machine one solid pile of gunk. We dried it out shelved above the rayburn but the pages never held together again and the cover was lost to detergent suds and bin bags. Is that what you expect, when contemplating outcomes for maybe just once letting someone see a little more than this shell you’ve carved to replicate what people think is you?
