In the calm of an empty room
I found Pride behind the mirror glass,
and coaxed it into daylight.
I fanned flames from ash
with a slip of red silk,
slashed open white to the skin,
bared like orange pith,
small defense against an outside world.
Like water,
Pride slipped from me at a doorway
and in the mirror
was only sin the colour of shame.
Grey again in the ruins of an inferno,
I told myself
no one was looking at me anyway.
Last Monday I threw out the idea for a weekly poetry link-up where you write a poem based on a line from another blogger’s work. I can’t speak for everyone, but I often find inspiration in some of the fantastic pieces here on WordPress and I know we have all probably had that moment where you read something and find yourself thinking ‘I really wish I was the one who’d written that.’
So once again I’m inviting you to go onto your reader, hunt through the poetry tag, and find a line that sparks inspiration in you. Make sure to credit the original writer in your post and revel in the wonder that is the fantastic mass of poetry at our fingertips.
For me this week, it’s the following line that’s caught my eye.
Viaducts were built by the conquerors
Please make sure to check out the poem it came from in full, it’s a fantastic piece that I fell in love with immediately. The poem just seems to simmer with power when you read it.
If you want to join in then the linky-took is below the quote. Have fun writing.
Stones Throw
The farmers came with calloused hands in need of stone,
to build their boundaries and their hearth walls
among the lands that lost the names we’d forged,
regardless of the laws we’d written,
the last of which were echos in the marsh reeds
our ghosts waving at the workers about their tasks,
backs bent beneath another master lash.
And all in all the stones were taken,
chipped, chiseled, smashed and broken,
and we lay quiet in the waters of the empty marshes
so far from the glories we had dreamed to see,
so distant from the homes we’d wish to see
when reality caught up upon our dreams like grey mist
and it all burnt away on a sunrise
without even a stone to mark where we had been.
It’s been a while since I’ve written a Weekend Coffee Share post, months in fact, but I’m currently supposed to writing an entry for the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Competition so this seemed like the perfect way to procrastinate.
I signed up late for Camp NaNoWriMo this month. At the start of the month I was debating whether or not I was going to have a crack at it and decided not to because I tend to find that writing purely for word-count goals make it even harder for me to get myself into the right frame of mind for writing. That said, having a goal in mind does help drive me forward on projects so when I started rewriting my Shadow Dawn novel around the 10th July, I decided that I’d set myself a 30,000 word goal for the month and use Camp NaNoWriMo to help me hit that target. I’ve got more time to focus on my writing this month as I’m still waiting for the result of my last AAT Level 3 exam which means I haven’t got any studying to do. However, other social engagements are taking up most of my weekends so my current progress has been limited to what I can write during my lunch hour at work. Hence the pitiful looking bar chart above.
As I mentioned at the start of this post, I’m also taking part in the NYC Midnight’s Flash Fiction competition. The deadline for round one is 4am (GMT) so I’ve got the rest of this afternoon to sort out my 1,000 words story and submit it, even if the heat is making it almost impossible for me to get on with anything. I’d rather melt than write at the moment so I’m hoping hammering out a post might encourage me to hammer out a thousand words of fiction in a few minutes time. I can easily write a thousand words in a hour so a first draft should be straight forward, I just wish the weekend wouldn’t slip past me so quickly.
*Note: It’s now almost five in the evening as I’ve been procrastinating from writing this post as well. I really need to learn to just get on with things.*
Tomorrow will mark DVerse Poets Pub coming back off their two week break, something I’ve been looking forward to since their first day of absence. For the last fortnight I’ve been desperate for poetry prompt so I can’t wait until Monday’s Quadrille night.
I’m also trying to work out how to take my poetry to the next level on this poem. When going through the stats on this site I realize that I only reach about fifty views per post most of the while so I’d really like to start bumping that number up. I suppose the upside to that total is that my view total stays quite close to my likes total so I can see that most people who read the poems, go on to liking them. I just need to find a way of getting more people reading them.
Other than that there isn’t much going on this weekend. I hope yours have been slightly more productive than mine and I will now go off and get this flash fiction piece written for NYC Midnight before I find a way to procrastinate right up to the deadline. All the best for the next week and thanks for reading.
Like a dropped stitch
I didn’t see your absence
until much later,
when the narrowing become obvious
but I couldn’t find the courage
to unpick all that I had done.
I found the pip between my teeth
an hour after the bitter bite
of garden currents
had faded from my tongue.
In the middle of a meeting,
too close between collegues
to spit or pick
the pith from my mouth.
Instead I chased it
from cheek to cheek
along the ring of my lower lip
to the hollow beside my molars.
The presenter lost his place,
tapped again at his laptop,
muttered a word ,
asked someone to call IT.
I swallowed by accident.
Choked,
drew a worried glance,
waved it away with a glass of water.
Outside the cleaner checked bins,
roll of bags at her hip,
quick, quiet between the desks,
she whisked any evidence away.
The Summer heat has been making it difficult to sit down and write. Nowhere feels comfortable and I’m constantly shifting position to try and ease that sticky, gross feeling that comes with trying to do anything at all during hot, summer days.
I’d really love to hear people’s thoughts on this poem as it just sort of took shape this evening and I can very rarely tell if that makes it a good poem or a really bad one. Either way I enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoyed reading/listening to it.
Close up bunch of fresh raspberries
Carol J Forrester 
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