My mother taped mittens to my wrists,
that made my hands sweat
into wet worms without purchase.
She told me that you were dangerous
but by then I was older,
knew how to sink my claws in,
and to give in to the itch.
Dream State Darkening
“Slowly we slept into our fears”
Some nights the dreams slip past like minnow,
dark and shadowy in the water.
I am frozen,
mud stuck and slow
with limbs like old trophies
bent, broken, scratched,
the polish flaking like old paint
till the wooden skeleton is left
with all its pitted fragility,
no more than a twig
shivering in the storm.
When I wake,
I am still the scarecrow.
Clothes tacked on in mockery of skin.
Here I know the birds
do not fear me.
Instead they will come in flocks
to peck at what is left
when the last of me is withered
and gone to dust.
Some nights the dreams slip past like minnow,
dark and shadowy in the water,
and dawn is brought on by blinking,
slow and succulent it bleeds through the glass,
an orange splitting from its skin.
In an echo of better days
the dreams swim deeper,
far enough that I can pretend to forget.
These are the moments of peace
between the nightmares.

We’re slap bang in the middle of the DVerse Poets Pub’s two week break so I’m forced to search for inspiration elsewhere in the blog-a-sphere. Tonight I’ve stumbled into something that I’m thinking about making a feature.
The quote at the top is by a fellow poet/blogger and he kindly enough allowed me to use it as a jumping off point for a new poem. I’ve written poems drawing on inspiration from other poets before but this time I’d like to invite you to do the same. If there’s enough interest then I’ll chuck out the same challenge next Monday as well.
The aim is simple. Find a quote in a poem published here on WordPress. Use this as your starting point to write your poem, but please make sure to credit the original writer for their words if you include them anywhere in the post!
Then add a link to this post to create a pinkback or enter your piece using the InLinkz below.
Either way. Have fun writing!
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
Have you ever sat down and written the first three lines of something, only to hit the backspace like a maniac a few moments later? It’s so easy to throw out work if it doesn’t seem to be going in the direction that you want it to, and often that can lead to us spinning in circles, rewriting the same sentence over and over again.
I know this because it’s something I do repeatedly. For example, I’m currently holding my 70,000 word manuscript over the metaphorical bin because I can’t see how it will end. The plot is rambling and half-baked, I’ve got characters that aren’t where they need to be, the whole thing feels like a failure. In short I want to throw it away and start from scratch.
But!
If I do that there’s a good chance I’ll never actually get finishing the damn thing because next time I hit a snag in the draft, I’ll want to start over all over again. Instead I’m going to remind myself of a Neil Gaiman quote that I love, get my head down, and finish that draft one way or another.

“Whatever it takes to finish things, finish.
You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished.”
Neil Gaiman
The same applies when writing a blog post.
Yesterday I read a post called 31 Posts in 31 Days on a blog called Always Find The Silver Lining, run by Dominique. In it she finished by asking if anyone had any tips on what to do on those days where you don’t feel inspired or you’re struggling to write.
This a topic that lots of bloggers have tacked before. There are infinite suggestions across the web of things you can do if inspiration is hanging back. Read a book, take a walk, look out of the window… the list is endless and quite frankly, not a huge amount of help when you are stuck for something to write. So instead I thought I’d take the topic on from a different angle and passed on some advice I’d been given, by a Creative Writing Lecturer at Bath Spa University, when I said I was taking part in NaPoWriMo*.
Not everything you write will be good.
It was an honest comment and one that I’m incredibly glad to recieve because I’ve carried it forward with me.
At times we can sit down and write exceptional pieces of work with seemingly little effort. The words spill out with such ease that it can feel like we’re somehow cheating. Then on other days, each word will be a fight to pin down. They will clank against each other, sit awkwardly on the page, and refuse to string themselves into the shapes we want. This is the unfortunate truth about writing and it’s those days where we most want to throw the towel in and not bother finishing that story, poem, or article. It’s also those days where it’s most important that we sit back down and finish, no matter what sort of shape the final product produces for itself.

Now, I’m not saying that it isn’t important to try and make each post better than the last. My site in itself is an example of how skill improves over time. I’ve got better at writing because of how much I have written over the years, but progress is not a straight line and treating it as such will only lead to frustration.
The key is knowing that not everything you write will be fantastic. Some days it just won’t work. More often than not you have to work through a bit of sludge to get to the gold.
So if you take anything away from this post, make it this. The next time you want to hit backspace or delete, hit save instead. Come back to it later and finish it then. You never know when that piece of awkward, clunky writing might prove to be the inspirational that you’re looking for.
A while back I decided to go through the drafts piling up on my WordPress as the number was getting close to three figures and I thought it could do with a clear out. Unfortunately I’m one of those people who’s terrible at titling documents.
Turns out this is a great way of playing inspiration roulette.
Pick an untitled, see what crazy nonsense I was spewing, and throw myself into a free write. Like I said earlier, it might be terrible, it might be great, or it might be just okay.
The point is that I’ll be finishing the things I start, and that will teach me far more than hitting delete.

*National Poetry Writing Month
I could sleep here,
belly warm against the stone
arms splayed,
wings,
bent at the elbows,
reaching
perhaps to hold
but for now still,
warm,
cheek pressed to rock
sun baked,
lazy,
stubbornly forgotten
long ago
when this place was ice
long from melting.

View From The Top Of Snowdon – By Carol J Forrester
Since there is no Quadrille night this Monday over at DVersePoets I thought I’d write one inspired by my recent trip to Snowdonia National Park. The views were utterly stunning and it really does feel like you’re escaping the modern world.
A Quadrille is a poem written in exactly 44 words. The DVerse Poets Pub runs a fortnightly Quadrille prompt for those who fancy having a go in the company of some wonderful fellow blogger/poets.
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