Tag / prompt

by Carol J Forrester

A Clever And Cruel Man – A Poem By Carol J Forrester #DVersePoets

You and your dim accuracy,
head lolled loose
eyes whitened and widened
till the pupils blink out.
Words come clipped,
ransomed love letters
read like shopping lists,
or obituaries.
Call this a grey life,
the air sucked clear
your mouth a pursed funnel,
but I
am the culprit.
Found the bruises of your hands,
like marble sponge,
cold as stone
the heat slipping over you
without warming.
In the well shade you sit
while I sink deeper, darker
for the waterline.
Come up spitting dust
and excuses.
Shoulder a shallow cloak
of indifference,
already the hem unpicked
by those grasping hands
always tapping
rapping
at the weakest point.
Feel them at my temples
tonight, tomorrow, today,
at the weakest point
always tapping away.

Ah, I’m really hoping I got this right. The five Samuel Greenberg charms that I used for my response are as follows: dim accuracy / grey life / marble sponge / the well shade / shallow cloak. I tried to emulate Greenberg’s abstract style (though not quite as drastically as he employs the abstract).

by Carol J Forrester

Smile Of Pomegranate Wine #WeekendWritingPrompt

With a smile steeped in pomegranate wine

you laughed,

tipped your head back,

closed your eyes against the sun

painted in place

in a sky that never greyed,

unlike me

who seemed to leech all colour

from our Elysium,

so perfect in the way it held you,

in the way it caught me

like a trap.

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by Carol J Forrester

Night On The Ice #WeekendWritingPrompt

Blue lipped kissed,

laid your cheek on the ice

and searched for a gap

you would slip beneath.

 

Like hunting for pennies

beneath kitchen counters,

their copper wink bite

so, so cold in your palm.

 

And a creaking below

of sheets shifting, rising,

a threat to throw you out

into the wakeful night.

 

What you would give

for stillness

another side of the looking-glass.

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Thank you for stopping by, and if you enjoyed the poem above then you might enjoy my poetry collection ‘It’s All In The Blood’ which can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. It’s a self-published collection so I have to rely on readers buying and reviewing the book to help promote it, especially in places such as the USA. Thank you again for your time.

 

by Carol J Forrester

A Poem And A Blog Party All In One!

Dream State Darkening

“Slowly we slept into our fears”

Ritwik

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.

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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!

by Carol J Forrester

Erosion

I imagined that she was some great coastal cliff. Stone strong for thousands of years, but now the sea has managed to find a way between the cracks and it’s taking her apart in chunks.

It doesn’t sound like a landslide though. She doesn’t shriek and splinter as pieces of her sheer away from herself. There’s only silence as another memory, another name, another face, slips beneath the waves and into darkness where it can’t be reached.

There are still pieces of her left. Like fossils, preserved inside the depths of the cliff face. On days where it seems like everything has crumbled, they can find a way to the light.

The willow withered

its roots turned to dust and ash

but it kindles still.

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