A memory.  February 2016.  Walking the

streets of Salford through skewering winter

rain, on a hopeless errand.  I’m listening

to music.  Something by Radiohead –

a plodding acoustic strum rhymes with my steps. 

That’s not me

Two pharmacies already, turned away from both,

like an addict trying their luck.  But this isn’t for me.

It’s for my Dad – something to help him sleep while his

body slowly drowns him. 

The song sighs into the chorus. 

I’m not here.  This isn’t happening.

Walking, walking.  Keep going. The next shop has to

have it.  It has to. Up the hill, past high concrete walls. 

Past the women’s centre with its steel grills.  Past

the shops. I used to walk here with him sometimes. 

Sweeping electronic crying fills my head. 

The moment’s already passed. 

The rain doesn’t stop. I already know

what they’re going to say.

Today’s prompt: to write about a place inhabited exclusively by non-human creatures, using some slant rhyme.

We do these things together.  Legs rub.

Shield percusses.  We live and die as one. 

Your life doesn’t matter.  Nor does mine. 

What we do is for the nest.  Follow me.

Abdomen chirps. Do as I do.  Feed the queen. 

Feed the collective. We find the fallen on sand. 

Too hot to be still.  Feet on sizzling stone.

Keep moving or perish.  Bring the flesh of the weak. 

Feed the colony.  Sounds of work all around us.

Limbs scratch, mandibles crunch.  We do these

things together.  Remember your place in the

structure. Carry the injured and leave the dead.

Our bodies scream of danger.  Your life doesn’t

matter.  The sound of a million feet on sand.

Feed the queen.  Feed the collective.

We will never die while the colony lives.

A bit late! Prompt was to write a poem over several stanzas with a mythology theme.

With the door closed she could pretend

nobody else was there.  She’d never wanted

this – never asked for it.  They were all here:

Neptune. Hera. Poseidon. The rest.

Plaster smooth skin and white

teeth.  Expensive clothes and sculpted

faces. And Hades – over-familiar as ever –

making unpleasant jokes with her father

and looking at her to laugh.  It made her

bones ache. 

The rose garden is dark but the scent is

heavy.  She can sit here for as long as she

likes under Hecate’s moonlight and no one

can force her out of her own self. The tree

makes a protective shadow about her

and the breeze smells like spilled honey.

She shook her shoes off at the door and

tried for the stairs but they saw her. From

the corner he smiled at her, a salesman’s smile,

but she looked the other way.  The announcement

was presented like a gift, when in fact it was a

weapon. A dozen smooth faces turned to her.

A door slammed.

Off prompt again. Just didn’t feel today’s prompt – involved lots of syllable counting. And I haven’t written yesterday’s yet, but I’ll get around to it eventually!

Strings of lights and concrete steps.

Somehow you never made the

connection.  A long way from home,

and nobody to talk to.  The gates were

always open, day or night, iron leaves

casting curved shadows on the ground.

Beautiful and cold.  You were always bad at this.  Friendship. 

I didn’t follow the prompt today. Instead I wrote about something that’s been on my mind recently.

Some days you’re disappointed.

When you shook his hand and he smiled

and you just didn’t see it. The lie.

It wasn’t in his eyes. Somehow

you just thought it would be okay

but then it wasn’t. Meanwhile, in

the hospital, Mum was still dying.

Meanwhile the cancer still ate at her

lungs and her spleen until she

didn’t have enough of anything.

And he smiled, as he told a lie.

This morning some crows, a murder

I suppose, mobbed a young buzzard

over the fields.  It’s fine though,

not personal, even when the bird

could no longer fly.  Protect

your own by pulling a stranger to the

ground.  It’s all feathers and fury anyway.

It’s been a stressful day so I wanted to write something fun. This is the result! The prompt was to play about with words and use a bit of alliteration.

Bring me the long words.  I’ve subsisted

for too long on words of one or two syllables

and frankly, I’m undernourished.

Gaunt, sickly. You can count my ribs. Go on.

Bring out the fancy morphemes on a

porcelain plate.  The ones with curlicues

and surprising pronunciations.  Soughing. Psithurism.

No word salads here. Bring me the full-fat, unskimmed specimens.

Shock me with some hyperbole. Bring me the epitome of verbosity.  No

longer out of reach of the working class writer

 – now we’re all invited to the purple party.

Fill my glass to the brim with the good

stuff – I want to be woozy with words,

giddy with grandiloquence, bloated

with bombast.  Bring me the big words

and watch me waste them.  I’ll wallow

in them like Cleopatra in her bath of milk.

They’ll cling to me like secrets, spilling

out accidentally in conversation wherever I go. 

Bring me the longest words.  Let me enjoy them.

Today’s prompt was to write a poem which used sounds to create atmosphere, after Robert Hillyer’s poem Fog.

Scratching steps on loose gravel, the rhythmic snap

of stone on stone.  A blackcap sings, bleep bleep bleep

like an arcade game. It feels quiet here but it isn’t. 

The wind breathes through the wheat stalks

and a tractor hums. 

The clank of a chain.  Groan of metal on metal.

Growl of an engine.

Behind the bigger hush is an orchestra of human

sounds.  The road isn’t far away and the

rumble never quite disappears.  A crow’s squawk slices

through the quiet.  A dog barks.  Feet on stone and

the tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker.

Squeaking of gears.  Dripping water.

Thunder. 

The path changes to dirt. The ground feels hollow here.

Birdsong quietens.  A small plane crosses the sky. 

My footsteps echo as I pass beneath the headgear.

In the distance a man is watching.

(A ghazal)

On glassy waves we come to you

Listen to our song

Scratching pale arms held to you

Listen to our song

We sleep on nests of rocks and bones

a thousand bodies long

Of those who thought to tame our ways

and rob us of our song

Subtler than silent sleep

the pleasures of our tongue

A turquoise dream of lovers lost

and strains of ancient song

You’ll follow us forever

through the yearning lightless throng

And lose yourself in timeless dark

as you fall into our song

You’ll dream within our ocean

You’ll be where you belong

Pale arms pull you under as you

listen to our song

Using Jane Yeh’s Why I Am Not A Sculpture for inspiration.

To be denuded of my frivolity

stripped to my bare form

in search of a truer meaning

then made to wear uncomfortable

metaphors several sizes too small

forced to parade gaudy similes

in a kind of poetic beauty contest

To be sculpted

my edges slimmed trimmed

excesses removed before being

displayed and discussed