Day 12: Alliteration & Assonance

Today's prompt was to write a poem that makes use of alliteration and assonance. I always use alliteration, infact I'm a little addicted to it... so hopefully I'm focusing on the assonance now too.

(This is what it felt like last night when I was on a poetry writing spree:)


The Creative Process

There's a bee in my brain
buzzing and brazen
that within minutes 
becomes a hive 
of hyper word activity -
thrum, hum and spun -
honey the aim.
A poem wanting to be born.  

Day 11: Bop

Well I agonised over this prompt all day long and decided I was going to ignore it completely! Until tonight....when one line came floating by and suddenly then...this, a whole poem, from that favourite place all the good poems come ~ the blue unknown!:

*Read how to do The Bop here
 


Indefinite Pronouns

It's not that it didn't mean something, it did. 

We had something, even though in the end

it amounted to nothing. Even though

you were my one affirmative clause.

It's more to do with the fact that it never

got a chance to be anything.

And you were the definite article my heart craved.

From no one, you became someone new.

Not nothing and more than something...

until, all at once, you were everything.

Though the vagueness remained: a question mark,

an exclamation point. Our love incognito, a noun

without a name, a new word and world

that required naming. But when it mattered,

we were deaf, dumb, lame.

And you were the definite article my heart craved.

But some 'thing' did not equal everything

when there was somebody else to consider;

rule-fixer, game-changer. The grammar of love

favouring the sentence already made, pronouns pre-named.

And yet, despite it all, the loss and blame, 
somehow I know, I will love you, indefinitely.

And you were the definite article my heart craved.

Day 10: Portrait Poem

Today's prompt was to write a portrait poem of a person. Mine was inspired literally, by this painting from John Williams Waterhouse 'The Soul of the Rose.'


Poetic

You are a poem
quiet and true. 
Elaborate at times,
every word a coup. 

Resplendent in rhyme:
what you say
with what you do. 
Rhythm in kind. 

Your heart a metaphor
of everything good. 
Beauty your main
preoccupation.  

Day 9: Nine

Today we had to write a poem of nine lines.... tinkered about with a few ideas for a while until poem this suddenly popped into my head form nowhere really. (Strangely, I think it's kind of a mash-up of the week's earlier prompt of the elegy and the famous 20 Little Poetry Projects prompt...)



Nocturne

Nine lives didn't mean much in the end. 
We wasted them in death-defying melodies
strummed on perfectly-tuned heart strings. 
Incorrigible, the stars and youth. 
How I wished I'd saw you then
in black and white perfection. 
But dreaming never ends, even still.
We followed the moon until it led us
back to our bluest beginning.

Day 8: Repetition

Today's prompt was to write a poem with a repeated line or word.... this one's based on real-life experience which I found kind of fascinating...



ECG

A scroll map of the heart, literally.
All the peaks and valleys of living - 
eating, breathing, thinking, feeling, 
hieroglyphics of quotidian being.

Boom-boom, boom-boom
the sonic beat of life
filters through the gloom
of the MD's room. 

Boom-Boom, boom-boom.
Loud proud systole
filling the air like a shout. 
Proof positive of presence.

Heart no longer a metaphor, 
weary and broken
but a red-fisted muscle 
of persistent proclamation:

I'm alive, I exist, I am  -
suddenly relevant,
resonant
information.

Day 7: Fortuitous Poem

Today's prompt is to write a fortuitous poem.... A weird and fun idea this one!

Changing the rules a bit.... And I think I was subconsciously influenced by Ogden Nash and Charles Simic on this one for some reason!


A Daydream of Luck

A spider on the top of the stairs
came to me in a dream,
unravelling its web
with a pearl of a question 
at its centre. 

A piece of glass, on the sea's edge
saw through my heart
to where you disappeared
and the world too; 
down into the deep swell of sorrow. 

A clock, looking for tomorrow,
sighed your name and a pen
wrote down the time
I stopped waiting on you,
as memories melted into gold.

A feather, flew from grace,
landed in a puddle at my feet,  
when the forecast was pain,
but a poem grew
from under my table 

and began everything again.



 

Day 6: Angles

Today's prompt is to write a poem about something looking at it from different angles. Don't know where I got pennies from...



Penny

Rainy day currency, charming bidder
for thoughts.

Pocket dweller. Wish maker. Luck bringer -
see one, pick it up, all day long...

but they never add up. Declaration
of casual bankruptcy. All-in, all-out.

Yay or nay decider. Flip or flippant.
Value of recognition, sudden tumble of truth.

Minted manna from the heights of heaven -
or heads of state grubbying hands. 

Small change, big claims.
Coppered keen circumference 

of dreams.  
Extinct species now.  

Day 5: Mary Oliver

 

Write a poem in the spirit of Mary Oliver today... I've read and loved so many of Mary Oliver's poems that I hope this doesn't come out as a blatant imitation...!



Daffodils

Like bunched sunshine the daffodils bask
in their vase on the counter-top
adorned with light. A burst of energy, theirs 
is the colour of gladness, specifically, aliveness - 
what is otherwise known as joy.
All March they have brightened roadsides
with customary glee, throwing yellow cheers
to passers-by, Wordsworthian observers.
But now, their pretty bonnet heads bow
brown with decay - their part 
in the great annunciation of spring 
almost over. Trumpets that blazed all month
with mirth of days to come 
tuned down
until another year.
And we are sad for their ending,
but too happy with our own beginnings
to be anything less  
than elated.

Day 4: Micro-Poetry

Although today's official prompt sounds good, I got carried away today with micro-poetry, after creating a 'poetry station' in my school library. Here's two I 'physically' completed:

Miracle light.

Bird reaches for 

the blue dream

of sky;

day begins. 

In the event of love

be beautiful and true.

Leap into colour,
forget the world.

Blue notes

fall from night

after a storm of beauty.

Invisible magic,

heart's delight.  

Day 3: Elegy

Today's prompt was to write an elegy. Seeing as today is my birthday (and I'm feeling really old for the first time ever) I thought this suitable...




To the Girl I Used To Be

I mourn her who has gone -
that girl of ten and more years ago 
who lives today only in the green corridors of youth.
She who wore flowers in her hair, heart on a high, 
hands full of dreams, every day a new kind of currency...
all faded now to a mirage memory.

How I long to return to her -
but cynical age has burned her at its stake,
time tarnished her sun-flare glow to shadow.
While time has aged me, she will always remain 
wild and young and free, in those happy halcyon days,
the very best version of me.

Back when I waltzed with the world, hand in hand
and life as I knew it, didn't hurtle by.