Day 11: Letter

 

Today's prompt was to write a letter and a reply. 

***

Dear Future Self,

Are we there yet?

Present Self

Dear Present Self,

*Return to Sender*

Day 10: Junk Drawer Song

Today's prompt was to rifle through our junk drawers taking notes and then listen to a favourite song and take notes, and then combine the two to make a poem!

With thanks to Van Morrison, Nick Drake, Brandi Carlile. 

Harmonies

 

Amethyst avenue,

boulevard of broken dreams.

Meet me halfway

on the sunny side of the street.

 

Pink moon evening

into the mystic,

time unspooled

in a mother-of-pearl mirror.

 

Oh I wish we had

a waltz in a penny store;

elastic band of memory

stretching forevermore.

 

Harmony rising

hairbrush pining.

Taffeta skirts

and chandeliers shining.

 

Hopskotch on stars

chalk lines on tarmac,

you and me

ampersand elegant.

 

Papier-maché hearts

in a drawer, dying.

Trinkets, tarnished.

Gypsy soul, sold.

 

Love will find a way…

Moonglow afterparty.

We were born

to know the light.  

Day 9: To-Do List

 

Today's prompt was to write a to-do list from an unusual character. 

My first choice was a cat, then went for this!

The Poet’s To-Do List

 

Stare nonchalantly out window, trying

to describe the exact blue of the sky.

Contemplate oblivion.

Move a comma to and fro; replace with a semi-colon.

Backspace and delete. White page afterglow.

Reflect on the futileness of existence

juxtaposed with the beauty of a leaf.

Stagger muse-less to the kitchen,

consider anchovies on toast.

Shuffle through the 3pm doldrums,

do what you think poets should do at this time

and imbibe an espresso macchiato.

Shimmy when a word strikes the subconscious

like light hitting a sun catcher:

phantasmagoria, spectrum, heliotrope

bouncing rainbows across the room.

Delight in the quiddity of objects -

violet and elderflower gin bottle, floral china teacup,

verdigris watering can, smoothness of a spoon.

Wrestle thoughts onto page like a child

catching butterflies; grasp an idea like an eel

slippery and electric, crackling in an undercurrent whirlpool.

Colour-code emotions. Translate into wordy overflow.

Toast the dusk with a haiku kiss.

Worship at the silver light of a crescent moon.

Revel in the heightened feeling,

the fire-branding of words across a day

that blaze and blaze.

Day 8: Monologue

Today's prompt was to write a monologue from the point of view of someone who is deceased. 

I tried and couldn't! So, this instead:

Requiem for 2020

 

I was supposed to be the beginning,

not the end. Filofax of the year forgotten,

calendars closed, diaries left blank,

life deferred, put on hold. New Year dreams 

caught in Covid’s chokehold.

All my days blurred into one.

Seasons scurried past unnoticed.

My predecessor roared his riposte (giving

the 20s a bad name, huh!)

but people were in a flap. Everything suddenly

reduced to nothing. An empty time

of worry, fear, grief, regret.

I did my best. Years come and years go.

Mine will be one with an elegy of woe.

 

Day 7: Fib

 

Today's prompt was to write a fib! An 1,1,2,3,5,8, syllable count poem.

Fib

Just

one

feather

is enough

to outweigh hardness,

incrementally soften hate. 

Day 6: Line

 

Today's prompt was to pick a short line from a favourite book and use it as the title and inspiration for a poem, and then change the title.

'There was scope for imagination here.' - Anne of Green Gables

Scope for Imagination/Seed

Held in hand, sprinkled wonder.

Metaphor - hope, growth, new beginning.

Great expectations, fairytale motif. Magic beans

in miniature; beanstalks, called to mind.

A flag, a banner, a subtle unfurling.

World within a whorl, within a week

periscope of possibility.

Tiny seed, smaller than a full stop

curled in on itself like a dream,

hatching the future. 

Day 5: Shape

 

Today's prompt is to use the basis of a poem to shape one of our own, same starting letters, same syllable count. I did two from the one.

Interlude

Maybe missing               Memory means

one another,                   oubliette time

quantifies this                querulous moon

   

affection our                  ad infinitum 

sequestered hearts            serenading;

in cautious notes               imagine 'we'

have been keeping;           happiness now

yearning to yield               you and me, us.

Day 4: Liminal Spaces

 

Today's prompt was to pick a picture from the Liminal Spaces Bot on Twitter (@SpaceLiminalBot) and write about it. Okay then.

My Future Waits Without Me

 

My future waits without me.

Past keep-out signs and ‘do not cross’ lines,

my future waits without me.

 

Stage lights on with no show,

my future waits without me.

Empty corridors, no-go areas,

my future waits without me.

 

Instead of silver, grey.

Instead of mirage, monotony.

My future waits without me.

 

Around cement corners, my future waits without me.

On cul-de-sac tenures, my future waits without me.

 

Neon lights haunt me.

Silenced applause daunts me.

Spectres of what could have been

mock me.

My future waits, without me.

 

 

 

Day 3: Personal Universal Deck

Today's personal universal deck was a brilliant prompt! 

I may have taken some short cuts....and the end product was written very much under the influence of Prosecco bubbles (birthday clause!) 

Oracles

 

Tether me to a star,

I want to blaze, heavenward.

Light the obsidian dark,

with imagination’s mascot.

 

At the blue hour,

dance with a mermaid,

launch poems to a scalloped,

luminous horizon.

 

Lounge in a jazz daydream,

sing tutti-frutti lovesongs,

fade out to piano china-bone

whisper, curlicues of joy.

 

Sonorous vanilla dusk.

Silken caress.

Pinata of hearts

exploding in a rosé sky.

 

New moon a hammock

for tired eyes. Give me sunshine,

give me rest. Dawn,

in a slow falling teardrop.

 

 

Day 2 : The Road Not Taken

 

Today's prompt is to write a 'road not taken' poem of our own, inspired by Robert Frost's.

The Poet’s Path

 

No linear routes. Highways,

motorways or auto-pilot cues.

Marking destinations off

on a checklist of non-chalance.

 

No, this is the path

of brambles and wildflowers.

Moonlit stones and mud-trodden ways.

Into the forest, counting the trees.

 

A doodled journey of spirals and loops,

intricate ways of being, seeing.  

There are no maps here,

no peers to follow or imitate. 

 

Just the alphabet of stars,

tourmaline suns setting in the heart.

And the reward? The view, not of below,

but the here-and-now ever-present sheen

 

of the light in every thing.

Voyeur of daily wonder,

blessed enjambment 

of aliveness and joy.