Day 2: Kay Ryan

For today's poem I'm using yesterday's Kay Ryan prompt - so short and clipped and mysterious... okay then.




Sloth

He curls himself around 
the nearest branch already
almost immobile. Minute
mechanics of movement
a feat 
of exhausting
contemplation,
unrelenting (but unbothered)
determination. 
Coarse as a gruff
rebuttal, the sloth is 
an excellent Zen master. 
Life in slow-mo,
no-go,
negotiating
space. Monotony
monopolised.
In varying degrees, life 
shifts: night terrors,
morning mantras. 
But the habits
of stasis 
remain.
Evolutionary dogma
and all of that
(permanent pain.)

Day 1: Haibun

 

 'April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers...' 

 ~ Edna St Vincent Millay

Yay, another NaPoWriMo begins! 

Today's prompt is to write a poem in the style of Kay Ryan, but I find this too difficult, so I'm going with yesterday's early bird prompt of writing a haibun.


Observations on April 

April comes on like a blush, the first flush of the year's love. Each day begins with a buoyancy. The sky is blue again, benevolent. The days ahead beckon yellow, open and sun-clad. Sliver of a new moon adorns the sky on this first April night like a diamond earring, or some gracious, celestial smile. A promise. Everything begins here.

Season of new songs
trees glitter in the distance
incandescent air

Day 29: Friday Feeling

Not feeling the 'remembrance' prompt today (well, not yet anyway...) More of a go-with-the-feel-flow of observation.



Friday Feels

Jazz floats on the air 
like a sultry smoke, bubbles
over rain-dappled pavements,
a hopskotch of delight. 
Music to carry flowers by: 
white roses
and lilac tulips. 
Music to watch pigeons by:
iridescent bebop swagger. 
Music to come alive by:
effervescent overspill,
every single thing a fascination.

Day 28: Story

 

Today's prompt is to tell a story, backwards. 



Life of a Leaf

A leaf falls from a tree. 
A copper goodbye, dipped in ochre light.
Green, a memory now, veined in its heart. 
Crinkled and curled at the first feel of cold,
head wilts, bows to teardrop pose. 

Summer a dream, a frond-filled fantasia,
frills and thrills of possibility.  
Tendrils leap into a pageant of palms
that cheer in the breeze, ever-present applause.
Until May beckons a glorious chorus of green.  

Sun, shine, rain, hail; it holds tight, tensed. 
Fist of belief, clenched against the elements.  
From small beginnings, a bud appears. 

Day 27: Long Lines

Today's prompt is to write a poem using long lines. Hmmm, long lines are often my downfall, so I do like to keep them clipped and short, but hey, I'll go with the flow today so...


Story-full

Today a story of sights: 
fluid script of serene come-and-go waves,
curlicues of white as taut as intricate lace. 
The calligraphy of tree branches as they wait for leaves. 
One magpie's unlucky black and white fly-by.  
Cars that pass oblivious, slow verbs in the distance. 
Clouds that can't seem to make up their mind -
stay, go, float, fall; all the same, whatever which way. 
Two lone pink flowers on the cherry blossom at the end of the lane -
spring's mascot, weak-willed, biding its blooms.  
And for the epilogue - one blue-winged, russet-blushed swallow's
sleek dart-dip, home again, (heart again), to announce a new season 
to the world beneath its wings.

Day 26: The Heart

I didn't like the prompt today - the call and response one - but instead was inspired by this picture above from the brilliant comic strip: Heart and Brain 

Hearts are really amazing aren't they?



Occupations of the Heart 

Optimist.

Astronomer.

Trapeze artist

and trampolinist.

Exuberant existentialist.

Visionary 

with far-reaching range, 

rose-tinted viewer.

Secret-keeper,
seldom speaker,
Lie-detector, extraordinaire.
Smile-maker, 
cheerleader,

song-singer,
joy-bringer, 

jazz -shaker,  

involuntary beat-maker. 

(Wild percussionist -
upon occasion.)

Full-time lover,

poet,
enchanter. 

Default dreamer. 

Treasurer 

of non-monetary wealth.

Path-maker,

rule-breaker,

rebel, with many causes. 

Hope-hoarder. 

Artist, alchemist.

Reluctant horologist. 

Instigator 
of much silly behaviour,

architect of extravagant plans.

Master mechanic -

the muscle

in every sense. 

Believer.

Trail-blazer.

Insistent dauntless seeker.  

Soft at core

but persistent, resilient 

hard worker.
Prizefighter.

Invincible, almost. 

Under-appreciated life-giver

in more ways than one;
(see above).

Day 25: Stolen Lines

Excuse my absence, it's been a tough few weeks unfortunately in which a crisis has ousted poetry for a more pressing practicality.

But. Onwards. For poetry is always a salve.

I accidentally read the prompt wrong today - instead of stealing one famous line to start with, I'm using several. A big nod to T.S Eliot.


Another

Maybe April is the cruelest month -
breeding love out of the deadlands,
mixing memory with regret, new buds
with old imaginings.
For to make an end is to make a beginning.

How long, how often, we've tried to start anew,
but happiness is a grafted plant
that refuses to grow in shallow soil
rife with rocks, and not-so-nimble fingers.
Do I dare disturb it?

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
the taste of each new day a stimulant;
night, a back-to-black affair.
Where have all the bells gone?
Exultant, ye who go on.

Let us go then, you and I
to a place just shy of sky, huddled
together so well they'll strain to know us. 
Consider my universe disturbed.
Love is a madman's song
querying the dawn.

Day 11: Detail & Abstraction

Today's prompt is to write a poem in which you closely describe an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does.


Today

The window pane brailled with raindrops, 
grey pearls of bejewelled matter. 
The new leaves beginning on trees
lime tufts; confetti-flung green. 
Sky a vast streaked Impressionist swirl.
Daffodils playing a tune of mirth
on the sidelines of road, continuous concerto 
of yellow cheer.

Happiness is a keen anomaly.

Day 10: Book Spine Poem

Well, I never knew there was such a thing as a 'book spine' poem - but there is! It consists basically of stacking books on top of one another with their titles in a poem alignment.  Which is today's lovely and very fun, very addictive prompt. I couldn't stop doing them, once I got one (and my bookshelves are in a mess to prove it!)

Hello sunshine!

The grass is singing, 

the people look like like flowers at last

eating fire, 

butterflies and moths. 

Bring me sunshine, 
wild
tigers in red weather
ways of seeing
astonishment.  

The versions of us 
lost in translation:
pure
wild 
love poems. 

Paris Poem

Paris was ours, 
Paris to the moon!
Paris, Paris -
a moveable feast. 
Paris, mon amour. 

 A Couplet on Being Single

In a town of five thousand people
the heart is a lonely hunter.  

Travel Haiku

On the road
lonesome traveller, 
big magic.

 

Tender is the night.

Beloved 

nocturnes -

gilead

to the moon.

Redemption

The snow queen,
the ice queen,
there but for the
green heart.  

Love begins in winter:
the spinning heart, 
the magnetic north;
rapture.  

Dystopia
 
A confederacy of dunces
the world to come.  


 

Day 9: Frightening Line

 

Today's prompt is to write a poem that contains a line you are afraid to write -  be it a truth, a fear, an unsettling image. 

Hmm. The truth, the whole truth,the scary truth and nothing but.

(I must confess I took some inspiration from this ace song I've been listening to: Thousand Eyes by Of Monsters and Men)


Thousand

I watch it all 
with a thousand eyes:
how I loved you, how I lost you. 
Stuck on repeat, replay.
Every day, a new reel
I'm forced to see;
glare of multi-faceted regret.  

At night, the subconscious loots
through the loss, unstoppable. 
Greedy for guilt, my masochistic mind
can't let it go, tries in vain
to find a consolation -
there is none.

On the surface, you see me bluff 
nonchalance.
But it's never that, not even close.

Your image splits me open:
a thousand different things 
I could have done... could have said.
The thousand ways I saw the world
refract your light -
reduced now to a shuttered one.  
Possibility has a lifespan it seems,
much too brief for love's.  

And the thousand days since -
gone by
in the blink of an eye
and still, I'm there.
Sometimes I wonder
if I'll ever be able
to leave you behind.