napowrimo 5

The official prompt was a container poem -- you take a poem rip all the words out and use the cadence and first letter of each line. 

I used the Irish airman foresees his fate by Yeats. I couldn't think of a theme, my partner suggested making a dress from bread. As you do.

The Goblin Girl

I dreamt that I must make a dress
Somehow all stitched from old rye bread;
To cover up and then undress
The zombie army of undead.
My fingers nimble like a mouse;
My tailor nose is all a twitch.
Never let fairies in your house,
Or they'll enchant your every stitch.
No potion, wizard, dragon maid;
No earthly source, no rite of way;
All endings of all charms are paid
Drown all your tools at break of day
I called a girl to wear the dress
To test the stitching and the wear
And to the ball she went, I guess.
I saw her at the goblin fair

napowrimo day 4

I used the official napowrimo prompt which was liminal zones and used this photo as a visual prompt

https://twitter.com/SpaceLiminalBot/status/1378068006425788419?s=19

In the late Littoral

Sometimes it's hard to remember : we are part of someone else's story, but not the biggest part.

These old red chairs in the forecourt by the ocean,

The scent of salt air, piss, heated oil and bacon.

Smoke in my breath from the fag end in your fingers,

Brut in the air, slicked back hair and just like your suit

You had seen better days.

Phone pressed up against your ear with hunched up shoulder.

Fingers greedy in your tatty pack of Amber Leaf,

Rolling while you're talking, combing through the dog ends

"I called her up," you said, defeated. "I told her..."

"I told her that. I did."

And the wind whipped up and sent your words to oceans,

A tiddler broiled out at sea. White tipped crests of waves

Raced out and fell to foam on sodden dirty sand,

And the water ran in rivulets in the stream,

Along the broken groin.

"I told her," you said again, but firmer and the

Anguish in your voice ran deep. "I said to her, look,

I speak Italian." And the wind blew up again

And whipped your Rizzlas away, sprawled tobacco

On the wet red tables.

And in that moment you were my uncle, broken

As I saw him last, poised beside the rust bound cars

On Cowley Road. And you were franctic and fighting

Hard for one last hit. One last expensive blow out

In Regis-on-the-Sea

Phone still tucked beneath your chin, still lost in hopeless

Conversation, you moved between salt limned tables.

"Excuse me mate, have you got... can I get a paper."

I passed my tin and you picked through, took more than you

Needed for one fat smoke.

"Keep the packet, mate." You smiled and looked embarrassed.

"I shouldn't, mate. I really shouldn't." The packet slid

Inside your pocket and you coughed. "I shouldn't mate, but

Whats the point in stopping when I've already got it,

Big C. Know what I mean.”

And his phone squawked. "Terry, yeah right. Terry, I'm still

I'm still here. Look. You've got to let her know. I do...

I speak... And the wind blew up across the water

And the sand settled in the cracks on the floor. “I

Do. I speak Italian”

We are all parts of other’s stories

But we never know which part.

napowrimo day 3

This weekend was a little full on. The official napowrimo prompt involved making prompt cards and was more labour and thought intensive than I had mental space or energy for.

I have used the allographic prompt which was to write a poem of diminishing syllables, startimg with 11. The first line has 11,  the next 10 and so on ending at 1.

This poem is a little hackneyed,  but inspired by my current environment 

Monosyllabic 

Not awake nor asleep. You live in twilight

Footsteps are leaden on the plastic floor

And the sound of voices from the other 

Conversation fill your silence

Himmer hmm. Blipper blip. Blip.

Since I've seen you, I am 

...  truncated like

You are trun...

Blipper blip

Blip blip

Bleep

napowrimo day 2

The prompt was "the road not taken"

The road not taken

Looking back, I never had control. 

The choice was his, not mine.

I never had a choice. This was not

A turning point. This was not 

A place where two roads meet.

If I had not.... If I had not... for

Twenty years I wrote that night

Again. Made different choices.

If I had stayed at home... If I had

Left the building sooner... If 

I had joined the laughing group 

Of students just ahead.... If I had said

The cooler thing, the kinder thing,

The firmer thing, the ruder thing, if I had said...

If I had said.... If I was kinder, crueler,

Meaner, better. If I was stronger,

Tougher, softer. If I had not been there.

If I had known what to do. If I could

Change his mind. If I had been a better

Woman... If I had...

This was not 

My choice to make, he told me so. I had 

No choices. This was not my road untaken.

It was his. He could have chosen not to.

He could have found a different route.

He could have found a different route.

He could have chosen not to be there, 

to stay at home that night. He could have

Said the kinder thing, the wiser thing.

He could have been a better person. 

He could have walked away. He could have

Been stronger, softer, firmer. He could have

Been a different man. Two roads diverged

One dark night. This was the one he chose.

day 1 napowrimo 2021

My previous napo best is 7 days. I'm going to aim for 8 this time. Let's see how it goes. 

This was the prompt   https://youtu.be/bX_xh2do3eM  

Nonsense verse is hard to write. This kept trying to go story on me.

Lady are you ready to go worm?

Lady are you ready to go worm? 

As the tropes of the brain go to

Cutters in your head and the

Sandy calls your name and the

Dragon has a core and the apple 

Likes to dance with the shelia

In the gig. Yeah! 

Everybody dance!

There's a bier, there's a peer, there's 

A lion in full mane, there's a bee

On a spree when the mandrake's

Gone insane. Bake in tulle with the

Fool, there's a kingdom left to claim! 

Everybody dance!

Yeah! Everybody dance !

Where's the noise from the boys

In the pearls from the girls 

Slam the drum and come around

Yeah. Right. Left. Right. Forward

Come around come around 

Everybody dance! Yeah!

Everybody dance.

There's a tree with a leaf which

Is guarded by a theif and the theif takes

Part in the beating of your art

Go away! go away

!  But the theif is here to stay. 

Everybody dance !

Yeah! Everybody dance.

And the troops in your head go to

Cutters in your brain and the clock

Is a lake and the lake is time to slow 

Slow it down. Slow it down.

Go to ground.  Go to ground

Lady are you ready to go worm?

Day 2 napowrimo2019

(Using the official prompt)

It's not courtship it's just talking
Except that underneath the chatter
In the air holds meaning and the fat
Brown bird high breasted pulls joyant
In the straw within the garden
His head down sticking up on nest
His tail feathers Bob even filled
With hope. Not wishing to disturb
I leave him to it take the other door
Instead.

The air aware with chatter everything
Is calling out in not quite spring
The neighbours talk in Hindi
Big voiced rounded proud of their
New extension and the garden just
Right waiting for the guests
Who are exploring and admiring
Ready for the party
in the summer when it comes
Not wishing to disturb them
I hide within the shelter of the wall
And breathe

And the mother scolds her child who
Runs ahead too bold glowing in the waiting
To be old enough to cross the road
And the child is ready for orange juice
And biscuit and delighted with the story
Of the friend from school that day
And stomping like a dragon and
Planning swings and sunshine and
Not wishing to disturb them
I step out into the road to let
them pass

Day 1

Lune

A grey cobweb hangs
Broken threads
Within the old home

Invisible light
Until a
Ray is caught within

A Web too fragile
For a fly
Can still hold photons

Erasure

That was a tricky monkey!

Exorcisms of mind

 
The womb of art is mind

The gods

Are human intelligence

Minds:

Gods, behind the scenes

Day 9: palinode

A palinode is a retraction of an earlier poem. It would have been neater to do this with a poem I already wrote for napo this year, but I couldn’t make it work. So I've written a reyraction to a poem I wrote as a teenager instead (largerly cos I have changed my mind on it over the years). The teen poem is first and the retraction second

No Compromise
I won't compromise, I won't compromise at all
I will fly and I will soar
I will touch the stars
And I will pocket them
And if I fall, then the ground will break my bones
But understand the ground
Is only there
To stop you falling further

A Compromise
I will compromise, there is no weakness
In learning how to swim
Flowing with the currents
Took me to sideways places
Flexible and motile, darting, changing
The stars reflected all around -
Suspended in my element
There are more directions
Than simply up and down

Day 8:money

Money

Money makes the world go round and rather
Than stop its spin and have the plates fall
It's time to swallow all my foolish dreams and
Grow up tall and hunt for money in the bushes
And the bayou and the monied monkey haunts
Lay out wires across the pathways of the jungle
To catch me wild money, tumbling into pits
I dugged in levy floors and covered with an inch
Of bracken - wild money howling lowd and lewd
In earthen holes with wide eyed owls and snakes
Get me down that twelve-bore-wide-boy
Today we hunt for money perched on trees
Flying green across the moon. Catch it
Stun it. Put it in a zoo. Maybe it isn't money
That I'm thinking of -- but parrots, or wasps
Actually this poem isn't about money, but
Something else entirely -- so there.

Day five : Emily Dickinson rewrite

Regrettably I know huge swarths of Emily Dickinson by heart.   479:Because I could not stop for death, has always bothered me
This parody would work better a little longer (something needs to be said about her bloody tippet for a start) , but I'm racing to catch up with the prompts.

Because I Could not stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death
I became a zombie bride --
And spent the rest of time
Riding shotgun by his side

The horses heads went onwards
Racing towards the sun
He repeated every joke he knew
-- Each and every one

Forever dragged forever
I bored of him -- he tired of me
I wish I'd chosen quiet death
-- Not this eternity

Belated Day 3 : fourteener (not iambic heptameter, cos I can't do meter)

Black Venn

These blackened cliffs are made of mud and walking to the ocean,
And so unspill with every step the unremembered dead;
Thrown out -- like breaths, the memories of a shallow sea,
That pooled in lapping silence o'er this tepid shelf of life.
All brought to fecund flower in one vital summer's heat
That lasted for a chron; two hundred million years ago
Bouyant with benthonic grace in the Tethys dying swell -

-- Here the bold Atlantic came to birth and rude aborning
Ripped continents apart. Opened with a midwife's knife
The mid atlantic ridge strides high, splits plates asunder
And sets land sailing, breaking, drifting, dancing to the north.
Submerged, subsumed, growing, scaling, dipping, twisting, changing.
Rising from the depths,  climbing from the ocean that obscured,
Waters fall before them and these cliffs walk up towards sky.

Oceans find new paths; families and orders rise and fall;
Birds wheel noisy in the heavens, fish drift quiet in shoals.
Deserts race with earnest drought, blink with angry heat, blow out, die;
And softened summers bend their backs to winter's frantic scolds,
And deep within these banks are laid the bones of creatures strange
Who shall not swim these seas again, whose days are long gone past;
Whose memories are faded save for those the black cliffs hold;

Walking, burdened with time: they pace slowly, surely onwards
To an ocean born of change, disruptive of their aeon.
They bear no malice, merely old memories to unload;
Spewing forth the dead upon the sand -- their own digested skin
Tasted and spat out by the ever hungry churning waves;
They walk, they pace, they stumble towards the ancient new
Spill forth their sacrifice, bend down before the present.
Proud in these final dying moments. They forget --  release

Day 2.5: stars

We live in a galaxy of birth
In a cut glass night of expectation
Exhaling breath in crystal shards
We looked up
And saw the ribbon of the Milky Way
Bold against the sky
And rich with nebulae and birth

Noisy with the chatter of creation
In nurseries of gas and matter
Protons fuse and burst and stars ignite
There are stars up there whose light
We'll never see --- stars just born
Radiant and racing towards a present
Ten thousand years away

There are stars there died before
We took our mother's milk
And trod on earth -- stars that burnt
In one long fury, blazed with angry light
And guttered out. Long dead.
Sending ghostlight from their past
But brilliant in this moment

Exhaling breath in crystal shards
Above us weaved the Milky Way
We fused and burnt a memory
Of a moment. Ghostlit in our heads
Actions lead to deeds we'll never see
Radiant and racing towards a present
On a cut glass night of expectation

Napowrimo Day 2: a negation

A negation

I was not “yours” --
A person cannot own a person
The best you could've hoped for
Was mutual support

I was not a “goddess”
This does not distress me
I never longed for deity
My feet were never made of clay
But walked the earth on flesh

They felt like pounded meat
In those new red sandals
You said you so admired
And my steps were “small and even”
Because I was hobbling in pain

I am not a “classic beauty”
I look a little like my father
And I have my mother's nose
A sculptor would not feel the need
To map my face in stone

And even in verse you gloss
Over my particulars
Save for my “raven locks”
And that was dye
A fact you should have known

I was always just myself
Why should I be compared
To someone else?
Venus was a slut, and
Helen had a lousy time
All things considered
-- As for Callistrata?
I think you made her up.

No great tragedy rendered us asunder
I would have traveled with you longer
But our paths diverged.
Your company was easy
But we never climbed
The heights of passion.
That was written later
In revisions of your press

Finally, I would like it
If you recalled these verses
As my husband might find out.
                       

NAPOWRIMO DAY 1 (prompt: I guess it's too late)

I guess it's too late to get my purse now the bus has gone and I am on it
My keys, my phone, my credit cards left sitting strange on some car bonnet
I guess it's too late to take a breath, unquench my rage, unvent my spleen
Better to have my worldly goods, than tell some crap cyclist what I mean
I guess it's too late to leave on time and catch the bus that leaves at eight
And miss the pavement cycling freak who knocked me flat outside my gate
I guess it's too late to pour again , unspill the coffee, unstain the shirt
And then not have to change again cos I put on one that's smeared with dirt
I guess it's too late to go back to sleep and wake again without the hurt
That churned within my sleeping mind, so my first words were words of hurt
I guess it's too late to start again. I guess it's too late to start again
It's far too late to start again

                                                 It's never too late to start again
It’s never too late for anything. To breathe and pause and start again
Rub down the bruises and numb the pain. It’s never too late to start again
Cancel the cards and recut the keys, accept the blow from insurance fees
Make all the calls and fix what you can, leave all the rest -- it can go hang
It’s never too late for anything, the day’s what you make it at anytime

Pomegranates

Yes, I have pomegranate in my museli
I used to eat the flesh and shuck the seeds
But now I eat those seeds too
Because they're good for you

Day 7 write a love poem to something inqnimate

To an empty packet of Amber leaf

Were you using me, or l you?
Looking back its hard to tell

So close I was defined by you
Friends invited me and got you too

Made adjustments to their plans
for our relationship, accepted you

As part of me. And you were
Part of Me. Bad news, girlfriend

Rebellion sucked in at every breath
Two fingers lifting in the air

You were festivals and fiesches. Vodka
in the kitchen and hours on the phone

You were writing, ashtray by the keyboard
sparking up when words came wrong

At midnight you gave streetlight
All its meaning, smoke gives

light its shape, and you were comfort
In the lonely hours. I reached for you

And I can still remember how the room
Smelt, your tang upon my fingers and

How in mornings you would catch
Me with a jolt, turn my legs to jelly

As I felt you running through my
Veins, until you hit my brain and

I grew dizzy with the need of you
and I can still remember

The sound of metal as it hits the flint
The spark, the smell of gas, the flash

As I ignited you, drew in to lungs
That knew they hated you

To a stitch upon my side. A rasp
Upon my throat. A pain within my centre

A fear of you that lived sideways
To my love. My bad news passion

I was defined by need of you and still
I miss the way you made me feel

NaPoWriMo Day four

Prompt: a lune

A Lune

Existential angst occured
While trying to write doggrel
Feeling better now

NapowriMo Day Three

NaPoWriMo: Day three: A charm

A Charm

Borage from my garden to help the power of speech
A  bessom from the birch tree to bring it to my reach
Budding shoots and feathers to grow a stable nest
Lode stone buried in the soil to lay my fear to rest
A blessing from the goddess and it bring no harm
Seeds from the dandelion blown to seal the charm

Napowrimo Day Two

Prompt: A myth, Not Greeco/Roman

Danu

She was the water and he was the tree
And the sky was fallen down upon her
And the tree was the world and the water
Was life and the water was death and
The sky was the world and under the water
The world was the death of the world

And he was the tree and the tree was
The branch and the branch was the leaf
And the leaf caught the sun and the sun
Was the start of the life of the tree
And the tree was the life of all worlds

And the worlds were the roots at the base
Of the tree which stood in the bog where
The water ran free and the water was life
And the water was death and the water
Was She and She was the life of the tree

She was the water and He was the tree
And the sky was fallen down upon Her