Entries to Express It In Eight from September 2020 to the present . |
The number of poems enforces the use of blog format with ten poems per page. |
Last Motel If memory be the suitcase of the mind in which we keep mementoes of the past, just tokens of the times and things we find to lay before our final steps at last, our lives dragged to awaited destination, the baggage of existence unpacked now and laid upon the bed of rumination, a last goodbye and final awkward bow. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 04.30.23 Prompt: Suitcase. |
Release The spirit of Endurance, freed of bureaucratic chains. dances with the trees in the garden of delights, waving his mask in wild gyration before his eyes now open, and voice raised high in daylight: never again, you fools, you fools. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 04.29.23 Prompt: Photo of a statue dancing around a tree. |
Superhero Hey, Mr Superhero, what’s your super power, getting older very slow, make a minute last an hour, find the car keys when they’re lost, eat more hot dogs than the rest, catch the bullets, dodge the cost, what makes you the very best? Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 04.28.23 Prompt: National Superhero Day. |
Difficult It’s not the town that’s Difficult but it’s a long way from Easy, if that’s your goal or else result, just the spelling makes me queasy; it really gets me in a State (oh surely you will hear my plea), too many letters on my plate, so Difficult in Tennessee. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 04.26.23 Prompt: Difficult, Tennessee. |
Brave New Sheep Modern man identical, reduced by society’s tentacle, drained of individual thought, trained, maimed and bought, fashioned to fit the mould, designed for a world grown old, peace they have at a cost, when everything else is lost. Line count: 8 Rhyming couplets For Express It In Eight, 04.25.23 Prompt: Illustration of the minimal sign for person. |
John Cage “Begin at the beginning,” the king said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland “Begin anywhere,” said John Cage as well he might, the man with a blank page and ambient sounds in the night. I wonder why he bothered at all an opening to imply, since random sounds he knew would fall in the silence he supplied. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 04.24.23 Prompt: “Begin anywhere.” – John Cage. |
Fairy Tale Alice is out catching fairies in the dark night once so scary and, though this might seem contrary, (more so if you live on the prairie) she’s consistent compared to Mary, her sister who used to be hairy (it’s enough to make one wary), is bald as a coot and won’t vary. Line count: 8 Rhymed aaaaaaaa For Express It In Eight, 04.22.23 Prompt: As per Illustration. |
Interior Arrival in the early morning, when Beverley Minster was reaching for the dawn sky, a wedding cake of towering spires in white stone, and inside, the hush of vast expanses lit by the dawn light through painted windows, an emptiness filled only with awe and the sudden echoing of a Bach concerto, as the organist practised in peace. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 04.21.23 Prompt: Write an interior poem. Note: A minster is a cathedral size church formerly attached to a monastery. Beverley’s, in Yorkshire, is smaller than most cathedrals but exquisite in its soaring height and Gothic design. |
Rhyming the 19th Century Poet William Makepeace Thackeray is often accused of quackery, although I don’t know who said it (or, if it’s written, I read it), it’s true he wrote Vanity Fair and satirised humanity there, which sounds as boring as hell, deserving the rhyme that I tell. Line count: 8 Rhymed aabb For Express It In Eight, 04.20.23 Prompt: Quackery. |
Firmament Consider the wide sky above, the great emptiness overhead, yet He paints it broadly with love from foggy grey to evening red; such care upon a mere backdrop, He scatters celestial fires, all this to bring us to full stop, to lift us above our desires. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab, syllables eight per line For Express It In Eight, 04.19.23 Prompt: Write a poem about something overhead. |