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. |
Mountain The bare face of the mountain rises above in naked disdain for the lives of mere mortals, assembled like attendants below, in awe appropriate and shadowed humility, scrabbling in the scree of the peak’s exfoliation. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 04.14.23 Prompt: Scree. |
Mushrooms 2 So they dropped the bombs, presumably from boredom, throwing them at the cities, those wartime committees, but they really should have known, the times being upside down, that mushroom clouds intended become cloud mushrooms instead. Line count: 8 Rhymed (approximately) couplets For Express It In Eight, 04.13.23 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Sparky His eyes that sparkle with delight, mischief being his prime intent, inform us of his taken right to lead us on without assent. And if we acquiesce indeed, end in searching for the car key, it’s only true that we concede it’s not chance his nickname’s Sparky. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 04.12.23 Prompt: Sparky. |
Kites Perhaps all kites should be yellow, it being such a happy colour, and happiness being the object of the young soul holding the string. And if you’re going to dream, yellow being opposite to blue, it seems ideal to take you from the blues and into the blue. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 04.10.23 Prompt: I Dream of Yellow Kites by Retta Bono. |
Sharks But No Jets Hark, hark, the sharks do bark and sometimes ride the surf; they do it just to make their mark and delineate their turf. With jaws like saws they’ll give you pause and make you yell for mother. Don’t hang about to find the cause, run faster than the others. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 04.08.23 Prompt: Image of a shark (probably from Jaws) emerging from the water. |
Down in the Dumps “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…” Lesley Gore’s hit song from her album of the same name, 1963. Yes, you may complain and that’s your right, but it’s my party and I'm drained of fight, since my house has been lost in a sinkhole, I’ve been trying to have fun in a bowl. And now you understand the reason I grieve; we’ll have to climb if ever to leave, which is why I cannot be so bright - I am trapped by my fear of heights. Line count: 8 Rhymed aabb For Express It In Eight, 04.07.23 Prompt: Worst place to throw a party - in a sinkhole. |
Buffaloes “An old cowpoke went riding out…” Ghost Riders in the Sky by Stan Jones Another one saw buffaloes adrift in that same sky, and maybe no one really knows what rides the storm on high. For these had horns of shining steel and hooves that struck with sparks the painted sky annealed, and foreboding ever dark. Line count: 8 Rhymed abab For Express It In Eight, 04.05.23 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Lost Far off in the darkened marsh, where only the tallest rushes rise as ghosts from the blanket fog, an arm lifts a lantern, aglow and shrouded in the turbid air, its light bound in swathes of mist; powerless to rend the gloom, it paints the darkness red. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 04.03.23 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Water Vole A favourite animal, the water vole, lives by the river, in a hole; though known by many as water rat, he really isn’t a bit like that, being more a sort of miniature beaver, a swimmer at heart and dry land leaver, forever united in the literary soul are the water vole and his friend, the mole. Line count: 8 Rhymed couplets For Express It In Eight, 04.02.23 Prompt: Write a poem about an animal. |