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. |
Insomnia Small hours of the morning and my mind is churning, the cream of the agitated day recycling in my thoughts Sleep forgotten, rest ignored, I pound the jumbled notions till the tumbling, turning tumult spreads the butter of the dawn. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 08.04.21 Prompt: Illustration of butter churning. |
Persilliance Summer and detergent advert billows in the memory surfing with the whitened sheets blowing in the wind. Then the happy housewife’s smile flashed upon the laundry flapping, colours ‘gainst the sun-washed sky, bold within commercial’s tide. Line count: 8 Free verse, trochaic meter For Express It In Eight, 08.03.21 Prompt: Billow. Author’s Note: I leave the etymology of the word “persilliance” to the reader. |
Mean Streets Ragamuffin, a word Victorian and near forgotten, like the ragged urchins in the tales of Dickens, but now resurgent, representative perhaps of a modern age of homelessness and debt. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 07.29.21 Prompt: Ragamuffin. |
Generations The child plucks a shoot from the bush by the door, crushes the leaves in her fingers, sniffs at the pungent smell that wafts her young memory to grandma’s house, and old lady clothes and colours, the scent of lavender. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 07.28.21 Prompt: Lavender. |
A Smile of a Day A benign day it was, the night having rained until the air was fresh and bright, crystal in the morning light of the summer sun unfiltered, and the lawn so green the gardener signed a ceasefire with the dandelions. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 07.27.21 Prompt: Benign. |
Time and Tide From Hunstanton to Wells in Norfolk runs one long, sandy beach where the cold North Sea laps at the land and the shallows extend to the grey distance. Time your visit with an eye on the tides, for when the waters have ebbed, you’ll have a long walk on the damp sands before touching the edge of that disinterested sea. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 07.26.21 Prompt: Shallow waters. |
First Things A cool morning beyond the window opened to the late night air, still dark but growing brighter with the coming dawn. A bird sings, jabbing insistent notes into the silence waiting for the sun. The sound fades as the world gathers its thoughts for the morning. Line count: 8 Free verse For Express It In Eight, 07.24.21 Prompt: Cool. |
My Excuse In attempting this task, I was waylaid by Google and just had to ask, what’s this thing like a bugle? It’s a game, it said, and I gave it a try but ended up dead. Now I’m late - you know why. Line count: 8 Rhyme scheme abab cdcd For Express It In Eight, 07.23.21 Prompt: Attempt. |