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Printed from https://shop.writing.com/main/books/item_id/2299350-Promptly-4-and-5
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Rated: 13+ · Book · Cultural · #2299350
Poems for years 4 and 5 of the Promptly Poetry Challenge.
A year's worth of poems, every week for 52 weeks, spanning 2023 and 2024, plus the year following, from August 2024 to August 2025.(provided I live that long, of course).
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January 16, 2025 at 11:33am
January 16, 2025 at 11:33am
#1082415


Square Peg

There is that in us
There is
That fits not in
That somehow we’re an insert
From another place
In a world of balance
Like a bench
Placed conveniently by a lake
In a forest
A sore thumb
In a land of nimble fingers
A misplaced comma
In an eloquent sentence.

Not a gross intrusion
Or exclamation
In a crowded space
But an intimation of otherness
A hint
Of something lost
Or not yet found
So it’s only now
In the quiet places
Where silence breathes
And thought arrested
Finds the slightest wrinkle
In the ironed sheet.

We are indeed
In the world
But not of it.



Line count: 29
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 23 2025
Prompt: As per illustration.
January 6, 2025 at 2:20pm
January 6, 2025 at 2:20pm
#1082048
Rowan Atkinson Updated

No doubt Mr Bean can match grateful,
he being an actor sublime -
in slapstick he’s really a plateful,
in satire he absolute shines.

But now he’s entered the arena
of political comment sans joke,
displaying a side of him meaner
and terribly hard on the woke.

And in truth I like him the better,
as a comic I found him quite crude;
his humour seemed childish and wetter,
now he looks to be starting a feud.

For the audience now is much harder,
the lefties impossible to please -
there’s no tougher food in the larder,
he will wish that he kept them in freeze.



Line count: 16
Rhymed abab
For Promptly Poetry Challenge 5, Week 22
Prompt: Use the words bean, can, match, grateful.
December 30, 2024 at 11:20am
December 30, 2024 at 11:20am
#1081714
A typical troll.


I Like Trolls

Not being much for mythological beings,
reality being enough for my feelings,
I had no fav’rites adored nor foes to rag on
apart from a weakness for another’s dragon,
till, when pushed by contest’s requirement,
a troll proved my highly unlikely inspirement.

An initial story provided education,
destroying all trolls’ accepted reputation,
oh they’re large, there’s no denying that,
but in their stumbling there’s a certain eclat,
with character rather more gentle than bad,
and wisdom unexpected in simplicity clad.

So, now that I know the troll in his fulness,
I reject all the tales that speak of pure dullness -
all the trolls that I know are sharp and precise,
they are friendly indeed and not prone to lies,
as companions they’re great and soothe all your worry,
and so outwardly ugly they make enemies scurry!



Line count: 18
Rhymed couplets
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 21 2024
Prompt: Write a poem about a mythological creature.
December 29, 2024 at 10:58am
December 29, 2024 at 10:58am
#1081682
Life 2

Seasons turn with the winding earth,
our need for order dividing
one from another, the same round,
just as all things grow from their birth,
upward with spring’s bright rush riding,
till summer’s fulfillment is found.

And so into autumn’s harvest,
like fruit from the branch we tumble,
still warm from the westering sun,
as earth turns now to its darkest,
agèd and frail we must stumble,
with ancestral dust become one.



Line count: 12
Form: Zenith - Any number of sixains. (Your poem must have two = 12 lines.), 8-syllable lines. rhyme scheme: a-b-c-a-b-c d-e-f-d-e-f.
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 20 2024
Prompt: Zenith form.
December 20, 2024 at 4:26pm
December 20, 2024 at 4:26pm
#1081351
Snow

It snowed today,
swathes of little flakes
windblown across our vision,
literally laterally,
coating the deck like matt paint,
slowly thickening
to a crust of white puff pastry,
glistening in reflected light
from our window.

We didn’t go out,
but watched content
with winter’s usual greeting,
Christmas still to come
and sunshine and more snow
before next year.

It’s enough that seasons
still chase the chosen round,
unaffected by our sins.



Line count: 18
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 19 2024
Prompt: Use these three words: snow, sunshine, glistening.
December 13, 2024 at 2:42pm
December 13, 2024 at 2:42pm
#1081130
Serendipity

Like a Beatles medley
of endless invention and chance
life erupts in happy accident
as moment follows moment
tumbling in abandoned glee
always onward never halted
a chain of golden links
poured in perpetual piste.

Is it all then in serendipity
launched haphazard to no end
a fortune favoured forever?

Oh, there’s an end
and turning back
we understand
that all was for
the best.



Line count: 16
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 18 2024
Prompt: Serendipity.
December 2, 2024 at 2:41pm
December 2, 2024 at 2:41pm
#1080747
Gratitude

The problem with expressing gratitude,
it often appears as mere platitude;
so common the wording of thank you,
it’s only just better than blank you.

And though there are no languages
where gratitude commonly languishes
without expression in one form or another,
there might be one we’re yet to discover.

In the end it’s probably best
to stick with the words of the rest,
and give a delighted impression -
do not stoop to a surly confession.



Line count: 12
Rhymed aabb
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 17
Prompt: Thankfulness.
November 26, 2024 at 12:53pm
November 26, 2024 at 12:53pm
#1080521
Nomad Song

I think they will say of me
that what steps I left were free
for roots I never put down
and wandered from town to town.



Line count: 4
Form: Tanaga - quatrain, syllables 7777, rhymed aabb
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 16
Prompt: Write a tanaga.
November 23, 2024 at 11:26am
November 23, 2024 at 11:26am
#1080379
For Andrea Again

I am reminded of those late nights
when you snuggle close and ask
“Are you awake? Tell me a story.”
And I search my empty brain
and speak of memories of youth
running free in a dry and desert land
and how loneliness struck me
in my damp and misty homeland
of friends that came and went
and yes I’ve been alone at times.

And you recall those times alike
though now that we’re just you and me
and how strange it is that it’s enough
and all our gratitude’s for now
and not the past.



Line count: 15
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 15
Prompt: Picture of a Thank you note.
November 17, 2024 at 8:50am
November 17, 2024 at 8:50am
#1080081
Endgame

The first and last, alpha and omega,
so life plays out its petty dance,
right to the end when breath comes short
and every nuance snatched at,
only to slip through the grasp,
aged fingers awkward in their haste
to hold the final moments hesitant,
the sight now dim in fading light.

Thus poor creature huddled in vain,
resigned through long acquaintance,
yet unable to loose its grip in final sigh,
would say quite bold, “Yes, now would be
the moment, smoothed by constant touch
to familiarity and rest.”

And then the life force, instinct, will,
turns in an instant ferocious still,
no, just one more breath, a second glance,
before I go - it’s not too much to ask.



Line count: 18
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 14 2024
Prompt: Use at least three of the following words in your poem: stunning, nuance, colorful, last, first.

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