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). |
A Soft Day A soft day as the Irish have it to describe those grey days so natural to the British isles when the cloud comes down to meet us shrouded in gloom and dim light with rain so fine it falls not but inhabits the atmosphere soaking nothing but arraying our clothes with the diamonds of tiny drops held on the fibres miniature pinpricks of moisture and we swim in the mist creatures of the silent world coddled in chilly companionship grateful for the veil that hides our secrets. A soft day indeed and the mark that seals our souls with talk of weather as though anything but this gentle touch could steal our hearts. Line count: 23 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 5, Week 6 Prompt: A rainy day. |
Pumpkins Pale and protected from the sun, ghost pumpkins white await their fate, dreaming perhaps of Florida where their sickly hue might tan to burnished gold of bolder mien, or orange from the salon’s sessions, a brazen bunch of bulging beam, and ready now for Halloween with toothy grin and archèd brow, brain aflame with darkened thought, as evil creeps extended night, the world embraced by fearful dream. And so to reach their pumpkin calling, no longer wan and unappealing, but ghosts arisen from the dead with furbished claim upon their rights. Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 5, Week 5 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Celebration Twenty-four today, twice twelve, scribbler’s ship sails on, literary legend so loquacious, vaunted vessel of valiant view. So sails the ship on spider’s seas, wanderer of web, warp and woof, gallant the galleon, great the game, she bends to the briny breeze. Calls to the captain the clever crew, cheers to the challenge of twenty-four more, roistering rum ration raised to the roof, sozzled the scribes in sweet sentiment. Alike in action, all assert their aim, onward only to open ocean, they raise their glasses in tumult and praise, birthday the happiest to Writing dot com! Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 4 2024 Prompt: Write a celebratory birthday poem to WdC. |
Advice Mind how you go, hard times ahead, take care, if you’d get home to bed, the future is a place unknown, be wary of the traps and stones, keep eyes upon the winding path and drifting snow, so guard ambition on the heights, mind how you go. The storm will pass, the night will end, you’ll ride the beast bad luck will send, if you can grasp and not let go your destination’s cheery glow, beyond the sands sweet meadows lie, bright flowered grass, the valleys wide, the days so bright - the storm will pass. Line count: 12 Form: Wrapped refrain For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 3 2024 Prompt: Wrapped Refrain form - 2 or more stanzas of 6 lines each; Meter: 8,8,8,8,12,12 and Rhyme Scheme: a,a,b,b,c,c. In each stanza, the first 4 syllables (or 4 single-syllable words) in the first line must be the last 4 syllables (or 4 single-syllable words) at the end of the last line. |
Day As the day unfolds, an unravelling bud in the morning light and the diamond dew sparks the spider’s web, the world turns to meet the risen sun and the summer smiles supreme. There, ‘neath the laden branch, leafy, dark and shadowed, where the night hides cool in the soil, the ants go feverish in their task, secret manoeuvres underground. Out on the lawn where the heat settles, heavy and baking the desiccated grass, and time holding its breath while the noon rides high overhead, so spends the day in sloth. And evening draws on reluctant, loth to release its hold on the world, stealing the hour with fading light far into the hush of tomorrow, and thus unfolds the day. Line count: 20 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 2 2024 Prompt: As the day unfolds. |
This is the first of the poems for the fifth year of Promptly Poetry Challenge 2024/2025. All previous poems are for 2023/2024. Renewal Oh, there’s new beginnings of sorts, it’s true, made a few myself, so I should know, and you may not think this applies to you, but we’re all human here below. The plain fact is your load won’t change, your backpack’s filled with things that stay, you’ll need that guilt and that ball and chain, you are who you are - we’re built that way. Of course, for a while you’ll feel just fine, a new start’s bound to make you smile, but you won’t get far before you’ll find your shoes do pinch your toes so vile. Your muscles ache and your brow asweat, resolution fades, ambition tires, you wish that you could just forget the thing to which you now aspire. You see, to start again you must divest yourself of burden’s load, good and bad must go, the shine, the rust, and leave them by this lifelong road. That’s not so easy you will find, but I know one who can help you here; your cares and woes He will unbind, renew your soul and free from fear. Line count: 24 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge 5, Week 1 2024 Prompt: New beginnings. |
This is the last of the poems for the fourth year of Promptly Poetry Challenge 2023/2024. All subsequent poems are for 2024/2025. Expanse Oh Kansas horizon so flat like a pancake or ruler or hedgehog though the last is somewhat obscure. Line count: 1 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 2024, Week 52 Prompt: Shape Poetry/Concrete Poetry. |
Dandelion Cast your fate to the wind and ride the wayward air in adventure blind and expectation fair. Cradled in the hand of fate may your landing find good soil in fields great and climate kind. But root both fast and deep to stake determined claim your face unto the sun must keep new glory bright as flame. Line count: 12 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge, 07.17.24 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Dance is Still Movement Random blasts of the synapses not physical like Cocker’s but the brain firing the body with jerky impulse reaction the music alive in transmission one with the meaningless word and David Byrne reinventing dance as immersion in sound. Talking Heads robotic obfuscation as art form they plough their ragged field and Byrne their scarecrow striding the otherworld in song and dance somehow divine. Line count: 14 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 50 Prompt: Dance. Note: Yes, this was written as a response to Ned’s poem on Joe Cocker. When nothing has occurred to me for a week, an immediate thought on hearing her idea was a straw to be grasped. David Byrne is surely Joe Cocker after intellectual processing. |
Magical Madrigal I’ve tried to make these verses best, always at pains to pass the test, but sometimes I’ve had no real rest till falling back upon a jest. Perhaps it be the word falls dumb upon my ear so often numb, as if my mind was steeped in rum, for answers to the prompt don’t come. And so in situation tragic, I find myself in climes pelagic, in deserts without all foragic - it seems I’ve no ideas on magic. Line count: 12 Rhymed aaaa bbbb cccc For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 49 Prompt: Magical. |