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). |
Ophelia Thus from the bridge, borne by the careful current on measured waves and shadowed water, between the Scylla and Charybdis of towering banks, she floats with unseeing eyes, life’s last kindness unwilling to draw the curtain on this final view of skies afire, wasted in a life cut short. And so she carries Hamlet’s future, empty now of all but retribution, a wild orgy of death and dying, his bride forgotten in the stream. Line count: 14 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 43 2024 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Sun Must be terrible to be a sun to spend all that time collecting dust spinning in space and sucking in matter having the gravity to squeeze one’s soul totting up numbers astronomical getting hot in the face with all that care setting the spark to the burdened heart and bursting into life and sight incandescent and bright with hope calling the children to gather round weaving your stories of orbit and flight caressing the dark with infinite light aflame with creation and conflagration and then in the height of blazing existence to know that you’re just another pinprick insignificant star in a cast innumerable. Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 42 2024 Prompt: Sun. |
Dreams He’s moving on the dream seller packing up his wares taking down his stall stacking the hopes and wishes rolling up adventures corralling the monsters hitching the unicorns elf and fairy remainders sold in knockdown clusters free dragon with every damsel nightmares all sold out flying dreams are tethered riches cashed and banked old friends folded away and mothballed to be safe and with his last goodbye he’s waiting at the door to claim the morning loaned you won’t be needing now. Line count: 20 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, week 41 2024 Prompt: Dreams. |
A Green and Pleasant Land Now reduced again to the simple cloak, Unadorned with gold and silver filigree, Plain cloth now fitting to our late degree, Yet worn with memories of older folk, Both ancient Greek and those with hearts of oak. Let’s not forget the years of jubilee, Once South Sea washed but now in cold North Sea, The gentle land beneath the Norman yoke. Let greatness stand as does the Parthenon, For Greek reminder of heritance fine, No shame be borne as is for Babylon, Since freedom reigned when it became the time, And glory’s rags dispersed both here and yon, The bells of war no longer for us chime. Line count: 14 Form: Petrarchan sonnet - an eight-line stanza (octave) rhyming ABBAABBA, and a six-line stanza (sestet) rhyming CDCDCD or CDECDE. For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 40 2024 Prompt: None. |