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). |
Evening Old age is like a setting sun Red and gold in a painted sky Heat and light bleeding from an open wound A cloak of darkness flung upon the world. Line count: 4 Form: Pantun. Four lines, with each line having eight to 12 syllables. The first two lines typically establish a theme, while the second two lines provide a twist or unexpected conclusion. For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 48 Prompt: Write a pantun. |
Adventure Mud mosaic of dragon scales she strides the path now desiccated the lakebed wrinkled carapace and treads the lines of broken silt in dreams of patterns underfoot while feathered finger points the way in wild intent haphazard her steps through lands imagined. Follow the line indented way these the sign for fantasy play. Line count: 12 Free verse plus a little rhyming For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 47 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Mists Africa does not waste its time with mist, its sunwashed plains are seldom kissed, precipitation saved for thunderstorms and cloudbursts being the season’s norm. And so I found the mists of northern shores a mystical, mythical dream from literary lore, a secret land of silent sight constricted by guarded peace and softest grey restricted. Inside this insubstantial world now shrunk with distant ocean’s breath inhaled and drunk, I find ancestral cause for celebration and I, in mists, a certain affirmation. Line count: 12 Rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 46 Prompt: Mist. |
Mirror Ah, always the same old question who’s this and who’s that who’s thinnest, who’s fat who’s pretty in pink and never mind the stink who’s wise as an owl with a voice that’s just foul who’s strutting today will be crawling in May who sings like a lark but shouts in a bark who colours her hair when nobody’s there who sings in the bath a complete psychopath who fiddles and diddles in the middle of riddles whoever asks me again will hear from me then I’m only a mirror and not wisdom’s pillar now think of another damn question. House Martell Line count: 22, word count: 100 Rhymed aabb For "Game of Thrones" The North Remembers, Mirror Mirror Prompt 1 Poetry and Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 45 Prompt: "Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the ________ of them all?" Note: This fits so well with Promptly's prompt that I thought I'd try submitting it. There's no rule that insists on newly written stuff and it was written less than two months ago, so here it is. If you reject it, I guess I'll write another, but the concept fills my head and I can't think of anything else at the moment. |
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. |
Evening Golden glory a furnace in the sky the sun sets in molten incandescence its blazing liquid ore radiant in flow across the sky aflame as burning light the red hot land and coal dark trees in fury’s fires ablaze with sullen wrath while still the silent waters reflect in rose a dream of petal paint and power in pink here the bamboo bridge in blackened shade breaks the bond of bank and stream and night climbs stealthy with inky cloak to draw its veiled hand upon the dying day. Line count: 12 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 39 2024 Prompt: As per illustration. |