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). |
Cat Show me your stripes and I can see your cat you don’t have to gripe to communicate that. Leatherette armchairs temptation to them no matter your care they’re shredded to hem. Though kitten will flay you so soft and so pretty forgiveness is true for your darling kitty. Line count: 12 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 38 2024 Prompt: Stripes. |
Faith 2 Faith takes no heed of setback the wandering trail of life she keeps her gaze on the target and shuns all feelings of strife It’s true that Hope is her sister and dresses in similar style but Faith cares not for appearance and faces her fate without guile For the journey she ever is ready she turns not a moment away her friends rely on her vision and know she’ll not lead them astray. Line count: 12 Rhyming scheme: abcb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 37 2024 Prompt: Faith. |
What’s in a Name? Zanzibar! Shangri-La! Coromandel, Samarkand and Ultima Thule, the names drip like honey, sparkled with bright jewels from our lips, enchanted sounds that weave such magic in stories bold and romances high and tragic. Mandalay and Cathay! Line count: 8 Form: Tigerjade; syllables 3,3,12,12,12,12,3,3; rhymed aabbccdd For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 36, 2024 Prompt: None. |
Doors Able was I ere I saw Elba, across the sea from Corsica, my captors forcing a humiliation on me. An emperor I was, held Europe to the last, but downfall clouds the past, no longer am I free. And I who owned a palace am taken now with malice and judgement oh so callous unto the house you see. So low am I become that still I count my crumbs, my house may be a slum but two doors to my glee. Line count: 16 Rhymed aaab cccb dddb eeeb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 35 2024 Prompt: As per illustration. Note: I guessed at the location of the house, fairly sure that it would turn out to be Mediterranean. Italy suggested itself, then Portugal, and finally the island of Elba. Which was the first exile chosen for Napoleon after his initial defeat. The first line is a famous palindrome, supposedly reflecting Napoleon’s thoughts while on the island. |
Hope Do I know you, Hope, though toward you I grope? So often you’re courted while I’m mostly thwarted. And I’m Doubting Thomas, afraid of the promise, sometimes anointed to be disappointed. Though I know that it’s you that rescues a few, and I look for your light in the darkest of nights, the pain is still greater when sooner or later comes the end of the rope in the sad death of Hope. Line count: 16 Rhymed couplets For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 34, 2024 Prompt: Hope. |
The Shadow The Shadow knows or so it goes dark deeds afoot as black as soot. He takes the night beyond our sight effects his schemes while we’re in dreams. Only the morn reluctant dawn brings light of day to Shadow’s play. And so we muse on paltry clues to evil done where Shadow’s run. Line count: 16 Form: Four quatrains rhymed aabb, four syllables per line For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 33 2024 Prompt: Shadow. |
The End And so great Death hangs dark upon us all, The foreseen stop that ends our tallied days, And heed we clear that final sounding call To say farewell to sun’s departing rays. So black the night that falls upon that day, No news escapes to speak of what it holds, And time may last or fritter right away; Death’s cloak still hides such secrets in its folds. Thus doom reigns grim on our benighted selves, This passing of the things that we hold dear, Attendant now upon our mem’ries’ shelves; We turn to face the darkest of our fears. Yet life itself was always bound to fall; What follows may be greatest of it all. Line count: 14 Form: Sonnet - 14 lines, 10 syllables per line, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg, three quatrains and a couplet, this last being a volta! For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 32 2024 Prompt: Write a sonnet. |
Bridge Indeed, I’ll throw a span or two across the gap and stream below, and offer my support to you, but in the north the blizzard blows. Remember that the weather rules and snow can build to mighty weight, the wind and rain can be so cruel, till straining timbers meet their fate. If you’d wish me disaster proof and safe for all who would use me, then build me shelter and a roof, a bridge to warmer climes I’ll be. Line count: 12 Rhymed abab, 8 syllables per line For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 31 2024 Prompt: Illustration of a covered wooden bridge. |
Allesley Churchyard I’m on the outside looking in, my feet in the street, traffic at my back, all noise and motion, but my eyes on the scene through gateway arch to the churchyard and peace shaded by the yew trees in dark seclusion, heads together, they whisper of their roots buried deep beneath the soil with the sleepers at their rest, in a different country now, their stone testaments fading with the years, and I, contemplating mortality. Line count: 18 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 30 Prompt: Gateway. |
Lost Oh, bright the sparkling light of that first dawn when we, the babe, do greet our wak’ning morn with lusty cries, indignant, angry fists, and bleary eyes clamped tight against the mists. Our solace then our mother’s warming breast, so beats the heart from chest to tiny chest till mild and gentle sleep the sobs doth soothe, our anger stilled in consolation smooth. How soon those birthing moments lost to time do fade beneath life’s mesmerising rhyme our former home of comfort tightly wound forgotten now behind the daily round. Line count: 12 Form: Sonnet, iambic pentameter, rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 29 2024 Prompt: Lost. |