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). |
Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring She turns toward us a glance over the shoulder light glowing from her face and a look that searches us. In time we might notice the dark background the bright and vaguely Arabic clothing even the pearl earring. But always we return to those eyes and the life within. Timeless she is 350 years old and more but alive and young and modern too that brief glance searching us as we gaze into her soul. Line count: 17 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 18 2023 Prompt: Art. |
The Mirror Speaks My father said I was a reflective personality and it’s true that I deal in reversed images, painting portraits for my patrons, personally persuasive of their particular pulchritudes, yet secretly negative in my ultimate purpose and truthful in matters both light and dark, at times to my own detriment and danger, the legendary seven years my sole defence ‘gainst disappointed delusion and disgust in those who ask for news they do not want. It’s a living in the end, at times a pantomime of mirth, at others a matter of tragic insight, a constant narrative of sight and seem, a fable fast forgotten. Line count: 14 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 17 2023 Prompt: Mirror. |
Uplifting Elevator, escalator, go on up, social climber, not a rhymer, on the rise, morning coffee, oh so softly, lifting cup, cherry picker, nothing quicker, to the skies, sleepy breaker, now a waker, take a sup, highly thought of, never bought off, opened eyes, helicopter, ornithopter, vertical, that will take off, surely make off, hear my call, jet air liner, silver shiner, flies the heights, stair ascending, upward trending, one more flight, inspiration, divination, kite insight. Line count: 11 Form: Eleventh Power For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 16 2023 Prompt: Eleventh Power Poetry Form (invented by Christina Jussaume) The form consists of: • 11 lines • 11 syllables in each line • rhyme scheme: a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c-d-d-d • must be written about an uplifting subject. Note: The eleven syllables force an unusual meter in this one. Essentially, it's a chant, requiring change of pace within each line, thus: 1234-5678-9-10-11. |
Pumpkin This November, party pumpkin, missed October, silly chumpkin, kept on growing in the patch, slept beneath the leafy thatch, dozed unnoticed through All Hallows, woke when all the fields were fallow. Now the gourd repents at leisure, no one needs his golden treasure, wasted all his autumn girth, spent forever his season’s mirth, now a tear drops from his eye, does no one fancy pumpkin pie? Line count: 12 Rhyming couplets For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 14 2023 Prompt: Pumpkin. |
Oh Yeah, Peace, Man Oh, love that bomb and its obliteration, celebrate the curse of abomination, anaesthetise with our extermination, let amnesia be your instigation. You can march or even shout aloud, a single protest or in a crowd, opinionate and deregulate, drift off to sleep in some drug you ate. But you can’t unlearn what now you know, the mind has you forever in tow, our course is set, direction chosen, our sentence clear, in stone letters frozen. Line count: 12 Rhymed. Oh, and the syllable count is interesting. It has meter after all. For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 15 2023 Prompt: A colourful peace sign. |
A Jitty Ditty Alley oop, alley way, O’Malley held a rally down the alley one day, Back street, crack street, frack street meet, City jitty*, pretty gritty, Walter Mitty play, Pity party, ditty hearty, arty farty way, Smarty panted, Artie ranted, Marty kept the beat, Sweet Selena you shoulda seen her, Oh, the dreamer, none serener, Dance diviner, nothing finer, From the barrow sends the arrow, sparrow flies away, Spies the evening fraught with meaning, Leaning, keening, cleaning, screening, though the scheming’s so demeaning, Still the morn shall make it pay. Line count: 14 Rhymed aabaabcccaddda For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 13 2023 Prompt: Alley. Note: *Jitty is colloquial English in some regions, defined as the narrow passage between rows of terraced houses. |
A Trinket a Tanka Tanka very much, no paddle for my canoe and I up this creek, promptless once again to drift. So I thankee very much. Line count: 5 Form: Tanka (5 lines, syllables 5, 7, 5, 7, 7) For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 12 2023 Prompt: Tanka. |
How Now, Aldous Huxley? The doors of perception heaven and hell uncertain reception doom clock and bell knock once and enter wait on the call saint or repenter the entrance for all no temporary hiatus dependant on chance nor payment for status the end of the dance. Line count: 12 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 11 2023 Prompt: Picture of ornately decorated doors. |
Okay, Faith Yes, I have faith but I’m not about to boast, it’s ‘tween me and God without need to post; if you ask if I believe, I’ll tell you whatever, and after not care if you berate me forever; I’ll even attempt to explain how I got here, when it comes to the truth I don’t have any fear, but the matter of faith is a very diff’rent beast, and no business of yours, no, not in the least; it may be a mustard seed, could be a mountain, it’s not easy to do, to measure a fountain, although I can say that it’s lasted this long, to guess at the future would only be wrong. Line count: 12 Rhyming couplets For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 10 2023 Prompt: Faith. |
Just Say No A disgruntled hippy named Stan once found himself locked in the can he didn’t half pout to find no way out and blamed it, of course, on the man. His girlfriend, a complete drama queen, was looking decidedly green, she’d swallowed some grass, now had terrible gas and drove everyone else from the scene. The moral of this sorry tale, though it may seem a little bit stale, is to keep a spare key where no one can see, and tell your dealer no sale. Line count: 15 Form: A serial limerick For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 9, 2023 Prompt: Your poem should include the following phrase: "no way out." |