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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). |
Acrostic Underwater A submarine, Chrysalis and carapace, Regnant monarch of the deep, Ominous hulk in midnight rise to Surface of the heaving seas, Turreted your looming tower, Isolated, far from home, Concealed your mission ‘neath the foam. U-boat menace Nautical, Down beneath historic waters, Ever seeking, ever hungry, Relentless are your hunting ways, Where the whales their songs do sing, Aquatic beasts of common aim, There the chartless roads you roam, Endless creatures of the ocean Ride beneath the rising wave. Line count: 18 Acrostic For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 6 2023 Prompt: Underwater. Note: As much as I detest acrostics, the submarine wanted this one. |
Windmill Outside, the great, white-washed construction, timber-hatted over brows and slotted windows and four wide arms demonstrate directions, proud landmark of the open fields attendant, swinging in the summer’s wild and boisterous wind, haughty to Quixote’s vain attack. Inside, a clattering industry, a noise of turning, wheels and cogs so ponderous and lumpish, heedless in their measured track and timeless, grind the stones in weighty grating, on and on, fine the dust on floor and floating, bright and white within the shafts of sunlight, specks inside the gloom. Line count: 12 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 5 - 2023 Prompt: Windmill. |
Excuses Well, it’s week five and I’m still alive, but can’t bend my mind from the daily grind; two stories to write (and make ‘em bright) before August’s end, then off to send. Though it’s true that I could easily dash something off and so be free, it’s windmills and they demand of me my very best conceivably. And so I must for these few days employ my mind in other ways, and then devote remaining hours to what may be my dwindling powers. Apologies that I’m forced so late, but hope result will be worth the wait. Line count: 18 Rhymed basically in couplets but with varied meter (I can’t help it - I’m in a hurry!) For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 5 08.28.23 Prompt: Windmills. |
Acrostic 4 Acrostic, acrostic, I’ll lose my tiny mind, Caught in desperation, I mustn’t fall behind; Reason tells me “Easy, better get it done,” Oh, if I were able to turn this into fun, Sure, I should remember that it’s just one a year, That this is burden light indeed and one I should not fear; I struggle still within my chains, a prisoner to self, Control perfectionism and add this to the shelf. Counting up the lines and syllables to boot, I add some silly rhymes and look for more to shoot; There steals a crazy notion into my fevered brain, Simplicity confounded be, if backwards runs the train, Ornament, obfusticate, this makes the thing worthwhile, Rejection of the commonplace, invent a brand new style, Creation of a mirrored view should be a real blast; Ah, acrostic, acrostic, I’ve beaten you at last! Line count: 16 Form: Acrostic For Promptly Poetry 4, week 4 2023 Prompt: Acrostic, any word or words. |
Sentinel High on the rocks like a sore thumb, you stand on the hand of the cape, bright white with a bloody red nail, while the waves your fingers do strum. Overhead in the summer’s blue light the clouds wisp their gentle designs, but in the mirror of the tide’s latest pool a darker world speaks of the night. When the storm stirs the waters to rage and the mariner’s blind in the dark, then comes the moment to grasp - your thumb’s up to your cue on the stage. Line count: 12 Rhymed abca For Promptly Poetry 4, Week 3, 2023 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Summer Haze The summer heat sits heavy in Oklahoma, broad the bleached blue bowl above, succumbs the silent grass to mere survival, thin and thirsty, withered on the sun-baked earth, spreads the empty plain to hazed horizon, flattened by the turgid, lifeless air, blued by desiccated distance, misty, insubstantial, the land bleeds into atmosphere. Urgent to the heartless heavens, pleading for the cooling rain, twirling dust devils do the dance unguided, swirling dirt and twigs and leaves, tiny tornado mimics in the grip of circling winds, calling for the balm of storms. Line count: 14 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 4, Week 2 Prompt: Summer Haze. |
A Song of Belonging In the shadow of the mountain where the oceans meet, on the highveld savanna desiccated by the heat, or the rain-soaked island where the people are like me, and the shores of New England always battered by the sea, all have been at times a place that I call home, but really with me it stays wherever I may roam. Line count: 12 Rhymed abcb For Promptly Poetry 4, 08.01.23 Prompt: Home. |