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). |
Square Peg There is that in us There is That fits not in That somehow we’re an insert From another place In a world of balance Like a bench Placed conveniently by a lake In a forest A sore thumb In a land of nimble fingers A misplaced comma In an eloquent sentence. Not a gross intrusion Or exclamation In a crowded space But an intimation of otherness A hint Of something lost Or not yet found So it’s only now In the quiet places Where silence breathes And thought arrested Finds the slightest wrinkle In the ironed sheet. We are indeed In the world But not of it. Line count: 29 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 23 2025 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Rowan Atkinson Updated No doubt Mr Bean can match grateful, he being an actor sublime - in slapstick he’s really a plateful, in satire he absolute shines. But now he’s entered the arena of political comment sans joke, displaying a side of him meaner and terribly hard on the woke. And in truth I like him the better, as a comic I found him quite crude; his humour seemed childish and wetter, now he looks to be starting a feud. For the audience now is much harder, the lefties impossible to please - there’s no tougher food in the larder, he will wish that he kept them in freeze. Line count: 16 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge 5, Week 22 Prompt: Use the words bean, can, match, grateful. |
I Like Trolls Not being much for mythological beings, reality being enough for my feelings, I had no fav’rites adored nor foes to rag on apart from a weakness for another’s dragon, till, when pushed by contest’s requirement, a troll proved my highly unlikely inspirement. An initial story provided education, destroying all trolls’ accepted reputation, oh they’re large, there’s no denying that, but in their stumbling there’s a certain eclat, with character rather more gentle than bad, and wisdom unexpected in simplicity clad. So, now that I know the troll in his fulness, I reject all the tales that speak of pure dullness - all the trolls that I know are sharp and precise, they are friendly indeed and not prone to lies, as companions they’re great and soothe all your worry, and so outwardly ugly they make enemies scurry! Line count: 18 Rhymed couplets For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 21 2024 Prompt: Write a poem about a mythological creature. |
Life 2 Seasons turn with the winding earth, our need for order dividing one from another, the same round, just as all things grow from their birth, upward with spring’s bright rush riding, till summer’s fulfillment is found. And so into autumn’s harvest, like fruit from the branch we tumble, still warm from the westering sun, as earth turns now to its darkest, agèd and frail we must stumble, with ancestral dust become one. Line count: 12 Form: Zenith - Any number of sixains. (Your poem must have two = 12 lines.), 8-syllable lines. rhyme scheme: a-b-c-a-b-c d-e-f-d-e-f. For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 20 2024 Prompt: Zenith form. |
Snow It snowed today, swathes of little flakes windblown across our vision, literally laterally, coating the deck like matt paint, slowly thickening to a crust of white puff pastry, glistening in reflected light from our window. We didn’t go out, but watched content with winter’s usual greeting, Christmas still to come and sunshine and more snow before next year. It’s enough that seasons still chase the chosen round, unaffected by our sins. Line count: 18 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 19 2024 Prompt: Use these three words: snow, sunshine, glistening. |
Serendipity Like a Beatles medley of endless invention and chance life erupts in happy accident as moment follows moment tumbling in abandoned glee always onward never halted a chain of golden links poured in perpetual piste. Is it all then in serendipity launched haphazard to no end a fortune favoured forever? Oh, there’s an end and turning back we understand that all was for the best. Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 18 2024 Prompt: Serendipity. |
Gratitude The problem with expressing gratitude, it often appears as mere platitude; so common the wording of thank you, it’s only just better than blank you. And though there are no languages where gratitude commonly languishes without expression in one form or another, there might be one we’re yet to discover. In the end it’s probably best to stick with the words of the rest, and give a delighted impression - do not stoop to a surly confession. Line count: 12 Rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 17 Prompt: Thankfulness. |
Nomad Song I think they will say of me that what steps I left were free for roots I never put down and wandered from town to town. Line count: 4 Form: Tanaga - quatrain, syllables 7777, rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 16 Prompt: Write a tanaga. |
For Andrea Again I am reminded of those late nights when you snuggle close and ask “Are you awake? Tell me a story.” And I search my empty brain and speak of memories of youth running free in a dry and desert land and how loneliness struck me in my damp and misty homeland of friends that came and went and yes I’ve been alone at times. And you recall those times alike though now that we’re just you and me and how strange it is that it’s enough and all our gratitude’s for now and not the past. Line count: 15 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 15 Prompt: Picture of a Thank you note. |
Endgame The first and last, alpha and omega, so life plays out its petty dance, right to the end when breath comes short and every nuance snatched at, only to slip through the grasp, aged fingers awkward in their haste to hold the final moments hesitant, the sight now dim in fading light. Thus poor creature huddled in vain, resigned through long acquaintance, yet unable to loose its grip in final sigh, would say quite bold, “Yes, now would be the moment, smoothed by constant touch to familiarity and rest.” And then the life force, instinct, will, turns in an instant ferocious still, no, just one more breath, a second glance, before I go - it’s not too much to ask. Line count: 18 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 14 2024 Prompt: Use at least three of the following words in your poem: stunning, nuance, colorful, last, first. |