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). |
May Emptied box upon the bed, clutter on the blanket spread - an open book long half read, notepad, specs, and roses (dead), bottle with some green perfume, forgotten scent fills the room, morning coffee gone stone cold calendar speaks of times now old, a note I thought thrown away, long lost greeting, “Hello, May.” I remember well that day - you smiled before you went away; gone for years and once returned, wrote that note before I learned you were back but left again. Memories I counted slain, ceased for me to dwell upon, stir, and rising with the sun, awoken just to spoil my day, remember me, my name is May. Line count: 20 Rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 39 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Obsession I wanted a slot car set I was given a train set it was amusing enough but far from favourite slot cars came much later in that no-man’s land between child and adult but so fierce my desire it stayed with me always through combined sets with friends afire the same and self made cars correct in smallest detail. Still I watch the races and dream. Line count: 15 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 38 Prompt: Write a poem about your favorite childhood toy. |
![]() A Clipped Conversation 2 The bulldog clip and tiny child on shoulder carried, meek and mild, approached Sir Egg Cup and enquired “Can you help, sir? We’re lost and tired.” Answer Egg Cup gave them none, the spoon inside his head had done such damage when it stirred his brain, and sent his knowledge down the drain. You may have seen these things before I wrote of them in days of yore now much has changed and sad to say Sir Egg Cup’s spoon has gone away. Line count: 12 Rhymed couplets in (mainly) trochaic tetrameter For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 37 Prompt: Pick any object in your room. Now write a poem describing this object. |
Enough Already Old age is content to only sit and dream far from in the stream, without a new intent, old age is still content The young may build and scheme of deeds afire that gleam, but far beyond repent, old age remains content These things were once the cream, perhaps more than they seem, but sometimes called misspent, and old age is content. Line count: 13 Form: Dansa For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 36 Prompt: Write a poem in Dansa form. |
Darkness at Noon “La Dolce Vita” proclaims the sign a voice in protest against the lowering sky the gathering clouds of ill intent and the steps leading downward ever downward into gloom and deep despair far indeed from any sweetness of life the narrow alley squeezed between buildings grown too tall for their ambitions and painted in colours once bright but now dark with age and wear so rarely sunlit in these latter days as though life itself drains slowly fitfully down the grate in the foreground. The sign creaks in the breeze. Line count: 14 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 35 Prompt: As per illustration. |
The Seasons The seasons being the template of so many things in life, the daily round eternal bringing echoes of the the dawn till brightest noonday sun, to be followed by the evening shade with darkest midnight promised, so winter speaks of that misty, dreamlike place, our home, mysterious land of formative, forgotten phantoms from which emerge the first beginnings of the person we are meant to be, growing into the one we know as me. And spring is like those years we find when awareness blooms in full, our arms embracing all that comes enticing within our reach and clear eyes lead plans and schemes of all that can be grasped in reaching what we choose to call maturity. The summer comes with certainty, in greatest confidence, completed child and basking in the heat of summer’s bounty, with life burgeoning with positive assurance, no thought of year’s end, the longest days deceiving. Then the fall in so many ways, as autumn spreads its cloak of golden times as rewards for work, now slower pace invading, the dying leaves reminders all that nothing lasts forever and celebrations muted now in shortened days. Return to winter and those colder times, the bones are aching, breath frosted with the waiting knowledge that life grows thin, the wasted body struggling now, indecision ruling thought, and so, at last, it’s over. Line count: 24 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, week 34 Prompt: Use the following words in your poem: Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. |
Mysteries of the Night From the black emptiness of the darkened window comes the sound that freezes the soul, a shriek of such anguish and sorrow that the listener, no longer safe and ensconced, curls up in the bed with dread and fear, while nightmares toy with the thoughts riding upon the echoes of that tortured cry and questions arise from the deep. Is it the wail of a lost child, hungry and far from home? The scream of a wandering banshee wrenched from a heart of stone? The shade of a long dead traveller set upon by brigands? A last hopeless call for aid from some soul entrapped in the night? No, that sound that haunts your dreams ever after is but the hunting call of the fox. Line count: 14 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 33 2025 Prompt: Use this title for this weeks poem: Mysteries of the Night. |
Musicals In a field of crowding buttercups shuttered against the rain she floats like Mary Poppins forgot the plain in Spain. For though the hills may rise and sing her favourite things go spare and carousels go spinning round so fair and unaware. They say the music man was here umbrella to the fore he danced a lot like Oliver and then went off to war. Perhaps I speak of simpler times I’ve lost them all somehow and now our technicolor casts took long ago their bow. Line count: 16 Rhymed abcb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 31 2025 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Anticipation of Spring Now winter’s snows are shrinking, lace doilies on the lawn, and dark mornings chased away by quickening of the dawn. Now the biting teeth of cold are blunted by the sun and birdsong wakes the swaddled form to hope that winter’s done. Now the mind turns tentative, the lengthened days to count, until the time we say assured we’re over winter’s mount! Line count: 12 Rhymed abcb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 30 2025 Prompt: The anticipation of spring. |