Day 24 Dreamies

This 'poem' is what happens when you do a Zoom workshop on cut out poetry. First you try out the up to date version of the Paint software. Then you eventually - by the end of the workshop - learn how to put your words into paint. Following that you transfer them into a Word document. Here is where I learnt it. And these are the resulting words so far. If you understand these words then you're one step ahead of me. They were cut out of a selection of Facebook posts.

I am giving these away

again this week

who has panic bought all

families

I would like to keep

nature still legal

or swap simple

dreamies or lockdown

much appreciated

Day 23 Shakespeare's birthday

So here we are at Day 23, Shakespeare's birthday, and I've drafted a (sort of) sonnet. The prompt was a letter of the alphabet but I've been greedy and encompassed various forms of writing.

Ethereal writing

It doesn’t matter if it’s not written in stone

with ink, pencil, biro or on your phone.

Those hieroglyphs and cuneiform held weight

carefully carved, hammered, lines all straight

with meaning whether weighing up the deal

or telling us how they invented the wheel.

Chinese characters didn’t mess with an alphabet

images on scrolls misty mountains beset

with flowing gowns and lofty thoughts

conveying to the hoi-polloi what they ought

to do as sons and daughters. Will ghost lines

of Times New Roman leave behind

messages for the artificially intelligent

or will it be as if they’ve never been sent?

Day 20 Cat in a sack

Photo by Zane Lee on Unsplash

Taking my prompt today from a German expression. Now I've worked on prompts like this before and it hasn't been very productive but I keep trying...

Here's the first part of a draft poem:

They told me

German idiom: Di Katze im Sack kaufen

English equivalent: buying a pig in a poke

When you get older you can ride a bike.

As time goes by things will get better.

If you wait for your birthday you can have it

or save your pennies if you want that doll.

Wearing sensible shoes means you won't fall over

the ones beneath you who aren't worth it anyway

and people who get caught by the police 

end up in prison. You should never sleep...

Day 21 Anywhere

The last few days, during this Corona pandemic, have at last begun to make me feel the pressure of timelessness, and this might be seen in this poem. The prompt was seeing my reflection in a clock face.

It'll be interesting to see in the future just how many poems, and other writing, the Covid-19 outbreak has engendered worldwide. It can be difficult getting sidetracked into other subjects.

Anywhere

I caught myself like a ghost in the clock face

Hands took hold of my time and stopped

in the germ of a green ocean.

It was like seeing my twin but as foreigner

and not at all myself...

Day 19 Wild garlic at the cinema

The prompt today was a 'walking archive' which nicely suited a walk I have already done from home today. To be continued, and worked on.

Wild garlic at the cinema

You have barely made it into this season

yet have a movie to watch with actions galore

brief encounters with two reservoir dogs

Bonnie and Clyde holding thoroughly clean hands

Dr Zhivago hunting for sugar at Tesco

little Lexie running around Close encounters...

Day 10 Washing

This started life, from the prompt today, as a hay(na)ku, a three line poem where line one has one word, line two has 2 words, line three has 3. Then I just carried on. Very conscious it's set in Covid-19 times.

Time stretches

Dark

blue pillowcase

yellow towel blowing

in mild breezes heavy

branch acting as washing line

pole carefully crafted by woodsmen last

spring only looking back one year already nostalgia.

Day 15 Ingratitude

Day 20 of NaPoWriMo
Channelling a piece of music, in my case a song which you can find here sung by the inimitable Johnny Cash. From the point of view of a 'vulnerable' person who must isolate at home - apart from a daily walk - and rely on others to buy their food. At the same time this person is relatively privileged in global terms. I think you'll realise which product is currently in short supply.
Here's a chorus and the first verse:

Ingratitude in the time of Covid-19

You are my shopper
my only shopper
You'd make me happy
if flour appeared
I never know dear
if you are listening
Please fetch me some bread flour today

The other day dear
I wanted bread flour
I dreamed I held it in my arms.
When I awoke dear
I was mistaken
it was a chocolate bar instead...

Day 14 cleaning up

First draft for Day 14

Cleaning up

Such a lot of noise across the road

water gunning her block paving

splashes of dark grey muck swept

from side to side into the gutter

self-splattering her flowered crop

pants and shirt. She won’t stop until

the blessed bricks are as clean

as a freshly imagined house

that will bear no memories

of how they did this together

laughing at the dirt on their clothes

and him only dead this past month.

Day 13 Bot pairs

Trawling various prompts today I used a Twitter bot, having recently discovered these little AI tropes. These particular ones are all iambic pentameter which I've tried to stick to, but I don't usually find them easy to put in a poem.  Next I dipped into a book, The Craft to find a prompt from Harry Man (the same that I was paired with at a Poetry Business workshop at my first attendance there?). The idea is to find two things/sentences/adverts that would not normally be paired.

Here are the two pairs I chose:
addicted austin stole the loot and ran
and
One must imagine Kafka happy too.

So you can see how I altered the first one in the extract below. the second one forms the last line of the poem.

In addition I used the napowrimo prompt of something being stolen.

The baby didn't come till later.
Addicted Alan stole the loot and jumped
garden fences of us windowed neighbours.
In the pocket of his jacket the heart...

Day 12 Fighting talk

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/
wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/red-kite/

Fighting talk

A black fringed crow besieges nine red kites,

silent over rushing train and grumbling bus

As though the crow is looking to defeat

the dominion of nine red kites.

Should we admire its fighting streak...

Today's prompt is a triolet and I have rescued an old one here omitting its last three lines. Hoping for eventual publication...

Day 10 Time stretches

Dark 

blue pillowcase 

yellow towel blowing 

in mild breezes heavy 

branch acting as washing line 

pole carefully crafted by woodsmen last 

spring only looking back one year already nostalgia. 

A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words. As you can see I have elongated the original idea and continued up to eight words. Rules? Ha! But no claims to a polished poem, a draft waiting to be revised.

Day 8 Stupidly

I am so stupidly happy

from @SylviaPlathbot

We are so stupidly happy

...We are so amazed at seeing a blue sky

daffodils mocking our multiple red hearts

We are peering like starved prisoners at one bright hawthorn leaf

and jailing our own precipices to keep from falling

We look through a telescope at children dying to go to school

and parents temper their own workloads...

Actually yesterday's prompt from the NaPoWriMo website but the Poetry Police don't scare me nowadays...

Day 7 Bugs and chocolate

 

Food of the gods

theobroma cacao

In the easterly direction you were traded,

slaves to our addiction; grow full-bellied

from a trunk. An all-season pod

felled by a long-poled knife at a stroke...

Breakfast (C-19) chats on Twitter again, and a video from Emily Nelson at Leeds Museums and Galleries about cocoa production. Which led me to explore more here and there to start writing a poem that is very much based on science facts.

Day 6 after Andrew Marvell

Sonnet seem to be my default form. Today's first draft.

If I had sage enough and thyme

the dandelion would be no crime.

If I scoured the sky, laid waste to meat

a red kite with silent curving wings displayed,

who lorded over a broad estate

then foxglove, bittercress, wild saxifrage

would root and tumble, privileged.

If I could only let the onions grow

and not be always wielding hoe

or spine-deriding, bending low.

There’s memories going back in time

of blowing clocks, of daisy chains

and mum with fork in summertime

rooting out those lawless dandelions.

Day 5 "Almost, at times, the fool"...

... from Prufrock, referred to today in today's prompt.

This turned out to be less productive than I had expected. When I'm in a room with other poets working from the same prompts and talking about it, then it's better. Stuck in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic there's no choice. Zoom-ing is an alternative but certainly not the same. So here are some of the phrases I came up with. Judge for yourself whether they make a poem:

Strawberries are such gossips
Carol Ann couldn't possibly write my shopping list
that's when bridges collapse
when clowns perform the students pass their exams
nine red kites will ruffle the sky
and rabbits disappear into the warren under Turing's guidance.

Days 2 and 3 after digi-problems

Starfish figured yesterday after this fascinating and informative video from Emily at Leeds Museums and Galleries

I didn't post yesterday due to problems actually getting on to this blog :(

Today's draft offering on the theme of Dream:

Are we really still, here?

Inside the plane, silent like church

before the sermon.

In the yellow light someone

speaks without ...

This really does need more work!  

As does my drawing of the starfish - but not by me.  I can safely say that I do not have a career in art.

2020 Day 1 National Poetry Writing Month

Dear readers - are you still there?
It's been two years since we met here and I have been very busy writing, just changed my loyalties to Facebook, and Twitter @moiragauthor
Perhaps it's these times of global Covid-19 that has driven/provoked me back to my own blog. I wish you all well, stay safe social distancing, washing hands like demons.

So here is a sample of the writing I've done this morning.  This is not an April fool.

from An invitation to the red kite

...I will portion however many crows for you

you can return then unhindered

painting rusty red        white patches             bent wings against breathless clouds...

I took my prompt from Jo Bell's A year of poetry-writing prompts (Nine Arches Press)