#30 At the finish with 3WW LXXXIV

This is my final posting for NaPoWriMo. It’s a vignette, written in response to the prompt words at 3WW: highway, empty and ignored.

She screamed, Stop the car!
It pitched to a halt
on the verge of an empty road.

She slammed the door behind her.
and strode slowly, deliberately
into the middle of the highway.

The friends who left her there
agreed to synchronize their stories.
She could no longer be ignored.

I will now be taking a break to spend time with family near Geneva. Thank you to everyone who has either read or commented on my poems during April.

#29 ‘Bring me the sunset in a cup’ for Poefusion

This is my penultimate post for NaPoWriMo. I’m using a prompt given by Michelle of Poefusion and Poefeti. Michelle has been a wonderful source of ideas and inspiration (even more than usual) during April and I’m sure that all of us on the Poefusion Blogroll are grateful. Thank you Michelle! The prompt is the first line from a poem by Emily Dickinson. Click on the logo to read more poems and find a link to the poem the line comes from.

Bring me the sunset in a cup.
Let me imbibe its heady vapours
to dizzy my brain
with myriad colours
in high definition.

Bring me the sunset in a cup.
Let me hold it in my hands:
Lets its warmth makes me tingle
from the tips of my fingers
to the tips of my toes
as it acquaints itself
with my topology.

Bring me the sunset in a cup.
Let me be like a wine taster
as I savour the last drops
before it quietly
slips away.

#28 Completion: Two poems for Writers Island

Here are two short poems on the theme of completion.

The spaces in which they moved are
empty of their presence leaving
only an intolerable ache where
the spaces in which they moved are…

The parmesan cheese they bought last week,
the garlic rich peso sauce,
the bottle of chardonnay,
the baby’s rattle under a chair,
celebrate their presence
after they’ve gone.

#27 Two for Tuesday: Alien

The Two for Tuesday prompts are: lesson/lessen and/or streak. I’ve used all three.

Alien

The life form glared
behind heavy black curtains;
an asymmetrical platinum streak
down one side. The eyes
almost human.

I recalled the baby blond hair
and crooked smile
after you lost a tooth
on your first birthday.

There would be many nights
watching the clock hands
claw away time, waiting
for the phone calls
that never came.

You must let me make my own mistakes.
If there is a lesson to learn, I will learn it.

This did nothing to lessen my angst

#26 Monday Mural: First Love

Picture by kbware7 at Photobucket

This beautiful sand sculpture is this week’s Monday Mural.

First Love

I stepped out of the cloakroom of my childhood
into the sandkissed days of first love.
In matching fisherman’s smocks
we soaked ourselves in the Cornish town,
became members by proxy of an artists’ community,
ate gammon and pineapple,
peaches and clotted cream
in the cheapest restaurant.
When the sun was shy,
we took turns reading to one another.
We read about Triffids,
plants that could pull up their roots,
lash out and cause blindness.
We scooped sand into sculptures,
then watched them wash away.

Click on logo below to read more Monday Murals at Poefusion.

#25 Flowering for One Single Impression

Photograph by Kamsin

Delicate blooms:

Transience transfixed

on desktop.

To find and read more poems on the theme of ‘flowering’ click on the logo below.

#24 Acrostic for Read Write Poem

This week the theme at Read Write Poem is ‘jargon’. I have managed to produce anything for them this month although I very much wanted to use the ‘opposites’ prompt last week. I’m also flagging in my attempt to write 30 poems during April. I originally studied chemistry. so I’ve written an acrostic based on the word ‘chemistry’.

Chemical Acrostic

Crystals are easy to cultivate.

Helium makes your voice rise.

Entropy is an existential state.

Mendeleev’s Periodic Table arranges elements

In order of ascending atomic numbers;

Some are radioactive.

There are beautiful words like allotrope and isomorphic.

Reversible reactions are the norm and

Yellow crystals may sublimate.

#23 Friday Five and Monday Mural

I have used the Friday 5 to write a poem, using the Monday Mural as its inspiration. The Friday 5 are: votive, moulder, distractions, punctuate and splinter.

A mound,
tussocks,
a stump
crossed by a branch
which stabbed a splinter
into the palm of his hand
as he ripped it
from the mouldering tree
- the backdrop.

Crow’s cries
punctuate the air.

A girl in diaphanous dress
holds a plastic parasol,
buffeted by the wind.
A boy in white T-shirt
and khaki shorts
stands beside her.

The cries of crow
are not distractions to

their votive ceremony
sealed with a blot of ink
on a scrap of lined paper
torn from an exercise book.

A mound,
tussocks,
an effigy in diaphanous dress
holding a plastic parasol
- the foreground.

Crow has settled:
his cries no longer
punctuate the air

watercolor by leontinemay, originally uploaded by anongrrl.

#22 A little Luc-Bat for Poefusion

The luc-bat has alternating lines with 6 and 8 beats and a rhyme scheme that includes internal rhymes. For Michelle’s fuller explanation click here.

I have to admit that my poem is somewhat derivative. I’ve been reading a lot of Yeats’s s poetry and as i was writing I realised that these lines were going through my head:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick…

W B Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium.

Thirteen lines

The sky above was grey,
before me stood an aged crone,
frayed tissue hung on bone,
mumbling in monotone to me,
You will never be free,
as long as you carry that charm.
Her words set off alarms.
A trinket to deflect harm, how could
it do other than good?
If I had understood her wish
was not to admonish
I would have relinquished my need
of irrational creeds.

#21 Colour for one One Single Impression

In winter’s darkroom

spring soaks negatives

in succulent green.