fairy music

Fairy by MariposaViajera at Photobucket

This week I’ve decided to combine the Monday Mural and the Friday Five from Poefusion. The words are kempt, string, dilated, vinegar and mural.

after the string of his bow broke

he cleansed the wound with vinegar

from an alabaster bottle

called his kempt hounds to order

pressed on in the moonlight

beguiled by fairy music

played on the harp

by the beautiful creature

first glimpsed

in a mural

dilating his heart.

The New Forest, England, October 15th 1987

This is my first post, a little late, for Read Write Poem and the prompt #15 is ‘the weather’.

BBC weather blooper by Michael Fish storm of 1987

A woman rang the BBC:
A hurricane is on its way!
The weather man only laughed and said,
It’s not going to happen today.

It began as a murmur amongst the trees,
Took the roof off the keeper’s shed.
It’s not going to happen today!
The weatherman laughingly said.

I tried to get home by a major route
But a ******* trunk lay across my way.
The weather man only laughed and said,
It’s not going to happen today!

Britannia has a temperate clime,
And her people are so well bred.
It’s not going to happen today!
Was all the weatherman said.

Stari most (2)

Mostar 023, originally uploaded by kamsin alexander.

This photograph shows the bridge after it was re-built. It was taken by my daughter when she visited Mostar whilst teaching English in Sarajevo in 2006.

Here is my original post for 3WW.

Inked

Inked, originally uploaded by adam pritchett.

Spilled ink . . .
transient
beauty.

Sadly, this is my last posting for One Deep Breath.

Rambo

The words for 3WW LXXIV are punch, T-shirt and unravel. This week I’ve written a piece of flash fiction.

I don’t remember when he first appeared and nobody knew his real name: we all called him ‘Rambo’. He always took up the same position, leaning against the wall at one end of the recreation ground; its graffiti art as his backdrop. He always wore the same white T-shirt with the logo ‘I Pack a Punch’ emblazoned across his chest and a fist coming out at you like Lord Kitchener’s World War 1 recruiting poster ‘Your Country Needs You’. Even the local tough guys decided that they didn’t need Rambo. The Rec. had a bad reputation: it was where the kids from the local comprehensive stopped off for a smoke on the way home; a recruiting ground for drug pushers. All sorts of rumours circulated about Rambo. He was around six foot tall, with greasy black hair and a well tanned skin that showed off the muscle fibre when he flexed his biceps. We made jokes that he must either only have the one T-shirt or have a drawer full of identical ones. Even when the weather cooled and the leaves started to flutter down from the trees, he was there in same thin attire. Then one day, I was almost past, when I realised that something was missing. The next day it was the same – no Rambo. It was over a week before I realised that I had simply failed to notice him. He was wearing a jumper that had started to unravel at the bottom edge.

Here is a painting created by my personality by following a link from Tumblewords’ site.

 

Click here to create your own painting.

‘Birds’

‘birds’ by dreyertjie at photobucket

The Hag

In moonlight, swans pivot
positive and negative images,
watched by the old hag,
crouched in the cloisters,
screaming her awful midwifery,
whilst beneath the promontory of her nose,
silver fish belch from her mouth
to swim upwards into the cerulean light.

Queenie with shrunken dugs,
delivers dreams
of what humans seek

but never find.

Slighted

The words for 3WW LXXIII are slight, girlfriend and imagined.

Was it a slight or had she just imagined it? He had swept back into the office so close to her that she could have touched him, and regained his regular seat without acknowledging her existence. She had opened her mouth to say ‘Hi!’ but was left to close it again without having uttered a word. As he was wearing dark glasses, it was difficult for her to judge whether or not he had actually seen her. But he must have seen her. She definitely felt slighted.

Francine often wondered why she’d been born into the twenty-first century. She would have fared better before the 1960s when women’s liberation started to be a force to be reckoned with. She saw herself as the pursued rather than the pursuer; the rabbit rather than the fox. Why couldn’t she do what any one of her friends would have done and simply go up to him and say, ‘I want to be your girlfriend’. It would have been better still in the nineteenth century when men actively wooed the women. She was, however, a realist and her native common sense soon gave her a kick in the buttocks. Of, course she would then have needed a dowry or been like one of Jane Austen’s heroines, needing a rich husband like Mr Darcy to rescue her from her poverty. Not that she had any objection to Darcy. She also reflected that Victorian marriages were no better than modern ones and were often more hypocritical. She thought of poor Helen Graham in ‘The Tenant of Wildfeld Hall’ who had been forced to run away from her violent and drunken husband, taking her small son with her. No, maybe it was better now and she couldn’t expect him to know what she was thinking without her having given him any indication that she was interested . . . but he had slighted her.

She snapped out of her reverie to find him standing in front of her. He had taken off his dark glasses.

‘You must think I’m a dork, wearing sunglasses indoors,’ he said. ‘The optician put drops in my eyes to enlarge the pupils and it made everything look so bright.’

Valentine card

This post is for the Monday Mural and is also the Valentine that Michelle wants us all to write. I’m afraid I’ve adopted a persona rather than writing one as myself. It is extremely raw as I wrote it straight onto my computer.

Photo synthesis, originally uploaded by Perpetually.

My Valentine

Softly, my love . . . We met with a kiss at the Village Flower Show.

My best friend dared me to go up to you
and introduce myself. You were overdressed
for such a provincial occasion whereas I wore
my usual blue denim overalls which needed washing
and smelt of horses. The wind was blowing
my hair over my eyes and into my mouth.
I felt self-conscious because I am a skinny bird who
doesn’t wear make-up, whereas you are very much the
sophisticate. I heard you say how much you liked my
roses, which you awarded First Prize. I only
meant to tell you that I was the person who
had grown the roses but when I got close,
I was so overcome by your fiery aroma
that I could not control myself. I know that
I embarrassed you. I want to make amends. So,

Softly, my love . . . We met with a kiss and I so want to meet you again . . .

My best friend and my brother Nigel helped me
to take the photo. I borrowed the shiny red tights
from my sister (she uses them for Yoga)
- I wanted red to match the tulips.
You can see me holding them in the photo
- I wanted you to see that the roses weren’t a one off
and that I really do have green fingers.
The scarf belongs to my mother. I was worried that the tulips
would be thirsty whilst the photo was being taken so
I asked Nigel to water them. As you will see
I spilled some soil when I took them out of their pot.

Softly, my love . . . We met with a kiss and I want you to be my Valentine.

I love ‘Ku

Here is my Valentine (not) haiku for One Deep Breath.

Our love departed

like frost from garden lawns

warmed by winter sun.

Changed

This week’s prompt for Writers Island is change. We’ve had four really glorious days here in the New Forest- today there is sun and clear blue skies – which has made me reflect about how much my mood and general sense of well-being is affected by the winter months when its hardly got light before we have to draw the curtains and pull down the blinds. I don’t expect this unseasonal weather to last, as in 2007, we had summer in April and wind and rain in June, July and August. At least British weather has the virtue of being unpredictable.

S.A.D.

(Seasonal Affective Disorder)

Grey

gloom

envelopes all,

its heavy cloak

of nightly darkness hijacks day,

sends cowards to snuggle back under their duvets,

to wallow in apathy, lethargy, ennui, futility, despondency, misery, melancholy.

 

Sunshine,

brightness,

blue skies

filled with birdsong,

banishes the murky mantle, extending

welcome to crocus, snowdrop, primrose, shoots and blossom,

letting in verve, vigour, purpose, optimism, love, hope, and joy.