Sunrise
A peck. A dot. It
slides,
honey spilling out.
makes merriment,
and we are beyond
talk.
sat on a dish, waiting
to be
devoured.
Someone waves out
there,
but it’s just
breeze.
It goes unnoticed.
the horizon lights
up.
A bird flutters
out.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 20, 2024
Macbeth
of style. The scene
sets, a stage
wracked with
unconditional charm.
together,
unchained, eclipsed,
two swans gliding
on water.
The dressing-up
comes easy,
but the lines, the
lines are lost.
There are no words
because he forgot,
and so the curtain
must come down.
Day 19
this silent loitering without intent,
a shadow bypassing other people.
He hunts all the spaces in between.
a chalk outline washed by rain still stains
the pavement where we walk in line.
Everyone sees it. No one says a word.
She doesn’t like to talk about him at all.
Her work colleagues don’t even know he exists.
She wonders if he has one single regret.
Aghast, she’d check her face in her compact,
fix it the way you would fix your lipstick.
And pray he’d behave in front of their child.
So hollow, the way the lips curl back,
his teeth, sharp-edged like graveyard stones.
He is the wolf. A wild, snarling wolf.
or in the sun-haze of a shop window.
Just one second. And then he’s gone.
Or maybe he was never really there.
If she closes her eyes, she can wish him away.
Today, she opens them, looks down at the chalk.
It marks the position of her body yesterday.
Day 17
Moon dust recalls a lost night’s shade,
aimless wanders in moods of endless dark.
Motion turning. How it always turns.
the only one, and we can never be forever,
this trip back, this screwing with a reality done.
I am me, and you are you. We can never meld.
bubbles cross a distant spray. Soft surf lifts so
this shine will never ebb. The echo of a return.
We are one, but never were one. We are two.
rhythm sweet, the way it moves, its breeze,
as though we sail on a never-shrinking sea,
live inside colour chords, the curve of the true.
smooth arch of the blessed, we listen in,
content as if this wide world moves in tune,
only for our audience, only for us. Just we.
Day 16
Prompt: we challenge you to write a poem in which you closely describe
an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t
seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course,
really does. The surprise ending to this James Wright poem is a good illustration of the effect we’re
hoping you’ll achieve. An abstract, philosophical kind of statement closing out
a poem that is otherwise intensely focused on physical, sensory details.
The mile
I walk the latent mile, mud-spattered,
curves in the distancing, mirroring,
the sun blazing stripes over this chill clime,
and I am lazy in my own clamber up,
over, trailed by a tail of twisted lanes.
through which to spy on the frozen horses,
shaggy brown, grey and dappled, the last
in his blue coat. The hands of the hills span
out, palms rising to circling cirrus clouds.
the hum of a bumble’s bounce, trill lark
and a chuckle of sparrows hedge-haunting.
Beside a white birch, a baby rabbit curls silent.
I try to shake the ghost of my own self loose.
Day 15
Prompt: take a look at @StampsBot, and become inspired by the wide, wonderful, and sometimes wacky world of postage stamps. For example, while it certainly makes sense that China would issue a stamp featuring a panda, it’s less clear to us why the Isle of Man should feel the need to honour 2001: A Space Odyssey in stamp form. From Romanian mushrooms to Sudanese weavers to the Marshall Islands getting far too excited over personal computing, stamps are a quasi-lyrical, quasi-bizarre look into what different cultures (or at least their postal authorities) hold dear.
Day 14
Prompt: write a poem of at least 10 lines in which each line begins with the same word. This technique of beginning multiple lines with the same word or phrase is called anaphora.
in
the rolling of this sacred endless tide,
in
essence strewn, a being, no need to hide
in
this arched second shore of becoming
in
someone else’s eyes something, waking.
in
sinking deeply in and effervescent doubt,
in
the purest sense, an endless rhythm’s flow
in
waves of shocking colour, ribbons of rainbow,
in
search of this difference always out of reach.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 15, 2024
Day 13
Prompt: play with rhyme. Start by creating a word bank of 10 simple words of one or two syllables. Five should correspond to each of the five senses (i.e., one word that is a thing you can see, one word that is a type of sound, one word that is a thing you can taste, etc). Three should be concrete nouns and the last two should be verbs. Now, come up with rhymes for each of your 10 words. Use as much sound play in your poem as possible.
The words:
Sea, shush, salt,
sad, heat, sand, surf, cliff, leap, dive
The rhymes:
Sea, me, bee,
fee, we
Shush, blush,
mush, such, gush, hush, lush, plush, rush,
Salt, fault,
caught, halt, naught, taught, vault
Sad, mad,
bad, cad, fad, glad, had, lad, rad, tad,
Heat, seat,
meet, teet, beat, feat, neat, wheat
Sand, hand,
band, land, rand, wand,
Surf, turf,
birth, worth, dearth,
Cliff, miff,
biff, fifth, riff, stiff, tiff,
Leap, deep,
heap, reap, seep, weap
Dive, five, hive,
jive, live, vive, wife
Flow, glow,
mow, sow, bow, how, low, now, plow, row, tow, vow, wow
Sea sounds
Be the sea
and me, we weave full-flow,
this gush so
lush, this hushed rush and glow.
this leap so
deep, we will not weep and bow.
a tiff with the
wife, strum a riff too shallow.
greet the
heat’s hot beat, treat a neat rain shadow.
this deep
leap keep so no echo seeps tomorrow.
Day 13
The note
I’ll be gone.
In the time it takes your
fist to crush it,
I’ll already be on the
first bus out of town.
In the time it takes to
check my wardrobe,
I’ll be holding out my
hand at another bus stop.
In the time it takes to
check my drawers,
I’ll be running with my
bags to the railway line.
In the time it takes for
realisation to set in,
I’ll be calming my breath
as the late train leaves.
In the time it takes for
you to grab your keys,
I’ll be blocking whole
memories out of my life.
In the time it takes for
you to lock the door,
I’ll be planning a route
you can never guess.
In the time it takes for
you to start your car,
I’ll be praying slashed
tyres won’t take you far.
In the time it takes for
you to throw a punch,
I’ll be promising that no
more will land on me.
