2024 - day twenty-five

 The prompt is one question from a Proust Questionnaire.

"What is your greatest regret?"

Are regrets great or

Are they really annoying

Trivial hiccups?

2024 - day twenty-four

 The prompt is to start with a line from a poem.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad,

However hard you try to avoid them.

They in turn had parental influences

From an earlier and less tolerant age.

Or was it, was it really less tolerant,

Or was it simply different?

2024 - day twenty-three

 The prompt is a poem about a super-hero.

The alarm goes off whilst it is still dark,

But its strident tones remind you that

Someone somewhere needs you.

Your coffee is half drunk, but with 

One eye on the clock and one hand

Grabbing stuff you leave.

You leap into your vehicle and speed

Along dark and just-waking streets

Until you reach . . . 

The hospital, and start another long

And weary day as a nurse.

2024 - day twenty-two

 The prompt is a fight between two disparate objects.

The human wanted to type a document

And even hoped to print it.

The human was firm in its intent

And was determined with it.

The desktop felt rather neglected

And was angry with the printer.

The desktop did not feel protected

And was rather keen to hinder . . . 

The human who just wanted to type

And print this short piece of writing,

But instead of success language was ripe

And the two of them fell to fighting.

The computer just froze

And would not respond

To the human's desired prose

Or any attempts of its hand!

The human cursed, and the human swore,

And the human fell to despairing,

Until the human could simply take it no more

And, with frustration and anger forbearing . . . 

The human turned the power off at the wall!

2024 - day twenty-one

 The prompt is to focus on a single colour.

The world is grey, said the photographer,

As he loaded a new roll of black and white film

Into his camera.

All the colours are condensed into an infinite

Spectrum of grey, he said, pointing to the myriad

Of greys in the forest.

White is the lightest grey, he said, and of course

Black is the darkest grey, and silver is grey

And the sea shines silver.

Colour is just a filter, he said, that covers the essential

Greyness of all things, and we should always try

To remove the filter.

He took twenty-five shots, then went home to 

His darkroom where he worked with a red light

To produce mono prints.

Then he pinned his prints to an orange string

And hung them against a pink wall,

Sat in his blue jeans and turquoise t-shirt

Drinking tea from his lime green mug

Whilst he looked at his day's work.

2024 - day twenty

 The prompt is an historical event.

Stone quarried, pier,

One day cars started driving

On and off the boat

2024 - day nineteen

 The prompt is to write about something or someone that haunts you and then change haunt to hunt.

mOnStEr

They told him a story about a monster with five legs and three eyes,

A monster that lurks under beds and haunts (hunts) little boy dreams.

They told how the monster demanded a child as sacrifice,

And how it haunted (hunted) with howling and screams.

The listed each brave young person who was willing to fight,

And who fought to the death and changed into a ghost,

They listed each princess, each servant, each knight,

And debated which ghost might then haunt (hunt) him the most.

Finally the boy stayed awake one long night

And waited until all the adults fell to slumber

Then he hoisted his torch and with a searching spotlight

Crawled to the bed and then slowly crawled under . . . 

Next morning the adults found the bed empty 

No sign of the boy, shook their heads with regret

And said he must have been tempted,

That's another one lost to a fairytale pet.

And a long way away, in another land, 

All the lost children danced, hand in hand.