Day the thirtieth

Today the prompt is write about something that returns.


Back again

Each year as the spring creeps into
Winter's room, and slowly pushes
Aside the dead twigs and leaves,
There appear on the hillside some
Alien lives, emerging from the ground
As rain and sunlight draws them up
And unwinding as little monstrous
Stems and growing deer horns.
And each year I start by stamping on
Each one that I see and try to hold
Back the inexorable march of
The army of
Bracken!

It is a battle I always lose,
And I always shall.

Day the twenty-ninth

Today the prompt is to praise your pet!

Dog.

he is dog
a dogly dog
of wagging tail
and solemn eyes
runs in the rain
chases balls
eats biscuits
and loves to
chase the
red
dot

Day the twenty-eighth

Today the prompt is to describe a bedroom from your past.


And so to sleep.

Wallpaper with poppies and other spring flowers
Rioting all over it, but on a white background, and
The seams not quite smooth which are a great
Temptation to a small child to pick and poke at.

A shelf, mysteriously sitting at the side of the room,
And a step below it; adulthood tells me that this box
Is there to accommodate the stairs beneath, but
As a small child it was a puzzle and an intrigue.

A white chest of drawers with clothes from a bygone
Age within it, perfume bottles from a different life,
And false pearls and costume brooches that
Sparkle in the evening sun and tempt little fingers.

A window ledge behind the curtain, a space a small
Child could sit in and read after bedtime, until
She is spotted by her grandfather who lives just
A few raindrops away, and a phone call results.

This was the room that I knew, this was the room of the
Days when I was normal and had two parents and things
Were not all wrong and horrid, but when they sent me away
I came home to no father and a different bedroom.

Day the twenty-seventh

Today the challenge is write a poem as a review of something.


Waiting

It would be better if there was a time limit
I think, and a sense of where the beginning
Begins and where the end might begin
To be an end or at least to stop being
A perpetual beginning.

It would be better if the people who are
In charge of this had any idea what
They were doing and if they listened
To people who are not in charge but who
Do know what they are doing.

It would also be better if someone could
Arrange the weather so that instead of
Days of dreich and rain and clouds and mist
And misery we had a spell of constant sun
Lasting until at least the beginning of the end.


Overall I fear I can only give one out of ten.

Day the twenty-sixth

Today the prompt is to answer a list of categories and use the answers for a poem. I have a short attention span and the first category is weather - so - rain.


Chorley Market

Today is a Chorley Market sort of day
A buying faggots sort of day
A buying biscuits sort of day
A buying second hand biscuits sort of day
A buying fabric sort of day
A buying black pudding sort of day
A buying cheese sort of day.

Today is a Chorley Market sort of day
Where the puddles are congregating
Where the cars are lined up in by the station
Where the queues have umbrellas
Where the buses hiss and splash
Where the cafe windows are steamed up
Where the rain drips down your neck.

Yes, today is a Chorley Market sort of day.

Day the twenty-fifth

Today the prompt is to be inspired by a given poem. I took the words "in every room a shawl tossed untidily upon a chair or bed".

Last days

In every room in this abandoned house
There lives a memory, subsisting on dust
And echoes, and wearing just
A shawl across weary shoulders
That have borne a life of rainstorm and trial.

Silent footsteps pave across the floor and
Their tread is imagined in every sheet of paper
Tossed untidily aside when the last
Living residents left so precipitously,
And a single glove sits
Upon a chair and offers a mute lament for its
Long lost companion.

                                    The sleepless years
Of waiting can never ease the death
And destruction of mankind in its last days
And the pain never rests on couch or bed.

Day the twenty-fourth

The prompt is a fruit.

corruption

the seed of our downfall is encased
within the crisp skin, and the
sweet flesh is an unfulfilled
raindrop promise of freedom

Day the twenty-third

Today the prompt is a poem about a letter.


What?

I will not say which
But will scrawl words
That will broadcast hints
To allow a looking body
An opportunity to work it out
In sunlight or rain.

Day the twenty-second

The prompt is a phrase from another language.

Freedom.

He lives in a house without furniture
His bed is the earth where he stands
And the sky is his guide and shelter

He travels across oceans to new lands
And flies with the birds on rain wings
And time is a took in his hands

No walls hold him in, he is serf to no kings
And the wind is his voice and its music he sings.

Day the twenty-first

The prompt today is meant to be a homophonic translation - but I am interpreting this a little loosely . . .

When the weather talks . . .

The rain cloud tells us to shelter, and pitter patter
Is not a matter to be considered sufficient
To ditch the um-ber-ella and forget the galoshes
That protect your immortal soul . . .
The blue sky whistles memories into mind now knowing
And echoes the shouts of a beach and sandcastle
Playing of days in the past and promises, perhaps,
Of sun kissed moon washed life again . . .
The howling wind is retching and hurling abuse
At violent misfortune, armed with a bludgeon and
Knife, smashing and slashing the flimsy barriers
Mankind has erected.

Day the twentieth

Today the prompt is a home made gift.

Flight.

Come rain, come wind, come all kinds of weather
We fly in the sky, we fly there together.
We joust with our words, and joke with a grin,
'Tis the magic of friendship where all does begin!

Day the nineteenth

Today the prompt is basically found trivia.

 The hallway

The hallway was a neglected room,
Although not really a room at all,
More an intermission between the more
Definite movements of the living room,
The kitchen, or the bedroom.
No one usually sits and reads in the hallway,
No one goes there in order to listen to
A programme on the radiogram.
No, the hallway is a transitory place,
In the house, but not entirely of the house,
On the way from here to there, from
Downstairs to upstairs, from day to night.
In the hallway live the coats between outings,
The hats that are used only now and then,
The gloves that are not even in pairs any more,
And the umbrellas await the grabbing hand
When someone sees rain as they open the door.
On the chest in the hallway live the keys
Deposited as a resident passes from 'the world'
Into 'the home', a symbolic waiting area to
Pass from life through to death.
The hallway is purgatory with an ill-defined
Purpose, it is neither heaven nor hell, but
An ante-chamber to either, or a point of
Last return, from here you may go back
Or you may choose to go on but you cannot stay.
In this the universal hallway.

Day the eighteenth

Today the prompt is to consider life's small pleasures.


Recharge

To sit
To sit and stare across the water
Watching the light
Playing hide and seek with the hills
And the rain clouds
Teasing the trees
And dancing across the loch
To sit
Is to recharge.

Day the seventeenth

Today the prompt is 'forgotten technology' and doggerel wins the day. My thanks to Ivan Drever for recording the album that came to a sticky end!

I've ne're forgotten

Today I have to tell you a tale of loss and woe,
A rainy day's tale of deep disaster
So sad a tale, as sad as these things go,
A tale to cause real tears (although of laughter!)

I was cooking in the kitchen as I often did
Baking cakes to bring us pleasure and much joy.
I had music in there with me, a necessary aid
For music helps to further every ploy.



I had a tin of treacle, and I needed just one spoon
But it was set and hard as iron in the tin
So in order to make it softer, and do it very soon,
To the nice hot waiting oven it went in.

I waited for ten minutes, to get it nice and warm,
And while waiting changed cassettes, as you do.
Never thinking that the heat would do me any harm
It would simply make the tinful less like glue!




I'd put the tape down on the side, to wait till I was done,
And grabbed a towel to keep my hands from burning,
But the towel was wet and I dropped that tin
And hot treacle is runny as I was learning . . .

I dowsed the tape and stood on its case
My legs were all sticky and spattered
The tape was a goner, I'd need to replace,
And as for the case it was battered!

So the end of this tale, I am sad to relate,
Was one dead cassette and not even one cake!

Day the sixteenth

Today the prompt it to praise in the superlative. I may have turned this upside down . . .

you

your hair is oily and rank
your teeth are black and broken
your oxters are ripe and most dank
and your smile is a useless wee token
your nails are filthy and blackened
your knees are scabbed over with scale
your sneezing should never have happened
and your breath is rancid and stale
you don't wear a coat when it's raining
you don't wear a scarf in the snow
your chatter is not entertaining
and you spread misery wherever you go

Day the fifteenth

Today the prompt is to write in a style of some music. I have been lateral in my interpretation . . .

The beginning

Does the sound seem familiar?
Raising your hopes perhaps?
Meanings are important as well, of course, and the
Farther you go, the longer it takes
So, pack your clothes and tie your shoes,
Label those cases carefully; one last cup of
Tea, and off you go.
Do it now, despite the rain, why not?

Day the fourteenth

Today the prompt is a poem, poet or person that is your inspiration. My thoughts turn straightway to Edwin Muir . . .

The horses

The day the horses returned was the first day of normal rain.
That morning the clouds had foregathered in massed ranks
Of steel grey cushions, sky bound in wind-driven train,
A storm of nature's making, and we could give thanks.

Until this day the world had rained poison and dripped death,
Echoes of armageddon reverberated in each thunder clap,
And fear laced the raindrops, the wind's ice-sharded breath
Seemed to us, cowered in shelter, to be one more killing trap.

But once the radios were silent, and the ships had sailed on,
The skies slowly lightened, night brought the moon out and stars,
We slowly emerged in the tentative light of a revisiting sun
To walk once again on the land that in healing was ours.

And this day the clouds brought us rain and a promise
And in the evening the horses to join us in harness.

Day the thirteenth

On this the the thirteenth day the prompt is a non-apology, the discourse so beloved of politicians and confidence tricksters . . .

I am (not) sorry

a thief I am, and I feel no regret,
whilst still I utter anodyne and
pointless phrases, my apology is
conditional for what have I done?

I stole the day and danced with the teasing breeze,
I stole the time to walk beside the taunting seas,
I stole the hours of rain to linger long,
I stole the moments in the wild birds' song.

For all these things I took and knew no shame,
For all these things I'd steal again and again.

Day the twelfth

Today the prompt is to write a triolet.

One day


This day was born in the silver grey of rain
And grew wise from the added soft of sun;
It danced to keening windsong over and again;
This day was born in the silver grey of rain
And battled man's insane tyranny of pain
And lived through all the hours 'til it was done;
This day was born in the silver grey of rain
And grew wise from the added soft of sun.

Day the eleventh

Today the prompt is the meaning of flowers.

On the third day

Each year you return,
Swallow-like,
And stand strong
Against the storm,
The wind, the rain.
Daffodil.
The real resurrection.

Day the tenth

Today the prompt is to write a hay(na)ku - I have decided to expand the form into a pseudo sonnet for our times:

Easter


long
hours of
holiday weekend traffic

today
we expect
no-one to come
but there are cars

sunshine
bathes the
landscape in soft
and rainless light and
tempts the hibernating into life

but there are less cars today
so perhaps people will stay away

Day the ninth

Today the challenge is a concrete poem, where the physical shape reflects the subject, or tries to!

Dripping


when
it is
raining
the
water
runs off
my hat
and
drips
into
my boots.

Day the eighth

Today the prompt is to use a line from another poem - plagiarise in fact!


If . . .

To shiver like a root in the rain
To tremble like a wind-struck leaf
To venture one tentative step once again
To challenge the end with belief.

To dance like the storm in her eyes
To float as though eagled with wings
To cast a blanket of fear on the skies
Is to wait for the pain future brings.

Day the seventh

Today the prompt is to base a poem on a news article. I chose one from the Grauniad . . .

Recipe for success

Perfect shelves and unblocked drains are surely
All that anyone could ever wish for?
It would not matter that the cupboard doors
Fell off, or that the bathroom take keeps dripping
As long as the shelves and perfect and the drains unblocked.

Never mind that the roof is missing so many tiles
That you need an umbrella over the bed when it rains;
Never mind that the broken window means that
You need your winter coat, gloves and a hat to visit the loo.

Perfect shelves and unblocked drains are your guarantee
Of domestic harmony and bliss, they are your happiness
Assured from now on, your life will be trouble free
Because you have perfect shelves and unblocked drains.

Day the sixth

Today the prompt is to write in the persona of a character featured on Hieronymous Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.

An elephant opines


Stately as I am, no rain
nor snow diverts me
from my course.

My dignity survives even
man's determination
to use me as a horse.

Day the fifth

Today we are given twenty prompts but I have chosen just one - to write of the future, to make a prediction.


One day

And one day, when this is all over,
We shall sing together again;
We shall join our voices and drown out
The sound of raindrops on the parched ground.
And one day, when this is all over,
We shall meet and smile at each other;
We shall embrace our past and erase
The teardrop traces for a world in thrall
To the strident demands of power and
Money, and we shall reclaim this our land.

Day the fourth

Today the prompt is to base a poem around a remembered image from a dream.

Rainstorm

The road is long, it stretches from the cross
to the motorway bridge
And I have to walk it every day, once one way
and once the other.
In my dreams the road never ends, I have to
keep on walking
Walking, walking, with the raindrops running
Down my neck.
My coat gets more and more soaked and the
water runs into my shoes,
Soaking my socks and sending shivers back
up to my knees.
My hands become wrinkled and waxy, not able
to grip or articulate,
And the perpetual rain keeps running down and
dripping off my nose.

Day the third

Today the prompt suggested taking random words and, finding various rhymes for them, then use some in a poem. Some years ago I was told that one should NEVER use a word of more than 2 syllables in a poem - and as you can see I always heed that advice . . .

Invisible threat


The rain now makes it difficult to walk as
The damp underfoot means different shoes
And the intensification of the frustration of steps.
The rain makes the earthy smells stronger and richer
And the photographic excellence of the resultant
Picture presents a needed antidote to the pestilence
That besmirches our islands, that spreads
in soundless menace, wastelanded mainland
And island, consumed by a silent rapacious predator.

Day the second

The prompt is to write about a specific place.


Yesnaby

The rain is horizontal
Driving, cold, relentless,
The wind whips the waves
Into froth and ice-steam
Drenching the cliffs
And despite it all
Primula Scotica stands small.

Day the first.

The prompt refers to an action of some sort as a metaphor for life.

Rain

I was born when the first raindrop fell
And I grew as the raindrop became an ocean.
As a river I met friends, more than I can tell,
And as I grow old and ponderous, in slow motion
I drift into an estuary, and thence the sea.