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.
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!
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.
The prompt is an historical event.
Stone quarried, pier,
One day cars started driving
On and off the boat
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.
The prompt requires the subject to want to be something or someone else.
Confuse . . .
Confused, a small child
Wonders why they fail to please,
Getting nothing right.
A teenager, lost
In a world of confusion
Does not really fit.
An adult, life is
Confusing and unhappy,
It is still all wrong.
And always the thought that if only this,
And if only that, then it might all have been
Okay, and life might have been a bliss -
Ful romantic concluding film scene.
Perhaps they are not who they think they are?
The prompt is a poem inspired by a piece of music.
Homeward Bound.
I have sat in so many railway stations
And bought so many tickets.
I have travelled in cars with cassette players
And 'mix tapes' of whatever the driver fancies
But in my own car, no, I have albums.
At one time copies on tape, later on cd,
Now on a SD card and set to shuffle.
None of them have the impact of
The Simon and Garfunkel song the first year
I spent in the Lakes.
Any song from them takes me back instantly
To hot days at Scout Crag, and long lunches in the pub,
To journeys over mountain passes, and bank holidays
With too many people in one place, cars parked
Along the road and blocking gates, litter dropped
And the local farmer dredging the septic tanks
And spraying the contents on his fields . . .
Pretty pale pink and blue fragments fluttering
In the breeze and the sewage-smelling-wind bringing
The message of wrongly flushed sanitary towels
On display in broad daylight.
The soundtrack of my mistakes, and all my words
Come back to me in shades of mediocrity,
Harmonising their emptiness and I feel
A longing for someone to comfort me.
