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 |  GoT plus the PromptMaster! and Cards Against Authors stuff (poetry and short stories) |
 Apparently this is going to be a load of writing of various types - stories, poems, reviews and, no doubt, just about anything else you can think of.. |
| Altschmerz Another day, another lack of dollar, eyes creak open to one more dark morning, and I must enter the cold to dress in preparation for more nothing. The same pains and aches find new regions and the floor feels uneven beneath my bare feet, the game of guess the ailment has lost its flavour, my defences still stand from long practice. When the future is crumpled into a tight ball within my grasp, squeezed long ago of all its juice and dry now to the touch, it’s hard to see a reason to continue. Old age is all and more than expected, once interesting in its changes, even soaring at times with possibilities, and now revealed as just another day. Line count: 16 Free verse For Cards Against Authors, Week 4 Prompt Prompt Card: You are suffering from Altschmerz (weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had - the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which makes you numb to them, and they're no longer interesting to think about). Word Cards: Soar, Footprint (You only need to choose one word to use). |
| Tourist Class Like sardines in a baitball preparing for death in the can air travellers in the metal tube shuffle and stretch in the aisle stashing, stacking the spaces and sliding, packing in seats bodies retracted into armoured defences, silenced in hush and muttering under breath readied for the slingshot hours when earth falls away beneath and life constricts into limits bounded by elbows of touch unrequested or desired thought and reason squashed into this hollow existence endurance the only intent. Scant relief in the vision of sky folded flat meals on a tray jaded old movies squawking as the hum of the engines rumble to keep you aware another minute flown toward release from the press and racehorse blinkers unwound only for the smooth patter of captain’s announcement confidence unwarranted to scrape into your treasured invincibility so carefully nurtured to hold on to alone. Return to earth crescendo a sudden whoosh of arrival and freedom beckons in the rush to forget until flying again. Line count: 35 Free verse For PromptMaster! Week 4 Task Prompt Prompt: Using onomatopoeia, write a poem describing a crowded event. Make at least one sound jarring. |
| Echo Canyon When shouting in hope of an echo, the most common word is just “hello,” but some get clever and try a yodel, while others aspire to be more vocal. If, however, you leave it to me, I’d try for something both wild and free, a word like “orange,” which has no rhyme, to give Mr Echo an int’resting time. Line count: 8 Rhymed aabb For PromptMaster! Week 4 Prize Prompt: Prompt: The thing you’d most like to shout into an empty canyon just to hear the echo. |
| Mechanical Sympathy There is in us a thing that cannot be explained, man and machine they call it. Just turn the key or press the button, awake the monster growls. Vibration touches your willing grasp, control begins the dance, release it now in strength beyond curtail, so well-controllèd power, the meld of flesh and metal shining polished, separation falls away, animal and creation together with one mind, in harmony they move, and subtle imperceptible the conscious guiding hand your orders to perform. How can this amalgamating state be born, a mystic union formed; ecstatic and unlikely fusion souls - evolution thwarted? Line count: 18 Free verse For Cards Against Authors, Week 3 Prompt: You get to choose your own topic this week, but you must incorporate the wild card! Wild Card: Constraint: Each line must alternate between long and short sentences. |
| Bus The ninety-nine does come this way, or so I’ve heard some people say, and here it stops, so claims the sign, the one with Bus Stop written fine. If you are going to Old Hampstead and looking forward to your bed, I’ll stand and wait along with you for, as it happens, I go there too. Here comes one now, it’s going fast - oh dear, oh my, it’s gone right past. I should have seen, it was so clear, a twenty-three it was and don’t stop here. Oh well, I’m sure it won’t be long, the waiting crowd’s now quite a throng and all these people can’t be wrong, soon ninety-nine will come along. I’m told there’s thirty minutes wait between each bus - they’re never late. But I’ve been standing here an hour which may be why I’m feeling sour. Oh, there’s a bus just down the street - I’ve never seen a sight more sweet… yet now it seems it’s not my day, it’s turned around and gone away. I don’t think I can wait much longer, I’m mad enough to dance the conga right here at this forsaken stop, now all together till we drop. But wait, look up, there’s three approach, one after t’other, here’s our coach all labelled ninety-nine indeed - the first is full and gathers speed. The second too has no more room, it rattles past, seems set on zoom, and when the last’s career is done, it seems it has just room for one. I’m sorry but I was the first, besides I’m nearly dead from thirst, and as I hop upon the bus, don’t swear at me and make a fuss. Line count: 40 Rhymed aabb For PromptMaster! Task Prompt, Week 3 Prompt: Write a poem that makes the reader wait. |
| Ode to a Bathtub Oh, perfect porcelain potentate of purity! How bright your name in the order of bidet, basin and bowl, preeminent and famed, alone you stand, in greatness venerated. Now your shining flanks so adamant support your crown on high, that silvered tower above the crowd blessing from the sky, source of showers of soothing balm. Down to the welcoming receptacle cascade the cleansing waters to fill your strong and polished sides, lave your sons and daughters, thus cleared contamination of the day. So to the sacred drain and depths the teeming waters flow, to disappear forever from our sight, our sins dissolve and go, renewed we stand, glowing children of the bath. Line count: 20 Rhymed abcbd, varied meter For PromptMaster! Prize Prompt, Week 3 Prompt: The most nonsensical thing to write an Ode to. |
| Butterfly A megalomaniac metamorphosis, the frog; the butterfly is merely a flying worm. Beholden 1970 The butterfly goes flutt’ring fair in colours bright and debonair, his warning sign extraordinaire to predators that ride the air, “I’m poisonous so you take care - suggest you hunt some other fare.” And though it be a lie so bold, the birds do know through time untold such painted tones will danger hold, and leave the conman lone and cold to flutter on his course paroled, escaping as his plan foretold. Just think that as his wings do stir the atmosphere in tiny blur, his microscopic storm may whirr to greater gales and so confer unto the world cyclone and whirl- wind enough to make us demur. Remember that this flying worm contains always this nascent germ, and though he seems so light and bright, his heart is steeped in darkest night. Line count: 22 Form: Trochaic tetrameter, rhymed aaaaaa bbbbbb cccccc ddee For Cards Against Authors, Week 2 Prompt Card: A butterfly as a villain. . Word Cards: Glimmering, Whirlwind (You only need to choose one word to use) Wild Card: Constraint: Two lines in your poem must either use only one-syllable words or no one-syllable words. |
| Winter Sprinter Come with me now to the depths of winter when breath is so cold it seems to splinter, rasps in your throat like pepper and minter, scrapes in the lungs until your eyes squinter, rattles its way a dot matrix printer, just enough to make anyone whimper. Speak to me now of how pretty the snow, and set that beside the cold that I know. Line count: 8 Rhymed aaaaaa bb For PromptMaster! Week 2 Task Prompt Prompt: Write a poem that’s almost too much. |
| Modern Art A fine mistake it would surely be if readers should be made to see that my intent right from the start is to create what might be art, and since I do it in the present its modernness is surely meant. And if I say things in strange ways, it’s just because my personal days occurred when all the poetic greats have had their say and become late. The matters that concerned them then need no restatement once again. So if I speak of things today, appropriate it is to say in language quite contemporary and methods revolutionary, the better to speak unto my peers and weave my spell about their ears. Line count: 18 Rhymed aabb For PromptMaster! Prize Prompt Week 2 Prompt: The thing that is most likely to cause your poem to be mistaken for modern art. |
| Procrastinator’s Dread I do not care for future me who lives somewhere I do not see; it’s my comfort I nurture now when irksome tasks do crease my brow. I put them off and send them on for future self to slave upon, and turn my back upon the thought how hard his days with chores I bought. But now I fear that some dark day my future me will go away, for his resentment grown so vast had worn his patience down at last; departed for some Shangri-La, he sings of freedom on guitar and I be left with endless tasks, while he in tropic sunshine basks. Line count: 16 Rhymed couplets, 8 syllables per line For Cards Against Authors, Week 1 Prompt Card: You’re afraid of your future self. Wild Card: Metaphor: Emotional growth as a fragile seed. Note: Patience grows to resentment. |
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