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 |  Poems for years 4 and 5 of the Promptly Poetry Challenge. |
| A year's worth of poems, every week for 52 weeks, spanning 2023 and 2024, plus the year following, from August 2024 to August 2025.(provided I live that long, of course). |
Poetry 4 Poetry when singing has form bringing a certain moiety. Perhaps music is gained though truth constrained emotion trained drained. Line count: 8 Form: Quadrette - First four lines word count: 1-2-3-4, first four lines rhyme scheme a-b-b-a, second four lines word count: 4-3-2-1, second four lines rhyme scheme: c-d-d-c For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 28 Prompt: Write a quadrette. |
| Love Shall I compare love to a string of plastic hearts, to a symbol that means anything from lust to martyred sacrifice upon a ritual conflagration, a popular song composed in the fetid heat of some darkened and dishevelled nightclub, a bright young thing gamboling in spring through fields of green and sunlit daisies, a cherished secret hidden beneath the covers of a bedsit flat high up in the towers of the city, a drunken wedding feast lit with flashbulbs and the shrieks of champagne sozzled mirth, a superhero swooping to save from dragons the striking siren of seventeen summers, and daytime dream of dubious darling daughters? No, I’ll turn to your familiar face and knowing look, then smile in our completeness. Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 27 2025 Prompt: Illustration of hearts hanging from the letters of the word love. |
| Nightshift I have seen the nightshift those pale creatures hurrying home before the sun seeking the dark to earn their crust and passing the daylight hours in thickly curtained rooms dozing from fitful dream to dream propping up civilisation with quiet unseen labour leaving the day to louder men who dream of other worlds. I have been the nightshift and hated it missing the sunshine and the prattling crowds somehow surviving the regulation two weeks to return exhausted to the day and meaningless toil. Yes I know the nightshift and give them due honour for they hand on the baton without complaint. Line count: 23 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 26 2025 Prompt: Poet’s choice. |
| Flowers 3 Little dog roses, Tudor in form, lining the trails of my former home, crimson and white and left in the wild, their descendants no longer retiring mild, gone to the city and civilised all, used to the comforts of parlour and hall. Still feral the daisies of forest and field, unchanged in form and simple their yield, doggedly pale and floral exemplar, favourite of children’s drawings forever, untamed and free, still they succeed, dotting the landscape with highlights indeed. But hey to the tulip so brave and so bold, formal and painted so bright from of old, once the key to Netherland’s wealth, driving the trade and that country’s health, now the designer and painter of grace, striped in the fields, the lowlands bright face. Line count: 18 Rhymed aabbcc For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 25 2025 Prompt: Use these words in your poem: roses, daisies, tulips. |
| The Alphabeasts Aardvarks annoyingly act as adults Beavers behave before betraying Chipmunks challenge chilling constraints Diplodocus droops down defeated Earwigs eliminate earnest employees Felines fish for frantic followers Groupers gather ginger garments Hamsters hate heavy hobgoblins Impala imply infinite insurrection Jackals jealously jail jalopies Kingfishers keep kowtowing kings Lobsters like lefthanded loons Manatees may molest ministers Nightingales never needle ninepins Okapis occupy occasional overalls Piranhas prefer prey prostrate Quokka question quiet quail Rhinoceroses retain relaxing resorts Scorpions seldom seem surprised Tarantulas trim their towering threads Urchins use unauthorised utilities Voles value vanished varmints Wildebeest worry wanton walkers X-ray-tetras X-ist X-istentially X-tant Yellowhammers yammer yearly yawning Zebras zap Zambesi zealots. Line count: 26 Form: Alphabestiary For Promptly Poetry Challenge 5, Week 24 Prompt: Write an Alphabestiary poem. |
 Square Peg There is that in us There is That fits not in That somehow we’re an insert From another place In a world of balance Like a bench Placed conveniently by a lake In a forest A sore thumb In a land of nimble fingers A misplaced comma In an eloquent sentence. Not a gross intrusion Or exclamation In a crowded space But an intimation of otherness A hint Of something lost Or not yet found So it’s only now In the quiet places Where silence breathes And thought arrested Finds the slightest wrinkle In the ironed sheet. We are indeed In the world But not of it. Line count: 29 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 23 2025 Prompt: As per illustration. |
| Rowan Atkinson Updated No doubt Mr Bean can match grateful, he being an actor sublime - in slapstick he’s really a plateful, in satire he absolute shines. But now he’s entered the arena of political comment sans joke, displaying a side of him meaner and terribly hard on the woke. And in truth I like him the better, as a comic I found him quite crude; his humour seemed childish and wetter, now he looks to be starting a feud. For the audience now is much harder, the lefties impossible to please - there’s no tougher food in the larder, he will wish that he kept them in freeze. Line count: 16 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge 5, Week 22 Prompt: Use the words bean, can, match, grateful. |
 I Like Trolls Not being much for mythological beings, reality being enough for my feelings, I had no fav’rites adored nor foes to rag on apart from a weakness for another’s dragon, till, when pushed by contest’s requirement, a troll proved my highly unlikely inspirement. An initial story provided education, destroying all trolls’ accepted reputation, oh they’re large, there’s no denying that, but in their stumbling there’s a certain eclat, with character rather more gentle than bad, and wisdom unexpected in simplicity clad. So, now that I know the troll in his fulness, I reject all the tales that speak of pure dullness - all the trolls that I know are sharp and precise, they are friendly indeed and not prone to lies, as companions they’re great and soothe all your worry, and so outwardly ugly they make enemies scurry! Line count: 18 Rhymed couplets For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 21 2024 Prompt: Write a poem about a mythological creature. |
| Life 2 Seasons turn with the winding earth, our need for order dividing one from another, the same round, just as all things grow from their birth, upward with spring’s bright rush riding, till summer’s fulfillment is found. And so into autumn’s harvest, like fruit from the branch we tumble, still warm from the westering sun, as earth turns now to its darkest, agèd and frail we must stumble, with ancestral dust become one. Line count: 12 Form: Zenith - Any number of sixains. (Your poem must have two = 12 lines.), 8-syllable lines. rhyme scheme: a-b-c-a-b-c d-e-f-d-e-f. For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 20 2024 Prompt: Zenith form. |
| Snow It snowed today, swathes of little flakes windblown across our vision, literally laterally, coating the deck like matt paint, slowly thickening to a crust of white puff pastry, glistening in reflected light from our window. We didn’t go out, but watched content with winter’s usual greeting, Christmas still to come and sunshine and more snow before next year. It’s enough that seasons still chase the chosen round, unaffected by our sins. Line count: 18 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 19 2024 Prompt: Use these three words: snow, sunshine, glistening. |
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