Haikus - Dandelions

In the early morning when my baby just wants to play by himself and laugh at the fact his hands are attached to him and can find things, I sit half asleep and write some lines for the writers' posse over at Studio 30 Plus. Ideas pour, but I am tired, so I will just leave these two poems, using one of the prompts this week: dandelions. View more by others by clicking on the icon below. Thanks for reading.

Soldiers

They stand poised but burnt,
Like old dandelions, war
Scarred in a new world.

Untrodden

A summer moon hangs
On fields of dandelions
Where no one has stepped.

Flash fiction - Sanatorium, 1972

The ladies over at Studio 30+ gave us homework along with the prompts this week. It was to write and then wait. Sit back, read, re-read, let it stew and check it again the next day. I wrote Sanatorium, 1972 yesterday and it was good practice to come back to it today. I made some vocabulary changes. Reading it out loud was great. I don't do it enough, so thanks for that ladies.

The prompts this week come from Opal Reflections and the poem Pre-Dawn Reflections. They were "taught by my example" and/or "echoes". It should be obvious which I used! Thanks for reading.

Sanatorium, 1972

Isabella Snow thought she had them fooled: the memories, the trauma, the extreme mood swings and the night terrors. Famous painter turned poet with the fading white scars up her arms; she who had checked in over a month ago, hours before her deadline, clutching a yellowing photo of her father and a bottle of gin, no shoes. The first therapist, a fan, wanted to talk of her portraits, especially ‘Broken’. She hurled a vase at him. The second asked about her childhood. She spilled over herself, tripping on lost memories that made no sense with what the world actually knew. He gave her more pills, just sugar. The third therapist opened with, “I hated your last anthology.” Isabella smiled inside and cowered in her chair. ‘Echoes’ had been a roaring success, but she knew it was full of rainbows, shredded ropes of hope for the mindless to cling to. Here was what she really needed in order to write again. Pain. “Tell me,” she whispered back and prepared to really break herself open.  

 Read more here. 

Haiku - Summer

It's my last week of work before I chill out for the rest of the summer and await the birth of our first child. So, this week is a little bit more manic than most as I fit in last classes with my students with a last-minute intensive course I'm giving and the antenatal classes I have booked in. But I couldn't resist joining up with the fine folks at Studio 30+ and their prompt this week which is quite simple: summer. We can do anything we like with it. This came to me last night as I was trying to sleep (unsuccessfully). Other entries can be read by clicking on the icon above. Have a good week! 

Meanwhile

The ladybirds climb

Long, green stalks knowing at the

Top summer will end. 

You say goodbye, I say hello

For the last seven months I have had the pleasure of helping edit over at Trifecta Writing Challenge. But all good things come to an end and Trifecta is closing its doors this week. Before joining the team, I spent the summer, after moving to Luxembourg, taking part in its wacky and wonderful writing challenges. I loved its freshness and the real competition. They are many great writers walking its halls. As it ends I feel only glad to have been a small part of it and having had the experience of getting to read and know some very cool people. It was a sweet, sweet journey. These people; we have never met, and probably never will. And yet I will keep reading them because this world now, as it is, allows us. So no goodbyes, just more hellos. Keep spinning. Keep writing.

Connected

Parting we cannot,

We are already apart

Like the sun and moon. 

The flag on the floor

It's a picture prompt this week for the 100WCGU writing challenge at Julia's Place. As soon as I saw it, certain words came to my head. They are not my words and I have never written them down before.

They were written by a boy in my GCSE history class in 1995. We were studying the First World War and were given the task of writing a short poem. He read this out loud to the class and I have always remembered it. I can't remember if he gave it a title or not, so I have taken liberty with that.

In the wired and connected world we live in, I am not interested in using his words to connect with him again, so he will remain anonymous. I wonder if he even remembers what he wrote. If he does, and ever stumbles here, let him know those words touched me when I was fifteen and still do today, especially on this day of remembrance.

The Flag on the Floor

When the standing berry gets shot,
We pick it up and march on.
But we didn't today.

We left the flag on the floor.


Read more at Julia's Place HERE

Kintsukuroi - Golden scars

Ready for the weekend? Here's a prompt to keep you alive. It's this week's episode of delight over at The Queen Creative and we are told:

Kintsukuroi is a Japanese noun meaning “to repair with gold”; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

Firstly, it's a great word. Just say it out loud a few times. Cheaper than a yoga breathing class. Secondly, it has made me write another poem. Poems come to me in a dash, I can't help them. And once they are down I find it very difficult to change them. These poems of mine, I think they might be broken. But if you, by any chance, have any gold handy to help them out, like words, please stitch them together below. You can make them more beautiful, after all. Much appreciated. 

Golden Scars

Time ravages everything. 

Nothing can be saved. 

Wind whispers, stones crumble

People age, art fades.

Times pieces together meaning

For us to see its place

And beauty lies not just in colour,

Nor stone or stature, nor form or face.

Time cracks and wrung hands plead

Nothing stays as it should

But what is a painted Acropolis

Or Machu Picchu with a roof?

Time’s golden scars tell tall tales

A slashed, re-beautified tribe

Of carefully broken and re-pieced pieces

That are given second lives. 

So time, while ravaging, stitches richly

And the wind will wind its way

Through crumpled hearts and history,

Yet everything can still have its day.

Please visit other writers starring in this week's For The Promptless episode by clicking on the television screen that still works:

Words

I'm getting this post up today even though I posted for another site already. Tomorrow I fly back to my native island for a wedding so am going to be technologically mute for a couple of days. So, this prompt is from the folks at Studio30 Plus. The word is... WORD.

This is a poem I wrote in 2009 when the English language reached its one millionth word. I was very excited in the build-up as newspapers and linguists around the world placed bets on what that pinnacle official word would be. Then it came. The 1,000,000th word in the English language was...

WEB 2.0. 

I wanted to vomit. That's not even a word.

So I wrote this in response and I share it with you today.

Web Two Point Zero

How did we get here
From there?
From one word to a million.
How we say this and that
Has changed,
Gone are the rules in this word game
So that nothing ever remains the
Same.

Technology discovers
And wakes the dictionary.
It opens and finds a space,
As the world explores
And pours in more
So out of our mouths
It becomes commonplace.

When the grandfather cradles
A baby just born
He knows in another century
His meaning will have torn;
But that this little miracle
Will understand enough to say
Those words he knew
In a different way.
He feels sad how changes speak
Across years and countries
As new senses they seek:
Ones he will not realise,
Words he will not say,
Meanings he will never meet.

Years later, after a million more
His great great granddaughter listens, abhors,
To the children in their virtual world
As they compurite and intereed
And never ink or paper need.
She shakes her head and reaches for
The secret in her bureau drawer:
Those golden letters, they never faded,
Neither his words inside those pages.
She reads and delights in joined letters,
Painstaking care to get it right
And no disgusting number in sight.
So two remains two and too as well
Not like now, she’ll sadly tell
Her own grandchildren and she will let them see
Her great great grandfather’s life-long diary.

First one was born because it was the first
Words followed from a naming thirst
And to a million we have now arrived
The most amount of meaning ever survived.
But before we drop our heads to charge on,
To pass another inevitable million
We must remember words are more than letters strung
And they started with a meaningful 
One.

To read other writes on the prompt WORD or the other of this week's prompts, SICK visit:

The news article when, for some, this language crossed that million word barrier:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8092549.stm

Perfectly Me - approach-approach conflict in poetry

This week over at Prompts for the Promptless there's a conflict on the horizon. But don't worry, it's a one of those comforting conflicts where everything will turn our happily ever after. We think.

We are told:
Approach-approach conflict is the psychological conflict that results when a choice must be made between two desirable alternatives.

I've tried some poetry this week. It just spurted out. No conflict there, then. But I hope it captures the prompt.

Perfectly Me

Should I stay or should I go?

I don't know.

Staying is yellow and moonlit and beautifully strange.

Going is rusty adventures in daylight orange.

Staying is knowing, turning well-worn pages.

Going is jumping, leaping across new stages.

Staying is finding more.

Going is finding out.

Staying is being sure.

Going is wondering about.

Is it all or nothing or neither or both?

Is my decision final, or mirrors and smoke?

When I am happy as I am right now,

How can I walk away?

Yet over the fence is another rainbow

And more freedom to play.

Two halves of two wholes

That fit together perfectly.

All I must decide, or not,

Is which half is perfectly me. 

Check out other offerings over at The Queen Creative this week. Go. Or stay. Either way is OK.

Working Late

I've gone for a little poem this week, on the prompt from Julia's Place and the 100-word Challenge for Grown-Ups. Click on the image below for more information and to read others' take on the prompt. This week we had to include ...parting is such sweet sorrow...

Working Late

Lights dimmed, hoovers on

It’s now time to go,

But he’s still here and boss has gone

So it’s not for work I know.

I move things around my desk,

The cleaner watches me.

He hears me tidying my mess,

Tries to pack up slowly.

He’s timed it wrong so stays

By the lift tying his shoe.

I grab my bag, sway his way

Finally: it’s us two.

“Out tonight?” he dares.

I smile, shake my head.

“Are you going anywhere?”

“Nah, home and early bed.”

Lift opens, it’s over;

The game waits until tomorrow.

He goes – my not-yet lover;

Parting is such sweet sorrow. 

100 words + prompt

Winter has left the building

Spring is here and I, for one, am very excited and happy about it. Mother's Day is around the corner, Easter egg hunts are being planned (or, in London, are already underway) and there are brushes of colour along each pavement. Daffodils have sprouted in the middle of my lawn, crocuses are poking their purple and yellow heads out from all manner of places and the blossom on the trees is getting ready to party. Our heating times have already been shortened, the bbq has been cleaned and the patio furniture is ready.

Yesterday after I had done some gardening, planted some flowers, sowed some seeds and cut the lawn we had our first bbq of 2012. What a heavenly moment: sitting in the garden in the sun, reading the Sunday newspapers with the smell of meat cooking over coals.

Welcome Spring! It reminded me of this poem by Sidney Lanier.

Spring Greeting

All faintly through my soul to-day,
As from a bell that far away
Is tinkled by some frolic fay,
Floateth a lovely chiming.
Thou magic bell, to many a fell
And many a winter-saddened dell
Thy tongue a tale of Spring doth tell,
Too passionate-sweet for rhyming.

Chime out, thou little song of Spring,
Float in the blue skies ravishing.
Thy song-of-life a joy doth bring
That's sweet, albeit fleeting.
Float on the Spring-winds e'en to my home:
And when thou to a rose shalt come
That hath begun to show her bloom,
Say, I send her greeting!