26 April

Day 26 (2)

From Napowrimo.net - almanac entries

Almanac Questionnaire

Day sunflirts with dandelions

closing closing shop

in jaundiced suburbs,

creeping up outside old Georgian Sunday 

This is a haunted house  - 

a plague of alligators, 

ghosts  preaching xenophobia ,

poor graffiti - look the end is her..

Been 27 years, 

we're lost inside a plot -

some mad disney princess will freeze

the sky above the ordinary

5g corona templar gold 

is the rhyme of the day, sings

the leader of the free world 

Tinfoil and bleach and faith

3 drunk economists will shout

and slur the names of 20000 dead

Don't drink the koolaid, brother,

duck and cover  

You make a turn  - another alley  

 -  nothing here

but curlews, absolutely free,

who cares anymore what people think?

       

You do, you try to be a prophet - 

there is a fire of knockoff Christmas lanterns

along the skinned snake of this  blood red river

You think of night, those char-dark hawkmoth wings

26 April

Day 26 

Marathon
 a poem in 26 words

All first miles are easy-

times twenty, more, feel endless-

run until you can't

All first miles are easy-

stillness is a state of mind


At Marathon

we wait-the heat tires.
We shelter in the shade:
this town is dusty now, dusty then

We're waiting for the messenger, 
dying with his message

25 April

Day 25 (2)

Prompt from Napowrimo.net

Minutiae

This poem is about little life and everything we notice but don't notice:

For example, ants, the teeniest beneath my feet,

the extremity of workers. They make a line from

the ant-hole to my kitchen counter,

trying to death vortex round the sugar canteen,

except that it is square and it's hard to curve

round a square, but yes they try

I'm in a Facebook group where

we pretend to be ants

and it’s all BITE and LIFT

and yes, it's nice to have a sense of community

in these times,

but there's a mystery in being so small.

And we are small too. Our lives are very short

and this can lead people to do very silly, inexplicable things.

Like the wasp that flew off with its severed head

and thought it had escaped and only realised too late

(is there ever a good time?)

that it was blind and that it could never feed. 

Or the bird with wounded feet

we saw ascend from the weather in the deserted square,

not thinking that it might never land.

Or the cloud happy it was raining but not realising

that after,  it would no longer be a cloud.

Or the blue planet that creates

little baby things that may someday destroy it,

or try to, but is still proud of its creations. 

And do you know that the planets

and the galaxy and universe can only be

rolled up into a ball and pushed along

the edge of space and time by a girl,

a worker ant, taking it her queen for inspection?

She probes it with her antennae, she moves her feelers over it,

she moves her mandibles, she digests and recycles it

into ant-nectar for her wormhole wriggling young.

In her is the ant-nest in my garden

and the line of white stars beginning there

and stretching like time,

or what we understand of it, to my kitchen counter

and the sugar they can't reach,

can never reach, and still they try…

25 April

Day 25

Prompt from Poetry Society - what do you collect and why

Collection (1)

I wish I’d found among my lost possessions,

that old, round box with the sharp lipped catch,

an antique, made of Bakelite,

an ordinary heirloom, a memorium

and opened it, shaking it first ,

to hear them rattle against

each other, in their hundreds,

all the regrets

my mother collected and kept together in one

special container. I have none for mine,

just leave them scattered so anyone can find them

All hers, I have inherited but lost –

the mother of pearl, the plain brown round, the gilt,

the thin white plastic, little beads of glass,

twin eye on each to see the in and out

of thread not taken, or the wrong fed in

When I come to think of it,

I wish I could find it now- there are things

that need repairing,

coats don’t simply fasten on their own

But you've come to the wrong person -

I can’t sew this on,

I can hardly use a needle,

prick my finger, witch and maiden

Yet, I could simply do this, as I used to -

dive my fingers in the button box

and stir up all these little empty faces,

letting them slip between

You could hear them, all the regrets, from here -

clacking and purring between my fingers,

nothing but totems and charms, each powerful

and dangerous - such potential to be useful

24 April

Day 24

Actually from Day 23, but late...a letter to Shakespeare on his birthday

Dear Will

Your birthday is the same as your death day

in legend. A playwright’s neat contrivance

but I'd credit you with more than that

if you were your own creation,

as I am. There is no coincidence

There is no Deus ex, no fateful storm

We write the geology strata by strata

We are territory now, beyond plot -

forget the sad old men,

yourself included, all those jealous

kings, those senile gods

those envious middle managers

promoted above their station

I'm all verse and nothing -

I walk in structured pentameter,

in loose, worn clothing.

I write in blue blood like my eyes

I'm Sycorax, killed off before first act,

leaving the island motherless

There’s Prospero, father of all your books,

writing just to burn them, making

smoke to choke the plague

It spreads from London to Stratford

and you haven't many children left to spare

and nothing but words to save them

I am your co author, 

I'd allow the characters to breathe and eat, be agents

though I know the power of symbols on a page-

Sycorax washes her long blue hair,

Miranda, to survive, traps gulls, snaps their white necks,

Prospero eats air, scratches letters in the dirt

You lock yourself away in text

like a voice in Trees

singing terrifying songs.

I whisper in Miranda's ear - 

She'll take a knife into her wedding bed

to trim the form of her own sonnet

24 April

Day 24 

Prompt from Napowrimo.net - describe fruit
This is mostly 'found' from apple sites (for apple keepers) with some additions

Eden

I worked for a time up in the orchard

on the edge of somewhere you have never been.

The farmer told us our job, picking but not tasting

We  disobeyed him -stealing them to bite with our new teeth

They said two of the apple trees were brothers,

Good and Notgood-

sweetness only after the first frost of the year,

tasting like perfume  wildness, very early desire

The apples were not quite the grasp-span of my hand

as I plucked them too soon from the stiff, old fingers

Man ate one first, then blamed me,

but I invented taste and words to describe theft on my tongue-

greenlarge tartgood tartlarge, tartlarge greeningnever

thinchopped tartwithered juicyrosy,

witheredjelly redcharming mellowhideous 

sourgreen tartrotten russetfavorite

perfectsmallest and worstsour,

witheredmedium-sized tarttiny sourearly russethot

and tartmellow sweetsmall and sourlonesome

greenlarge red-cheeked enny green

Many fell on their own,

that was forgiven. In lean times, they were windfall -

We stored them till they stank of dazy sugar

drank them as they rotted, sang praise songs

It wasn't an easy job, but it was important,

my fingers bleeding onto the waxy skin.

I remember now,   in the dust and in the after,

Our Days were choked with apple blossom petals

23 April

Day 23 (2)

Off prompt - inspired by endless photos of 'Liverpool in Black and White'

Liverpool in Black and White

They keep demolishing and smashing Liverpool

Again again

In black and white 

And it seems that I was born nowhere

And lived nowhere

My grandmother

Might say this again and again

God ! Winston and Duke and Palmerston and hope

All done

Cracked window, what's your purpose?

Fainting house, what's your purpose?

On your knees and other buildings collapsing too

Hysteria,  Derelict house

Who lives in you like a crab in its hermit shell?

Release to me my people from the photographs

My Grandmother with her white eyelashes

all the brother ans the sisters -

charlie john sidney ellis annie may edie flo

all done

Black white photo, memorabilia, what's your purpose?