These poems arise from the Word Press course ‘Writing: Into The Poetry’.
The Day 1 theme is ‘water’ using haiku and tanka.
Water haiku
Like a liquid rope,
this sacred secret spring
binds me to the earth
Water tanka
All things seem possible
when we look across water
from the solid shore,
scanning our life horizon,
charting our new destiny.
Thought I’d try out some cartooning software.
Chelsea Owens has bought to an end her weekly Terrible Poetry competition because, instead of getting more terrible with each passing week, we started to sound more like people who were actually literate and punny. This is my final entry and tribute.
Bring a ring o’ poeters,
A pocket full of poseurs,
A tissue (of terribility) at issue
And we all fell down.
A bunch of us numpties, with almighty gall,
Us proletarian-lumpy had a great fail
All Chelsea’s exhortations to fracture our pens
Ended in the dumpster time and again.
But the fighter inside ‘er will eventually out
Back will come her brain and give the spiders
Gout from the sun-dried tomatoes that on her pizza reign,
And, Owen to her zeitgeist, she’ll re-rack us once again.
This is my response to the weekly Terrible Poetry contest prompt of ‘a humorous end to a useful object’.
Boris, as we called him,
made short work of our lawn in
no time at all for many a year,
his whirling dervishing music to my ear.
But one fateful day
his brain faded away
and chaos reigned on our green parade
as anything but lawn was flayed.
Boris charged and snapped dragons at full pelt,
(all the while how his innards smelt)
and mounted kerbs uncurbed
as he rose to the occasion so recently suburbed.
Just when I thought his madness was expended
and his carnationage had ended,
he climbed the bean poles, snicker-snack,
and gave the peas no chance, alas, alack.
There was nothing for it but the mortal blow
as my axe cleaved poor Boris’s fevered brow
and he shuddered and turned turtle
‘midst the burgeoning lemon myrtle.
This week’s challenge on the world of Terrible Poetry is to parody a popular song on the the theme of Covid-19. I’ve chosen ‘Macarthur Park’ with some reluctance, having been a roadie for Jeff Duff in the distant past and was always thrilled to hear him sing this. Ah, well, anything for art.
The bus was never waiting for us, girl
It always left when the driver said
We stayed too late at the dance
It departed and we were depressed
In the closet, hot and stuffy,
Along with Dad’s old army pants.
We barfed there in the dark
All the Coke and pizza flowing down.
Then I had to walk home in the rain
Caught a cold, I can’t shake it,
so next week I can’t make it
Cos I’m locked down with the Covid once again.
Oh, no!
Oh, no
No, no
Oh no!!
This 100 word piece was written using the photo prompt below (photo supplied by Jeff Arnold) for Friday Fictioneers
It had taken seven years for him to complete his glass-encased diorama from his wheelchair. Every evening and most days would be spent working with tiny tools and a high-powered magnifying glass, to re-create the seaside village where he was born, lived and died. His home, the boatsheds and every boat were true to that time. The final touch was the rainbow, symbolising both his hopes for the future and the inevitable disappointments in his life as he searched in vain for its end. Years after I inherited it, I noticed him in his blue sailing jacket, the immortal sailor.
This piece was written for this week’s Flash Fiction 100 word challenge, with this photo from Douglas M. MacIlroy as a prompt.
Just because I’m like a bird on a wire (well, actually, sometimes I am, except when there isn’t one, and then I’m wireless and then I get drunk and sing in a midnight choir) doesn’t mean I can tap into the phone system. And people don’t seem to realise you can’t make trunk calls from a tree or even from a branch line. I see they’re into aerial photography and cable TV. Must be loaded. So if they’d open the window I could make some calls. (Don’t worry, they would be cheep.) Just trying, in my way, to be free.
My entry into this week’s Terrible Poetry contest on the theme of spring or autumn, depending on your hemisphere.
(with apologies to His Bobness)
As the calendula ticks (not to be confused with cattle ticks)
over to the March of the sugar plum fairies
I vow to turn over a new leaf.
But I am de-feated
by the myriad discarded oak appendages
carpet-snaking to my door.
There must be some way out of here,
I thought in disbelief.
There’s too much confusion.
I can’t get on relief.
So I sprang forward through
a hole in the daylight-saving curtain
and found, to my re-leaf,
rabbits eating my lettuce seedlings.
This my response to this week’s Friday Fictioneers challenge to write 100 words about this pic provided by J. Hardy Carroll.
These flawed gems are in response to this week’s Terrible Poetry challenge, which consists of ‘stockpiling against a worldwide disaster, in limerick form’.
Wine not
The world is facing disaster
So stock up on tuna and pasta
Cache rolls for the loo
Store sanitising goo
And ensure your wine cellar’s vaster.
Paperless society
Go on, kiss everyone in sight
Before we all fall down to the blight
Forget all that tucker
And give us a pucker
But clench your other end real tight.
One flu over the cuckoo’s nest
There’s a man in DC called The Pres
He t-wee-ts, he pooh-poohs, and he says
It’s all something minor
Like everything from China
A few less old folk, who cares?
Six Crooked Highways 