The Poetry Marathon

Hour 5 Writing Prompts – Use at least 5 of the following 10 words/phrases: hardback, sunflower, knitting, cheddar cheese, space, wine glass, pavement, nail, oak, satchel

The sunflowers seemed to dance as she stared at their beauty through her

tilted wine glass.  She drew in the oak like aromas before taking her last sip.

With her eyes closed, she was taken back to her trip to the vineyards.  She vowed

to return but leaving now was not an option.  She would have to settle for her

memories.  Grabbing her satchel off the nail behind the back door, she headed

towards the garden, her special space.  There she would dream of Italy, the vineyards,

the people and the one she left behind. With the sun warming her face, she pulled

her hardback journal from the satchel and begin to write.  Would this, too, be

her next adventure?

 

 

 

 

 

Prompt 5, Stillness and Sound

Art of Noise on Sirius is punctuated by
passing cars and the same unhelmeted motorcycle
driver
who boomerangs this street every hour.
Morning has shifted from shy sunflower
to clear and stridently hot pale blue noon.
My mental satchel is packed without an itinerary
apart from warming my coffee and washing last night’s wine glass.
Voices on the pavement close to my door
raise my hackles for a minute – I’m not dressed for unannounced
arrivals
– but pass like a blurb on a hardback.

HOUR FIVE ~ Another Sea Of Clouds (refracted)

ANOTHER SEA OF CLOUDS (REFRACTED)

 

we’re peering into the windows of tomorrow

shadowed by sunflowers and tangled in vines

 

we’re walking on and over our own heartbeats

buried deep under the shimmering city pavement

 

we toss a blanket down with our submarine sandwiches

cream soda and cheddar cheese, laughter and memories

 

someday when I write like a writer these scenes will live forever

one hardback after another piling in a pyramid of aliveness

 

a monument to the moments that made me

knitting pages of conversation together under a shady oak

 

we can call it the space between the way I hold a wine glass

and what it actually takes to be a cougar in this world

 

we’ll call that window a mirror if it can nail our image down

when your satchel holds half my purse and all of tomorrow’s stories

Hour 5 : Cravings

Looking out of my bedroom window

As I stare at the space above

The gold ball glazing hot

A hardback just beside me

He has been my companion for long

A broken wine glass and it’s spill

I can’t turn my head to face them

But I can see the sun glistening up the oak

Jealous for it being sun kissed

I want to poke the oak with the knitting needles

The pavements are awake

You wake me up from a hazy conscious

I want to feel the caressing lights

Which I will adore and hate

I am your sunflower

Yearning that you’ll pierce my heart silently

 

At the Private Museum

I had begun to fade in the unseasonal heat and asked the tour guide if we could not spend too much time viewing the outdoor sculpture installation under her watchful eye. My brother erupted in anger and embarrassment, hissing “oh, jeez” at me under his breath. Somehow, my innocuous request had catapulted him into his adolescent embarrassment about our family. As for me, tears sprang to my eyes. I filed the incident away for future contemplation.

the long walk
back to the bus stop —
dry grass rustles

Vignette–Hour 5

The pavement in Jenksville didn’t look like those paintings of Paris in the rain no matter how hard she squinted. In fact they were just tar-sprayed gravel and wouldn’t reflect anything but the echo of her mother oak upended by the tornado. Mabel sat outside the one-room post office under a torn umbrella and hid the wine glass in her knitting bag. She was on her lunch break, but it would be unseemly for a government employee, even a part-timer, to be seen tippling. That big tree. Ormond had proposed to her under its shade in ’71. Now they were both gone. All she could do was stare at the space between her youth and her split nail.

Creature and Flame (Hour 6)

Destruction and Rebirth, a song rendering Death’s domineering canter still,

Eternity that once was his arena, crumbles in the wake of unsanctified design.

Abjections within purgatory fail on the majesty of my work’s symphony and kill.

Terrified, the cries of mortality that diminish against my ascending crescendo divine.

Humbled shall be the hosts of heaven, and the dregs the of lowly hells in her will!

 

Beauty is now in the guise of her hybrid body, shaped on purity of flesh and machination.

Elation of her humanoid limbs, amalgamated rifle as both crutch and replacement leg.

Cleaved arm now restored to glory; its whispered venom shall dispense my unholy creation.

Omnipotence resides within its cry, silently calling to be allowed to feed, pity shall beg.

Mercy shall not cast its dice, Justice will not intercede, non-spared our indignation.

Integrity destroyed against the fervour of her Urumi appendage.

Neither innocence nor temperance safe from my degradation.

Go now child, dispatch my FLAME.

Blood Red

Prompt 3

I see a flower all bathed red

Screams which into silence have bled

Such sorrow, such disaster who could have led!

When a flower with fate is set to wed

There can be pleas all around

Of a humbly beating heart

But none meddles with season

When you flower to depart

Yet when it bloomed

It had joy radiating around

It might be doomed

But had bliss bursting abound

When something so tender, could sway unafraid

I shall not fear any perils ahead

To sprout a life when there is none

Out of a reddening dawn will rise a sun!

 

No. 5: See

I see you
Your facial features
Eyes, mouth, nose

I see you
Your smiling lips
Your twinkling eyes

I see you
Your happy thoughts
Your sad moments

I see you
You and me
We are complete

party favors

nails in a dusty bin rattling like chimes

in the rich lady’s basement i touch things

that haven’t been touched in years.

tottering in high heels, red spilling from

 

my wine glass. fascinated by this space;

a museum of mundane beneath a

sprawling mansion. why was i even

invited? upstairs no one knows who i

 

am. but here, drunk and alone, i see

a moldy old satchel like my dad had

a broken oak table that i saw at a friend’s

lace curtains like grandma’s

everything so familiar to me