Bliss Human grass bending swaying with bodies together in a field of
Moisture mixing sweat tears mingling saliva glinting on the teeth of
Adult foetuses growing shaping screaming from the pain of
Living madness dreaming chaos illness life loss hiding in the heart of
Bliss
By Rachel Norris
(Prompts: bliss, conjure, herd)
cherry melancholia
Maria Sledmere
rain on the lawn; the greenness
dark and deep. a handful of shells
clotted in the mud with the blossoms,
the pink ones
from the cherry tree.
she walks out slowly,
snow petals swirling round her,
silent.
in the garden she will lie
where the grass is softest. she will lie
staring at the glass sky,
a sleepful of memory.
just love, the garden will say,
just love.
she forgot the place where he kissed her once—
it wasn’t here
but she returns anyway,
the grass feels sweet underneath her,
the air tastes golden, the first taste
of crab apples in autumn. love
set her going in spring, a silk cut
from a willow tree.
smoke rises in the distance
to the smell of cherry pie.
once he kissed her eyes, her cheeks;
he told her she was cinnamon.
in the garden now she is older,
older as the trees are, ring after ring
in each year, each reel of string
that she unwinds.
they come to bind
the sweet peas with twine.
bitter berries,
summer wine.
she is older
and the pie in her mouth now
is cloying; she is older
and the leaves are dying,
falling with the raindrops, the poor branches.
The garden speaks
now she is older, the rings round her eyes—
old pools of light, cherry pie,
speaking
of melancholia.
(prompts: eloquent, garden)
Eve
Ailsa Williamson
she strived to find
the good inside
the good beyond
and the ‘other’ foretold
she closed her eyes
and imagined within
a world of ‘other’
that was only a murmur
to tell a girl
‘do not eat
from that tree
of knowldege sweet’
the girl will then
start to wonder
what sort of knowledge
lies beyond now
what sort of ‘other’
is waiting thence
human passion
human desire
will spark a riot
spark a hunger
spark a hunger to succumb to
the serpent’s wiles
the serpent’s eyes
and the hunger will grow
until the bite is made
bait and all
the fish is caught
and all because
a hint was whispered
‘don’t eat from the tree
of knowledge sweet’
(Prompts: lil.jpg; desperation; perfection)
A rendez-vous
SM
We walk together hand in hand
a soft breeze blowing
on this summer strand
and for ever we’ll keep going
this is my dream
And it’s perfect – she says softly
slides one arm around my waist
and each moment is so costly
that it cannot be replaced
this is my dream
You will see my love is true
she has sworn it many a time
and she’ll return and swear’t anew
all the needs is a bit more time
I know for it was in my dream
so now we sit here you and I
waiting for her, so you can see her too
I promise she’s the sweetest melody
and she’ll swear her vows anew
I know for it was in my dream
So now we sit here you and I
and sit and wait and sit and sit
Don’t grow impatient now, for my
love will be here, where we sit
it was in my dream
It was a dream and she’s not coming
no beach or sun
no soft embrace
a dream, a dream
a cloud of air that left my
lungs
to disappear
it was a dream
(Prompts: disillusion, lover)
Honey and Frost
Maria Sledmere
At night I listen to the voices: some
are soft like honey
poured in your ears; others
grasp and grate at you, the raw frosty ones –
full of knowledge beyond you.
The honey ones speak of things I like:
love and music and life.
Oh, she’s married now to that man in the film —
What a cracker of a —
Here’s the latest track from a band called —
You never get the ending because
you’re always listening for the next part.
I love it in the dark,
the sounds at night;
they are what keeps me awake—
I don’t like to sleep or to dream.
I dream of the cold fingers, coming
out of the darkness all creamy and hungering,
covering the bedclothes with their prints.
They are like frost on my skin
and sometimes in the morning I think I can see their prints
though most likely they have melted.
The raspy voices know all about my dreams of fingers,
but they never let on. They talk about news
and politics to pass the time;
Their words fill the walls like rime.
You can scrape the white crusts off the walls,
feel the cold in the nerves of your fingers.
I had never heard voices like these before;
it was like my dreams had morphed
the voices on the radio.
I have an old purple radio: my Mum
calls it a retro one. It’s purple like a nightshade.
The aerial glints silver
and if you wave it around, the sound will change.
I can warp the voices, stop the words
before they make sense. Make them noise.
All day the songs from the nighttime fill my head.
They are mixed up with the honey voices,
sweetly swaying like my body
tossing around the bed. I write down
what I hear and the notes don’t make sense.
They are nothing but black pinpricks
which escape like moths, taking flight
from the white sheet of my page.
You could not play the same song again that way;
not like you can on the radio.
I think one day I will stop dreaming altogether;
a day without toast and tea, a day without weather.
There will be moths in my room,
caught up, stickily, in the frost. I will pick them out
like dead flowers. They will crush
to dust in my fingers.
The nighttime will come
in silence.
(Prompts: moths, purple, retro)
Trampled roses litter the streets, confetti
of the funeral of last nights festivities.
The dawn trickles soupy through the fog and glimmers
Against shattered glass.
I wake in a daze, on my back, on the tarmac
pavement washed with colour and litter, wet leaves.
I see a girl standing
sideways till the vertical horizon tips as I raise my head:
I recognise the girl, face paint almost sweated all away,
white dress crumpled and stained,
jewels scattered,
raven hair caught in a briar tangle.
We chased each other all the night and never caught up.
Now she pulls my hand, raises me up to stand
a head shorter than her and her curls.
Morning sweeps the mystery away.
(By Rachel Norris)
Prompts: Day of the Dead gallery, pursuit
Rowan Berry
Maria Sledmere
That moment was young love and cocaine.
On the sofa the afternoon was stirring around us
And you were passing over in glazed irises
Through which I saw the other world.
School took us from 9 till 2 but still we knew
That time had frozen.
The sofa where we lay is full of moth holes.
You used to come over and pull them apart,
Like you were searching for something:
Your fingers flaking the flaps of fabric;
You tugged till your nails bled.
We lay there, day after day
On the sofa in my daddy’s shed.
There was your smile and your cigarette burns.
I thought my mother would kill me
When she saw the scorches on my neck. Instead
She said you were a bastard, that I
Was forbidden to see you.
She didn’t know about the shed and the sofa,
Our afternoons with the dust motes
And the steady clunk of the lawnmower. The rowan tree
Whose branches poked through the broken glass.
You climbed in the window and it was cold – autumn
Almost. The blanket barely covered the whiteness of our legs.
By winter my freedom was still forbidden.
I loved the frost on the lawn, even when you stopped calling.
My mother wrote letters to the school
That were never answered
And I helped her cook supper while she read the Ten Commandments.
Your burns left a tiny scar on my neck.
One day in December I went
Down to the shed again, looking for something
Though not sure what. Just slightly, I thought I could smell you;
The skin of you masked in the musk of the sofa,
That smell of mothballs in the attic.
I plunged my fingers deep into the fabric
And pulled out a tiny object, hard as the stone of a peach.
In the candlelight I saw it was a rowan berry,
Its swollenness complete.
Here it is: this memory. In pain
I thought of you again, holding the rowan berry:
Plucked from nothing, raw red, rolled on my palm,
Coating itself in a snow of cocaine.
(prompts: berries, forbidden)
Hey all
Check out the page for POVEMBER now on the blog! Here you will find the daily poetry prompts. We’re looking to get as much work as possible on the blog so please submit anything you write – even if it’s just a humble haiku!
More info over at POVEMBER
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