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“Stories of Hope” …. and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Such beautiful and uplifting responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, l’chaim, October 4, 2017. Together, these are a small gift of antidote to news reports. Grab a cup of tea. Take a breath. Read. Ponder. Smile! These are as Paul Brookes says, “happy poems.”

Thanks to Paul, Lady Nimue, Renee Espiru, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Colin Blundell and Kakali Das Gosh for coming out to play.

Please join us for tomorrow’s Wednesday Writing Prompt, always theme – not form – based. You are welcome no matter the stage of your career – beginner, emerging, professional. It’s all about getting to know other poets and having your say.

Stories of Hope

The world thrives on stories of hope,

Little cracked,but surviving homes;

I live each moment in awe

From when life picked me first

So out of line, yet so full of want;

You are home to me,my world,

The only constant reminder,

My prayers and wishes answered;

No matter what changes around,

Am blessed;love can be found

If you raise a toast for the gifts

That equally to strangers, you receive to give.

© 2017, Lady Nimue, Prats Corner: Pages of my mind: collecting words, experiences and memories …

Lady Nimue is new to our pages but has been blogging and posting her poems and other works for years. She says in her “I, Me, Myself” – “I love to experiment in reading, watching and listening to all that suggested to Me by close friends and trusted sources; and then i maintain a record here of my reactions and impressions – what i hear myself say in my head and heart about all the living and non !

“Hope you find something of your liking too !! And  if you don’t let me know about that too ..”

We welcome Lady Nimue to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt.

there was a time

when one bottle of wine
seemed as if it was going to last forever;
the one I’m thinking of (purchased
one dinnertime in summer at 7/6d)
occupied a space in my life
a mile high and spanned the gap
all the way to Tibet; as you drank a glass
that dinnertime it seemed to refill itself
from the dregs of love

when one kiss would last
as long as the Rachmaninov cello sonata
whenever you put the record
on the turntable and let the needle fall –
obliterated in the so well-known cadences
which I could have been whistling
had my lips not been squashed against hers

when a bicycle ride would construct a day
down to the sea and back
across the long valley and over the downs –
magic ride often repeated –
I fill it from these dregs of memory

© 2017, Colin Blundell (Colin Blundell, All and Everything)

From a forthcoming book of poems by Colin Blundell

NOTE: 7/6d old money in 1964 = what would be 36p now
= after inflation in 2017 £6.80 = US$ 8.80

.the year.

gently go forward, then gently back
recreating past deeds and misdemenours
you thought forgotten.

gently go forward knowing we are mostly
all the same, with motes not spoken of,
except disorder.

gently it passed behind you, seen
clearly while looking for god.

gently gather winter leaves to keep
in paper bags. these are the golden
days .

my friend.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

..earth & heaven..

I have been away, this is the first day back.

not floods, yet death, and roofs flying, to produce home less ness.

I understand nothing of your situation, yet I know some stuff, and mostly i can only listen.

I guess we have to help ourselves. I met some good people away.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

Every New Beginning

To every newborn baby born
to those that overcome
to family diverse and all

for every new sunrise bright
for every moonlit night

the seasons that bring change
mother nature nurturing growth
remains

as seen in fields of flowers
kaleidoscope colors
in seeding fields & in
fields laid fallow

to harvesting and being thankful
for the celebration of life
& living

within each beginning
lies peace
Meta

© 2017, Renee Espriu (Renee Just Turtle Flight and Inspiration, Imagination & Creativity with Wings, Haibun, AR, Haiku & Haiga)

#An appeal to endure #

A dark tunnel
A murky avenue
A lunatic   storm
Puzzled looks
Embarrassed scenes
Pixilated hearts
A giggling child
A lotus pond
A blooming daffodil
Vanished agony
Annihilated pain
An appeal to endure …

© 2017, Kakali Das Ghosh

A Little Girl

places an autumn oak leaf
in all its yellow and red on my conveyor belt.

I consider my potential responses:

Sorry love you can’t buy that here.

Sorry love it has no barcode, so won’t go through.

That’s a free gift from nature, love.

At the finish I advise

Sorry you can’t put that through, love

and she removes the leaf from the belt.

At the finish it is all child’s play
in the adult buy and sell.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

A Grandkid’s Hug

1.

You’re such a klutz!
as I pull out my wallet
and silver coin falls out

I hold your warm hand
after all these years
and something passes
something does not fall

2.

Magic a grandkids hug
Round the middle
Softens sharp nails
Smooths frayed edges

Unaware hug anyway
any how whatever any why
all hammering
all awkward shaving down.

Gone in an instant.
Grandkids hugs should be
ever prescribed
On NHS

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

In A Hush

of winter
from bare limbs silhouetted

against a grey sky
a sudden voice
from tiny lungs

your full heart lifts
as if the tree had blossomed
unexpectedly.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

A Breathless

small boy in an angry bird t shirt,
mock flight jacket,
Hawaiian shorts and trainers
bursts into the shop shouting

“What-What-time-is-it?
When-do-you-close?
I’ve got fifty pee.”

I reply that we close at eight,
so he has an hour.

“Just ran all way here.
What can I buy? he asks
mouth open before a wall of sweets.

I show him in one corner trays full
of small chocolate eggs at 49p.
“Yes. Yes one of these.”

His delight makes me smile.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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“the moses manifest” … and other poems in response the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

The variety of responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” September 27 are a pleasure to read. Thanks to Renee Espiru, Sonja Benskin Meshery, Gary Bowers and Paul Brookes for coming out to play and sharing their fine work.

Join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome to take part no matter the status of career. Beginners and experienced are welcome to come, be inspired, share their poems and get to know other poets.

A Life Betrayed

She lives the only life
she has ever known
inside someone else’s home

she wonders how she came to this
miles of fields and distance
a breeze touching her
now frail being

did someone leave her here
without her knowing and
will she wake one day
to find she’s dreaming

for she loved him so in her way
but was he a mirage or
just a ruse she wrote of
in her own knowing

before her body did betray
and stole her life
and youth

© 2017, Renee Espriu (Renee Just Turtle Flight and Inspiration, Imagination & Creativity with Wings, Haibun, AR, Haiku & Haiga)

..the flight to egypt..

Edwin Longsden Long RA was an English genre, history, and portrait painter.

**

there are many pictures at this house, two dimensional and more. how can I love one

child above another?

I had only one, so that was easy, then questioned if I loved the late arrival more, I said no just different.

so I talk out loud instead of writing .

a new prose. I talk of formative years, the safe place.

russell coates museum. have you been there? it was free on thursdays a haven from the rain,

the

pain.

indoor fish pond, quiet on the stairs, to the edwin long gallery. the flight to egypt. looking

back now, I never thought of it religious. immense it covered the wall.

I use the past tense, yet it is still in place.

on googling I see the topic is biblical, I remember the procession, the faces, the space as

if his meaning was hidden to me.

now by choice it is.

do I make such pictures? no.

weird stuff as if installed in a museum.

crying.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

The Specificity of the Ordinary by Colin Blundell

in Iris Murdoch

the characters for the most part
get themselves into such a muddle
usually intent on mirroring
the messes & muddles of others
closely observed by scheming clowns
with special peculiar insights

how will they get out of the muddle?
a question which keeps you entranced
turning the pages rapidly
never really wanting an unravelling

no linearity just sets of closed circles
of rather bizarre impossibility

occasionally a character will experience
a bright moment of illumination
or clarity which I have come to call
the specificity of the ordinary:
the cat on the terrace dust particles
lizard on a sunny bank
bare gritty floorboards leaves in the wind
ivy climbing on a rock as it might be
to refer it all to myself measuring
the impact of the ordinary

if only the characters had listened
to their author’s commentary
more carefully they might all have been
able to rescue themselves

© 2017, Colin Blundell (Colin Blundell, All and Everything)

the moses manifest

he grips the tablets in his charge, this
courier of commandmenta, and takes umbrage or looks
askance at some person or
persons on
his left. on his head
are zigguratish lumps,
horns, that should have been
unsculptable rays of
light. julius the pope, the vicar
of christ, has left
his mortal remains entombed
here, and moses to guard
them. the likeness
of julius was to be
the capstone of the tomb
but it was never
done. the militant pope
had need of his hireling
visionary elsewhere,
as plasterer and muralist
for a now-renowned chapel.
the tomb was finished in 1545,
decades after julius’s promotion
to resident of Heaven.

© 2017, Gary W. Bowers (One with Clay, Image & Text)

 

The Hay Wain (1821), by John Constable (UK), (1776-1837)

Haywain

Her milkman Grandad often takes
her, his horse, cart and churns on his rounds
gifts her a small pony trap and horse.

Older she hangs a copy of “The Haywain”
above a dark brown oak dining table
with its curved back oak chairs

lit by white light French windows
on to a grey concrete slabbed patio.

She knows the smell of worked horse,
creak of cart and water’s rhythm,
much like milk slap and hooves on cobbles.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

Photograph by Paul Brookes

My Dali

A teenager, I was a poster
Christ crucified in a sky
above a cove
and dried blue tac
on my bedroom wall
lets Christ
lets me
fall at one edge.

I was a swan reflecting elephants
the need for it to be other
my fingers mirrored rocks.

I was a spoon on crutches,
anything but me.
​
© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

Golconde (1953), by Rene Magritte (Belgium), (1898-1967)

These Shapes

are not symbols.
Do not attach meaning.

Bowler hats and gentlemen
may fall on the page

in this frame. The words
do not mean the thing.

Magritte is a mark only.
All that attaches to it

is irrelevant. It does not help.
A birdcage is not a rib cage.

© 2017, ​Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

The Blood Serape and other ekphrastic poems by Paul Brookes

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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“The Blood Serape,” and other ekphrastic poems by Paul Brookes

El sarape rojo (1918) by Mexican artist Alberto Garduño (1885-1948), Public Domain photograph

A shot like a backfiring car.
I lay full length on the border.
Still as midday sun.

Folk think me dead.
So fire back. I get up.
Skitter like a lizard.

Now sit here, wrapped
in this blood serape eyes flit
side to side as bullets zip by.

Not a time for dance so shakers
are sleeved above me. Soon victory
will give my life back like clarity.

Photograph by Paul Brookes

The Elephant

Stumped at my English homework.
We’d read Edward Lear
and homework says write
an absurd poem.

I can’t. I cry,
in front of Mam,

who writes one for me,
almost instantly,

and titles it:
“The Elephant With A Propeller For A Nose”

“The  elephant died and from his grave
Where would be a stone a propeller rose.”

is all I can recall.

Now good friends buy us
this elephant and her calf.

I see dark wooden sculptures
of lions, giraffes and elephants

stare down at me from mahogany
sideboards below Clwydian hills

in Grandad’s home.

Only later does Dad tell me
he was a merchant mariner
for his National Service.

In my memory home
I place the elephant and calf
on a coffee table.

Photograph by Paul Brookes

Rothko Meant Nothing

canvases painted in one colour.
Where the detail? I’ve painted
house walls with one colour.
Modern art is crap. Money
for nothing

then I saw the ordinary light
of a wintered Humber Estuary
subtle difference to the sky

and understood.

© 2017, Paul Brookes 

Paul Brookes

PAUL BROOKES (The Womwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination) was a shop assistant, security guard, postman, admin. assistant, lecturer, poetry performer, with “Rats for Love” and his work included in “Rats for Love: The Book”, Bristol Broadsides, 1990. His first chapbook was “The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley”, Dearne Community Arts, 1993. He has read his work on BBC Radio Bristol and had a creative writing workshop for sixth formers broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live. Recently published in Clear Poetry, Nixes Mate, Live Nude Poems and others.

This spring 2017 Paul’s  illustrated chapbook The Spermbot Blues, was published by OpPRESS. Other recent collections include A World Where.  Recent magazine publications inclue Clear Poetry, Nixes Mate Mate Review, Live Nude Poems, The Bees Are Dead and others. His work has been featured in The BeZine. He participates regularly in The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt. I [Jamie} am currently reading Paul’s upcoming collection, She Needs that Edge and writing a cover blurb.  So far so Great! 🙂

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

 

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“The poet that was my father” and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Well, here we are: Tuesday! This brings us to this week’s poetic responses to last week’s Wednesday Writing Prompt, Philosopher’s Stone, September 20. The poems that follow give us an intimate and intense view of our regularly participating poets, either from the perspective of family connection, educational inspiration, or perspectives on art and philosophy.  Enjoy! 

… and do come out and exercise your poetic imagination tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt.  All are welcome no matter where in the world you live, no matter your style or your status as a poet: amateur or professional, beginning, emerging or established. These prompts are theme based, not form based.  All works shared on theme will be posted in next Tuesday’s collection. You may share your poems – or even prose – or a link to your theme-based work in the comments section below.

.the bull box.

i read Glyn Hughes, some times.

sometimes, i look at the photograph,

and wonder how it was that last year;

think of

how you wrote to me, sent

me your book

with a private inscription.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

.norway square.

you said nothing is ever perfect, and

i remember this and why.

reciting, shouting, jumping on walls

laughing.

you sent a book, along

with the money due.

st.ives.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

Gobbo!

how you live in my mind!
genius teacher of boys other than myself
(never in your class) so often floating past me
in your ungainly manner
during those severely wounded years
shortly after the period of reciprocal destruction
known peremptorily as World War Two

you had been caught (I have always imagined)
in a random machine gun volley
down some dark & horrible defile
stinking of blood & death
all in the same old idiot cause
returning after great suffering being pieced together
to Kingston Grammar School to amble disjointedly
along its corridors nick-named perhaps brutally
by previous generations of unkind boys to indicate
that they could hardly understand
a single word of yours whether spoken in fluent
Latin Greek Russian French or German
your command of which survived the wounds
of neck & face as well as arms & legs
and who knows what else now grave secrets

but once I heard you solo speaking loud & clear
in Dvorak’s Cello Concerto playing now
on the gramophone – and it’s not Rostropovich
but Gobbo as it might have been weeping for joy
at his survival in spite of all the suffering
this darkening evening in late autumn

© 2017, Colin Blundell (Colin Blundell, All and Everything)

Colin writes: ‘Gobbo’ haunted me from 1948 to 1954 although I never spoke to him nor did he teach me. He was clearly an artist and a role model! 

J. Berger

It must have been a repeat
Must have been.

As “Ways Of Seeing” was on
when I was nine.

I made a choice
to look and listen.

To reciprocate.
I’d never thought looking
had a history.

A artist makes
a list of choices.

What you looked at
had a history.

An artist makes
a testimony.

How you saw
had a history.

A witness out of true
with my world now.

Learnt to look
from different perspectives.

Find the story
in the out of true.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

“Bartholomew Street” after “Tempest Avenue” by Ian McMillan

Harold half way down collects wood
for his fire, leave it out front.

Leave out anything metal Gypsies at top have sharp eyes,

Stan, two doors down
wants his radiator gone.

Dave next door holds ladder
while I look at roof tiles

and shares homemade ale after.
Our roofers knew man who murdered

a man
at bottom.

I thought someone murdered
at top but our lass swears

he was only badly beaten
Old gent Tommy three doors down

quiet when his wife died last Summer
Put thumbs up when I cleared

his path of Snow last Winter.
Pear tree in back garden bagged

up by them all when ripe
as too much for our lass and me.

© 2017, Paul Brookes  (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

# Palping his verses #

Making up his abode in a distant land
Discerning the blue sea
He pierced beside me
Watery moonbeam playing on his visage
Vehicled abruptly his fervid miraculous fingers
Attiring a necklace of words
A mystic film
A palace of jade
I glowered at him except twinkling of my eyes
Surmising his authentic essence

Of a man a spirit or a god
Relating me his volition
to foozle me in his sea beside his mushy windy casuarina arbors
He left
Hurling his words into the blue bay
But nothing finaled
Albeit I recounter ,counsel
and -grope his lustre
Palping eyes of his verses
Savoring his left pages …

© 2017, Kakali Das Ghosh

The poet that was my father

Dedicated to Grisa Gherghei

The poet was my father
He read his poems to our family friends
And all were mesmerized by them
How wise, how deep, how entangled but also bold
In a time of dictatorship
The poet was my hero
Till one day when the feeble man crawl from under his own built effigie
Sad day for me
I became deaf to his words
And started writing my own lines
Lines on my own coin
The poet left
Vaporised in some blond vagina
Only then I have found that was his pattern
Sliding slowly from one black hole to the next vortex
Blond haired and with witchy eyes
The poet and me lost track from one another then
I remained with the one instilled by him in the cells of my soul
Later, decades later
The poet have raised again from his pit
He stands besides his trees
The trees that in one of his poems were craving to see a naked woman for they never been in paradise

© 2017, Iulia Gherghei (Sky Under Construction)

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY