Cloud Walker – All in a Word Prompt

High above,
Where humans rarely go
Nefelibata roamed
Writing poems
Creating worlds
Which you and I
Had never known …
Magically composed
Incantations
Taking us into the realm
Of clouds …
Though a picture
Is worth a thousand words
A poetic image
By Nefelibata was worth more …
Until one day
He became
Disenchanted
By the Earth
And no longer flew
In the sky above.

I’ve known more than one poet who could have been called Nefelibata…like Icarus they flew so high, and like Icarus they fell back to the Earth, but who knows unlike Icarus they may fly again!

Written for All in a Word – 13th Floor Paradigm

Reflections on Betrayal

Betrayal!  What’ve you done to me?
I’ve watched over you, don’t you see!
I’ve fed you, pampered you and more …
Although naughty, sometimes a chore!

We been together since we’ve met,
I’ve always thought we’d win the bet …
We’d show the world just what’s the score
I’ve never thought you’d bring me war.

Age has its own price to pay
Hoary hair grows whiter each day
Now dear body, I know the score …
Youth is something you can’t restore.

Betrayal! What’ve you done to me..
I’ve watched over you, don’t you see!

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Betrayal can be many things…here I’m playing with the problems of getting older…I as everyone else at one time or another have felt betrayed by someone or some situation…but at the moment, the only thing that came to mind was this 🙂

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Written for: Poetry Prompt # 4: Betrayal – Oloriel’s post for We Drink Because We’re Poets.

Just a Note – March 27, 2014

Hello World…

you might have noticed I’ve added a new form to my poetry collection.  It’s called a shadorma.  I came across this form recently through Mindlovemisery who by the way has opened a new prompting blog called Mindlovemisery Menagerie.  There will be a new prompt everyday from Haiku/Tanka through to Fairy Tales and Shadorma, please click the link for more information.

I’ve been asked to host the Saturday post, the shadorma post, to be precise and I’m really excited about the idea, and have been writing shadorma to practice a much as possible before the big day!

This week I’ll also be hosting the “Saturday Story – From a Photo” as a Friday prompt at We Drink Because We’re Poets (from now on until Lilith returns). This week I have a special photo by a special person, to inspire you,  Leanne Cole!  So, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you then.  The Sunday 13th Floor writing prompt will remain…All in a Word and is open to whatever inspires you through the hosted word … I’ll be working on that to see if I can’t refine it better!

Thanks for dropping by and reading…see you soon!  Georgia (Bastet).

Symmetry of the Odyssey – Free Verse

Odyssey

Symmetry of the Odyssey – Free Verse

where ever is that place now gone
in the ages that have moved on
the symmetry of the odyssey
that has been my life
from birth ’til now …

no crying for places or the past
but wonderment and curiosity
the symmetry of the odyssey
that has been my life
from birth ’til now

countries where I once lived
no longer exist … they’re just gone
the symmetry of the odyssey
that has been my life
from birth ’til now

geography has changed constantly
people are gone I know not where
the symmetry of the odyssey
that has been my life
from birth ’til now

houses torn down, cities abandoned
ideologies, certainties, faith all gone
the symmetry of the odyssey
that has been my life
from birth ’til now

reflections of my life long-lived
memories of times and places
are the symmetry of the odyssey
that has been my life
from birth ’til now.

Written for Poetry Prompt #2 – We Drink Because We’re Poets – The places we are

Ostranenie Nightmare – WDPWP Poetry Prompt # 011

We live in a world of our own creation.
Born in an age of technical revolution.
Thinking we’d better our lot on Earth,
We’re lost in this gone-off devolution,
Sad age of sour milk and cyclamates,
Our only values weighed in dollars and cents,
Our devil is another Value Added Tax,
On the next shoddy toy that we want to buy,
Made in factories of an emerging nation…

Our factories closed, since capital decided
The working people earned far too much.
Cities moulder and decay as economies die,
Whole families become homeless,
Tension grows, young people kill themselves
And their fellow students,
In a secular libertarian promised land
Gone sour, without love for humanity.

Whilst children toil and die to keep prices down,
Everything in the west in now imported.
Oh no, I exaggerate, we still excel in creating,
Nutrition-free food full of cheap new chemicals.
Oh “Brave New World” that’s ’round the corner
Of passive eugenic biological robots,
With pet tested allergic-free
Electronic chips to control them,
Culture-free schools to educate them,
And health programmes created to eliminate,
The excess.

Dystopian nightmare over,
I awoke, to write this poem,
Born, from sombre contemplation
Of dictats, made by just one nation,
Whose ideals are attractive,
But whose roots are rotten.
For liberty, is not buying power,
Nor is man, more than a small part
Of the Universe, we call creation.
Evolution is not the next new invention
of some mad industrial scientist,
But learning to take a step beyond
Our self-centred vision of life
Moving foreward, going beyond,
Our symian nature.
Written for Prompt #011 of We Drink Because We’re Poets

From: NamaKo London – pinterest.com/namakolondon

Poetic Experiment…

Yesterday, Gary Matthews, better known as Ye Olde Foole, put this up on my post:

living
with
volcanoes from
your childhood, well,
you learn
to
listen-

always
an
awareness of
the slightest shifts,
your breath
kept
shallow.

life
spent
struggling to
stay awake for
that inevitable
next
eruption.

It’s a poem with 11 words per stanza.  I’m going to try using the form. and challenge anyone else to do the same!

running
away
slipping along
tumbled down hillsides
getting muddy
isn’t
fun

shouting
bravo!
opera like
at squeaking mice:
that’s enough
highbrow
music

pitter
patter
little feet
slimy spider’s paws
trampling you
tenderly
nightly

Uhm…not much of a poem.  The form is harder than one would expect…

She,
Longing
For fulfillment,
Has tried everything
To insure
Daily
Carresses.

But
When
There’s nothing
Left for her
What can
She
Try?

Constant
Hounding
Stalking calls
Until the other
Runs away
Seeking
Peace?

Her
Anxiety,
Drove him
To break up
The affair
And
Left.

A little better…and you, what can you come up with?  If you feel inspired, write a post or put your poem in the comments below-

Tomorrow, as today,  I’ll be out of town, so I probably won’t be doing much reading or posting.  Ciao, Bastet.

And now we go for Small…with Gotye and Poets on a Page!

It’s such a small thing to ask
that we should meet at last
go to the sea-shore and walk
visit at a mall or library and talk

It’s such a small thing to want
a man instead of an “enfant”
have an equal…look into his eyes
and not play all the silly lover’s lies

It’s such a small thing to see
the woman who was to be me.
turn the page of the photo book
I look at her that I then forsook

It’s such a small thing to dream
of chocolate eggs and cosmic cream
of faery queens and ancient kings
my head is always full of things…

Ah friend, it’s all the small things in life
you can enjoy  freely without stress or strife…
it’s when you want to go beyond essentials
that the powers that be offer differentials

@)—>—>—

I’m here again with Poets on a Page you guessed it today the prompt is “SMALL”  …so we’ve  COLD, HOT, BIG and now SMALL….Tomorrow is the big day…Oh…I just had to share Amy McGrath’s photo for the prompt…it is too cute:

Have a great day and visit Poets on a Page…there is some interesting stuff going on there.  Remember, these were the ladies who during OctPoWriMo offered us so many prompts and forms…they’ve continued with mini-challenges to help us keep ourselves in shape.  It’s like when you want to run the New York Marathon…a little practice always helps 😉

Distilling Poe!

Today I decided to try to distill Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” into haiku form.  The idea originally comes from the Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, but over at the 13th Floor Paradigm, I decided to use it as a Sunday  Writing Prompt…giving full credit of course to who, from my point of view created this great exercise!

So here we go with Poe:
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

The Raven

ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.

Poe’s Raven in Haiku

dreary winter’s night
studying arcane lore books
a tapping is heard

mourning sweet Lenore
embers dying in the hearth
bleak December night

We Drink Inspiration – Poetry Prompt #008: Poetry

A Tanka Series for Sahm King

My Favorite Form

lights yellow haloed
whimsical should be the morn
yet that silent shroud
implodes upon my ear-drums
creating a somber song

morning concert fog
drip drip after cold wet drop
think I’ll go to bed
my hair will frizz in this mess
besides I still have a cough

what a lousy mess
could cut the gunk with a knife
by my life! oh dear
a bit hyperbolic, yes…
and not even a good rhyme

so my dear Sahm King
I wrote this series for you
the tanka is my thing
a haiku or a choka
or sedoka are fine too

on this Friday morn
all foggy and glum and wet
looking at your prompt
the words flowed along like this
so I’ve sent them off thus so

Roundelay: Yule-Tide

Christmas tree at midnight

Roundelay

Yule-Tide

‘Tis time to look at the world and cheer,
This the happiest time of the long year…
When snow and darkness seem so deep,
And all the world seems cold and dead.
For now the year begins to grow
As the sun yet, lies in the sky so low.

When snow and darkness seem so deep…
And all the world seems cold and dead,
We’ll light the log of sweet Yule-tide,
Roast our chestnuts and sing brightly…
Remembering spring, so close to us
As the sun yet, lies in the sky so low.

We’ll light the log of sweet Yule-tide,
Roast our chestnuts and sing brightly…
With our loved ones with our kin,
We augur the new year to begin…
Remembering spring, so close to us,
As the sun yet, lies in the sky so low.

With our loved ones with our kin,
We augur the new year to begin.
We’ll Feast and make the cold ice king fly!
Let’s sing our songs to the Eastern sky!
To the dawn of the year that’s begun to grow…
As the sun yet, lies in the sky so low.

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Roundelay

Vole (Fount of Poetic Wisdom) says that

“the roundelay is quite different from the rondelet, despite the names sounding so similar. It is also different from the roundel, the rondel, the rondine, the rondeau and the rondeau redoublé. These forms all evolved from a common ancestor, hence the similar names. The modern forms are all fixed and tightly defined, but in times past the word roundelay was used in other ways, sometimes as a general term for any kind of lyric.”

In the roundelay, most of the lines are repeated!  There are 24 lines in the poem, but only 12 lines are different.  Vole describes it as ABR/BCR/CDR/DER, where each letter is a rhyming couplet and “R” is the refrain (which is also a rhyming couplet).

The meter is trochaic tetrameter (for example, “By the shores of Gitche Gumee”).  He says that it is permissible for some lines to be a syllable short.

————————————————————————————————————————————

I have to admit…I didn’t really count my syllables…I did a tum-ti-dum-ti-dum-di-dum sort of beat in my head…I found this form at “Blog it or Lose It”  and it was written for Blog Festivus 2013, which you may want to go look at for lots of great reading…this year it’s dedicated to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol!  Here I’ve broken the poem down into colors, a trick I learnt from Cubby at Reowr, in order to help those who’d like to try the form follow the pattern.  Hopefully there are no typos…but if there are…just tell me an I’ll fix it!

Yule-Tide

‘Tis time to look at the world and cheer,
This the happiest time of the long year…
When snow and darkness seem so deep,
And all the world seems cold and dead.
For now the year begins to grow
As the sun yet, lies in the sky so low.

When snow and darkness seem so deep…
And all the world seems cold and dead,
We’ll light the log of sweet Yule-tide,
Roast our chestnuts and sing brightly…
Remembering spring, so close to us
As the sun yet, lies in the sky so low.

We’ll light the log of sweet Yule-tide,
Roast our chestnuts and sing brightly…
With our loved ones with our kin,
We augur the new year to begin…
Remembering spring, so close to us,
As the sun yet, lies in the sky so low.

With our loved ones with our kin,
We augur the new year to begin.
We’ll Feast and make the cold ice king fly!
Let’s sing our songs to the Eastern sky!
To the dawn of the year that’s begun to grow…
As the sun yet, lies in the sky so low.

If anyone would like to try this interesting form, I’d really enjoy reading it and if you like I’ll put your poem and a link to your blog on this one so as to spread the cheer!

Happy Yule-tide to all my neo-pagan friends and may your days be forever sunnier!

Bastet!

J. Milburn at Writing to b Noticed wrote: Krampus? Seriously?

Are the children being a cuss?
Running, screaming, pure avarice?
Let them know about the Krampus,
And see how fast they turn from vice!
All the kids, they know Nicholas;
That jolly elf is just too nice!

Let them know about the Krampus,
And see how fast they turn from vice!
Crying child throws a fit and fuss?
Tell the tale full of chills and ice.
All the kids, they know Nicholas;
That jolly elf is just too nice!

Crying child throws a fit and fuss?
Tell the tale full of chills and ice.
Scar the psyche with little muss;
make the little dears ponder thrice.
All the kids, they know Nicholas;
That jolly elf is just too nice!

Scar the psyche with little muss;
make the little dears ponder thrice.
If you do this, I’m serious:
I hope you come down with head-lice!
All the kids, they know Nicholas;
That jolly elf is just too nice!