A Poem a Day (653): NaPoWriMo Day 22 - The art of drawing

 
Day 22 
 
Prompt: this one comes from the poet and fiction writer Todd Dillard, who provided this idea on his twitter account a few months ago. The idea is to write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it. Like, maybe a comb and a spatula. Or a daffodil and a bag of potato chips. Or perhaps your two things could be linked somehow – like a rock and a hard place – and be utterly sick of being so joined. The possibilities are endless!

The art of drawing

It’s just a trick of the light,
this slight of moonscape paper,
the edges faded, jaded, kind of.
A stroke of charcoal pauses.
 
Reconsidered, his bland idea turns
on its side, snap-ricochets, becomes
a suspenseful thing of mystery,
a curve, a sigh, an artificial high.
 
She steps shyly into the empty scene
from out of it, finds life from nothing,
enters his heart as his pure imagination
finds her, scribbles in her loose curls.
 
A heart-shaped face, soft, full lips,
slightest touch, an upturn to her nose,
flash of pink across the cheekbones,
so high as to lend a paper cut.
 
She smiles and the landscape grows,
a woodland cross-hatched behind her.
Curves and lines, a crescendo in form,
lithe arms upraised, she dances alone
 
in this blown bubble she inhabits.
You can almost smell her, feel her,
the lightness of her walk, and then…
the music jars. An error, a smudge!
 
The artist’s hand reaches for correction,
rubs the foul point with the eraser’s edge,
but it streaks, ruins the silk of her dress.
A hard thrust, and it bounces off the wall.
 
He sits back, shoves the easel and scowls,
scanning the studio for his arch enemy.
Knocked, the charcoal drops and splinters.
From the wooden floor, an eraser chuckles.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 22, 2024

A Poem a Day (652): NaPoWriMo Day 21 - Greenest glade

 
Day 21 
 
Prompt: write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single colour. Some examples for you – Diane Wakoski’s Blue Monday, Walter de la Mare’s Silver, and Dorothea Lasky’s Red Rum.

 
Greenest glade
 
In deep trodden, mossy earthen beds
of nodding, silken tulip heads,
a spill of fresh rain scented green
splatters down my silver screen,
 
water mixing light, the purest gold,
something wondrous to behold.
In this leafy glade that shelters folk,
the Green Man haunts the oldest oak.
 
Raindrops slide in a figure eight,
wide owl eyes, a flight out late,
this symbol of all eternity kept,
still life where no one has yet slept.
 
Rainbow sneaks from glowering nimbus
and I wonder how the day will find us.
Waking green, bright emerald hue,
this crazy shine can only be you.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 21, 2024

A Poem a Day (651): NaPoWriMo Day 20 - Heart of stone

 
Day 20 
 
Prompt: write a poem that recounts a historical event. In writing your poem, you could draw on your memory, encyclopedias, history books or primary documents. 
 

Heart of stone
 
A heart of stone
sits on the mantelpiece,
it never gets dusted,
locks its history inside.
 
Your eyes flit to it, wherever
you stand in the room. Grey,
chipped, heavy and cruel,
somehow it fell.
 
The wall it hails from grew
four metres from the earth,
the outer of an inner parallel.
Between them sat the ‘death strip’,
where the people dodged gunfire
under an all-seeing moon.
 
They pierced Berlin’s heart in 1961,
divided it in two with concrete
to keep every East German out.
Soldiers watched them night and day
from 302 watchtowers. Somehow, 5,000
crossed over, but 191 died trying.
 
They thought it would never end,
but the Peaceful Revolution brought it down.
Thatcher didn’t want it to fall.
Luckily, no one listened to Thatcher.
 
The ‘Shield and Sword of the Party’,
the Stasi, with its quarter-million spies,
were no longer needed, the people released
from this orchestrated campaign of
surveillance pitting friend against friend,
lover against lover.
 
They drilled holes in walls to listen and watch,
paralysed victims by destroying reputations,
crushed relationships, sabotaged careers,
split families in half with paid betrayals.

A time of travel bans, gaslighting,
smear campaigns and bugging.
Social isolation, then suicide was rife,
so if the guards didn’t shoot you…
 
When the wall finally crumbled,
people found their own surveillance files,
discovered they were one of millions.
Most of the ‘unlucky’ had never known why.
 
They said it would never come down,
but in the end it could not stand.
It couldn’t outlast the will of a people
determined to be free.
 
Vickie Johnstone, April 20, 2024

A great book on the Stasi is Stasiland by Anna Funder.

A Poem a Day (650): Sunrise

 
Sunrise
 
So small.
A peck. A dot. It slides,
honey spilling out.
 
A pencilled-in line or two
makes merriment,
and we are beyond talk.
 
An aside, like a sandwich
sat on a dish, waiting 
to be devoured.

Someone waves out there,
but it’s just breeze.
It goes unnoticed.
 
Surf sounds, soft curves,
the horizon lights up.
A bird flutters out.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 20, 2024

A Poem a Day (649): Macbeth

Macbeth
 
Colouring in the edges
of style. The scene sets, a stage
wracked with unconditional charm.
 
They act in parts. Depart apart,
together, unchained, eclipsed,
two swans gliding on water.
 
It’s a fake battle with plastic swords.
The dressing-up comes easy,
but the lines, the lines are lost.
 
Someone laughs and the game’s up.
There are no words because he forgot,
and so the curtain must come down.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 20, 2024

A Poem a Day (648): NaPoWriMo Day 19 - Haunted

 
Day 19 
 
Prompt: write about someone haunted by something. Then change the word haunt to hunt.
 

 
Haunted
 
He paints faces in the stone-dead walls,
this silent loitering without intent,
a shadow bypassing other people.
He hunts all the spaces in between.
 
Bricks sit etched with the blood of life,
a chalk outline washed by rain still stains
the pavement where we walk in line.
Everyone sees it. No one says a word.
 
They talk about the sky or a tree or a song.
She doesn’t like to talk about him at all.
Her work colleagues don’t even know he exists.
She wonders if he has one single regret.
 
Every Sunday, she would have to see him.
Aghast, she’d check her face in her compact,
fix it the way you would fix your lipstick.
And pray he’d behave in front of their child.
 
He always smiles. She hates how he smiles.
So hollow, the way the lips curl back,
his teeth, sharp-edged like graveyard stones.
He is the wolf. A wild, snarling wolf.
 
Sometimes she spots him in the street,
or in the sun-haze of a shop window.
Just one second. And then he’s gone.
Or maybe he was never really there.
 
The hunter and the hunted.
If she closes her eyes, she can wish him away.
Today, she opens them, looks down at the chalk.
It marks the position of her body yesterday.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 19, 2024

A Poem a Day (647): NaPoWriMo Day 18 - The eagle

 
Day 18 
 
Prompt: we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker expresses the desire to be someone or something else and explains why. Two possible models for you: Natasha Rao’s In my next life let me be a tomato and Randall Jarrell’s The Woman at the Washington Zoo.

 
The eagle
 
You think you covet nothing,
that while you may not be enough,
this is you, the only breath you know,
born from that lone child in the mirror
who once stared quizzically back at you,
and you can heal, see it through,

but there’s a sharp cliff edge inside,
a rip, a tear. It shouldn’t be there.
Sometimes it bends. Sometimes it grows.
Stagnation is not a natural way to be.
 
We watch the eagle from the ground,
wings outstretched, a plane in spiral,
swift, sure, existence quantified.
A true power in its escape into the blue,
into the still, the lightness of pure air,
a kaleidoscope opening inside into out.
 
He dives on the updraft, skates almost,
spying humans living like specks of dust.
The mighty hunter, escape artist, swift
in his pursuit of truth. We stand below,
heads craned to the sky. Unseeing us,
he soars up into the arms of cirrus.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 18, 2024

A Poem a Day (646): NaPoWriMo 17 - Ephedra (inspired by a song of the same name)

 
Day 17 
 
Prompt: we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that is inspired by a piece of music, and that shares its title with that piece of music.
 

Ephedra (inspired by a song of the same name)
 
Life opening. A window rising to the soul.
Moon dust recalls a lost night’s shade,
aimless wanders in moods of endless dark.
Motion turning. How it always turns.
 
Bric-a-brac, a walk back, a curve in this time,
the only one, and we can never be forever,
this trip back, this screwing with a reality done.
I am me, and you are you. We can never meld.
 
Notes in streams lift light, fulfilling white energy,
bubbles cross a distant spray. Soft surf lifts so
this shine will never ebb. The echo of a return.
We are one, but never were one. We are two.
 
You record a lyric and dream on its company,
rhythm sweet, the way it moves, its breeze,
as though we sail on a never-shrinking sea,
live inside colour chords, the curve of the true.
 
This hard shell, heartbroken, dug out of sand,
smooth arch of the blessed, we listen in,
content as if this wide world moves in tune,
only for our audience, only for us. Just we.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 17, 2024

A Poem a Day (645): NaPoWriMo Day 16 - The mile

 

Day 16

Prompt: we challenge you to write a poem in which you closely describe an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does. The surprise ending to this James Wright poem is a good illustration of the effect we’re hoping you’ll achieve. An abstract, philosophical kind of statement closing out a poem that is otherwise intensely focused on physical, sensory details.

The mile

I walk the latent mile, mud-spattered,
curves in the distancing, mirroring,
the sun blazing stripes over this chill clime,
and I am lazy in my own clamber up,
over, trailed by a tail of twisted lanes.
 
Jagged trees arch, create spiky picture frames
through which to spy on the frozen horses,
shaggy brown, grey and dappled, the last
in his blue coat. The hands of the hills span
out, palms rising to circling cirrus clouds.
 
I listen to the even echo of my footsteps,
the hum of a bumble’s bounce, trill lark
and a chuckle of sparrows hedge-haunting.
Beside a white birch, a baby rabbit curls silent.
I try to shake the ghost of my own self loose.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 16, 2024

A Poem a Day (644): NaPoWriMo Day 15 - Green envelope

 
Day 15

Prompt: take a look at @StampsBot, and become inspired by the wide, wonderful, and sometimes wacky world of postage stamps. For example, while it certainly makes sense that China would issue a stamp featuring a panda, it’s less clear to us why the Isle of Man should feel the need to honour 2001: A Space Odyssey in stamp form. From Romanian mushrooms to Sudanese weavers to the Marshall Islands getting far too excited over personal computing, stamps are a quasi-lyrical, quasi-bizarre look into what different cultures (or at least their postal authorities) hold dear.

 
Green envelope
 
Mit Gutem Wünschen, he cherishes
a childlike rainbow splurged into being,
perfect arches scrawled across broken skies,
the ghost-like wafts of pearl cirrus caught
chasing dreams where there was only blue.
 
This pale green cage of ours belies time,
sacred nature’s seal on our soul.
We open it to peer inside at mirrors,
curving spaceless, excluding nothing at all,
and yet we only feel the borders around us,
the fences we built to keep all dangers out
now working to shield us shut within.
 
We are nothing but the acorns strewn.
The number 55 marks our final year,
impatient like two runners interposed.
Deutschland stamps us in one country,
the place of our birth, a retrospective.
 
We open the envelope, push it so far,
seeking to stretch as far as we can go,
follow this many coloured hope of ours
to travel this endless maze back to ourselves
and all those things we find meaningful,
but it can close upon itself just as easily
if we are looking the wrong way,
Mit Gutem Gewissen.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 15, 2024