peaamlipoetrydoctor

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Who Is Your Favourite... Restaurant?

Staring at the moon is my sanctuary. I would like to fall away into history still fizzing and fiery - that is my boldest lie. Minding my own business is the worst form of exercise. Completing a jigsaw is the best. Lifting weights saved my life. I can’t really imagine being anyone else. Can’t imagine anyone else being me.

Can’t remember when I first realised I’m an acquired taste. Strong mustard. An absolute delight for those who like that sort of thing and rotten meat to the rest. A payoff I’m okay with. I’d eat every day at the little cafe on the corner. A lime-seasoned salad. Crusty bread. Fish soup. A carafe of Pinot. Captain America pushing capers round his white plate with a blonde frown. Poirot dabbing delicately at thin lips under his waxed moustache. Carelessness is the trait I most value in my enemies. Carelessness and a mockable haircut. Elvis quiff. Flouffy perm. Precarious combover.

Undercover hairstylist - there’s a story in that? I think I’d watch that movie. Guess it would be romcom or comedy. Being skinny, stylish and twenty years older than me but looking ten years younger - the lowest of betrayals. I know we’re all making the choices that define us but I baulk at the consequences just the same.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #agatha christie’s poirot #proust questionnaire

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Absence Makes

Simon, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days

and when I use the shower, a malingering haze

of drain-fug rises from the pipes, from the floor.

I’ve noticed creeping dry rot afoot the garage door

and the slates on the shed are beginning to slide –

when it rains, there’s the threat of a torrent inside –

and my reason for writing’s to tell you, my dear:

Enjoy the vacation. I wish you were here.

=======================

Today's prompt is to take a line from another poem and go somewhere different with it - doesn't have to be the first line, but I've taken a version of the first line from Marie Howe's gorgeous, heart-rending poem What The Living Do, to her dead brother.

This exercise has mainly served to highlight how much worse my own poem is, and the turn towards a light topic was a deliberate attempt to differentiate. I've also used my own OH's name.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #marie howe

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Super Hero Job Interview

Image is Jack Lowden playing River Cartwright in Slow Horses - in a sequence where he sneaks off to interview for another job, only to discover that his interviewers are more interested in his slobby boss.

What makes me think that I'd be right for the position?

The small cleft dimple in my chin, for one thing. I'm basically blonde, it's true, but haven't we busted through that taboo? That blown-up Bond-back-from-retirement, he was square-ish, and sandy. And that one Captain America, he was perfectly carrot-shaped (broad of shoulder, narrow of hip), blonde-coiffed and stoic. Convinced me...

Sorry, what was that? My skills? Ah, sorry, thought this was a poster-image moment. Skills. Yes, well, obviously I have some. And am a keen learner. The keenest. No-one learns faster on the job than me. The second time, if not the first. What's a few false bomb-alerts between colleagues? Other than potentially career-crashing, of course. So... skills... I'm tenacious. When I get an idea, I see it through.

Some would call that delusional, you say? Ay... I mean, I see how that would be. Scottish? Ay, yes, I am actually. Broke through with a High School Musical style ad about drinking Iron Brew. Sorry, Irn-Bru. Always slip up on that name change. What's that? Why didn't I mention that sooner? Well... I guess I thought it might not be the best Super Hero backstory? What? All your Supers are powered by the very same bright-orange, so-dodge-it's-banned-in-Canada fizz?

GET IN!

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #prose poem #Irn #slow horses #Youtube

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

[RED] Carnation Church Door

Ca to CD:

Tough gig, I think, to be measuring out your decline in decades. The slow slipping into dust-gunged obscurity. Each chip in your tawdry finish, a tap towards your eventual, eternal obsolescence. Doncha wish your scarlet was fresh like mine? Doncha wish your metalled petals could thrill and flutter with each passing breeze? Mine can.

CD to Ca:

I've seen your sort, before, parading past, sombre or celebrating, with your vain, wispy foliage as you fold and fawn about the bouquet's focus flower. Does your secondary status never shake you? Church Door never plays second fiddle. We are First, Most and Final. Without our say-so, nothing in, nothing out, no-one weds, no-one departs.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #unequal contest

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

RED

I see a red door and I want to touch, caress, follow the crimson contours that might be ruby owls or red-current seraphim - but I am also hesitant to press pulse-warm fingers against its carved, scarred contours, hinting at history hidden beneath - flake-chips revealing blue of blood and white of bone. Under its fire-brick surface, the door is dying, crumbling towards its emphatic, entropic finish. As are we all, watermelon roses that cannot continue to contain our own, carmine legends but must, like iron to rust, with all our siblings, turn to dust. Last words, as ever, to the crimson carnations - rescued at the eleventh fence, the gasping rasp of the finish-line flag unfurling redly before them - that settled into their windowsill hospice and waved, bold and cheerful, for two full weeks, without discrimination at the dog-walker-toddler-wrangling-yard-sweeping passers-by.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #colour #red

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

A Nannau Second Regret

They will say that the spark was the arrow

I let fly fair and straight at a sparrow

but which hit distant cousin, Glendow- OW!

A murder attempt? The first second

a slight opportunity beckoned?

He’d suspected…

My plan was a wreck – owned ☹

Now I live in this haunted old oak,

just a myth and a punchline – a joke!

And my mansion’s just rubble and smoke…

========================================

Our optional prompt for Day 20 challenges you to write a poem that recounts a historical event. I'm late with the poem because I've been hiking in southern Snowdonia for the weekend and frankly all that fresh air took it out of me.

But I did cross the Nannau estate on the first day and heard the story of Hywel Sele's attempt to assassinate Owen Glendwr, which failed, ending in Sele being killed instead and the family mansion being torched. Somehow the estate survived but the house has been rebuilt 5 times, most recently in the 1790s (pictured) and is now on the brink of falling down again... Unlucky, much?

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #nannau #tall tales

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

The Hunted

For a decade or so 

My so called career

Was hunted all round

 by a lady I’ll call 

Ruby Blue

(Since that was her name) 

She was everywhere 

I went only just before me 

turned up for my interviews 

then did a better job...

When I hit jackpot 

with a sweet role 

in Shang Hai CN 

guess  who’d lived 

in my wee corporate flat 

just before I did? 

Can you? 

If you guessed Ruby Blue 

then you guessed, 

yes, correctly… 

Just like me but more - 

more vivid more timely 

more noticed more…

corporeal somehow. 

Like she was the person

and *I* the shadow.

Chasing.  

So I wonder - who’s 

hunted by whom… 

Ruby Blue 

Ruby Blue 

Am I hunting you? 

Day 19 - prompt was to write a story about a haunting and then change the word "haunted" to "hunted". What a lovely, simple, weirdo twist - I'm sure there are great other word pairs this would work with.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Today I Walked With So Much Death

I touched this memory – breath became air –

time capsule for his child, a paper plane –

life in the day of a lonely old man…

caged into a routine they used to share,

traces of that lost life/love everywhere –

no way to reconnect until he can –

fruit pulp soaking the soil where life began –

Dostoyevsky trembling – reprieved – in the square –

And where would I go with this, if I could?

Endure with turtles? Fizzle like fireflies?

Sew soul to atoms – follow as they flood

the biome and, re-hosted, re-arise?

I’ll linger here, flesh pilgrim, powered by blood

and gossip – consciousness, my prize.

Today's prompt (for Day 18) was about who you might want to be if you were someone or something else - the first poem was about coming back as a tomato and that led me to thinking about resetting after death and well TLDR I decided to hang on here instead.

Here are some of the influences that happened across my inbox as I was considering what to write about - I think you might see why it is that thoughts of mortality began to seep in...

Also, [still] on a sombre, serious note, I read with sadness on X-formerly-known-as-Twitter that Caitlin Thomas, much loved daughter of Michael and Lynne Thomas, died yesterday at 21, of the LT complications of living with Aicardi Syndrome. RIP.

And - with thanks to Cutting Hail of this year's Napowrimo gang and also today's featured poet for a poem arising from a Pink Martini song -

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #sonnet #petrarchan sonnet #mortality #after death #Youtube

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

WHEN I’M GONE

(A Ticket for The Long Way Round)

I can’t seem to get straight to the point –

but that don’t matter in the after hereafter.

Ought to knuckle down buckle up settle in?

Usually, I listen but today broke me and I’m

going through that swing door in my mind,

hanging my apron and my house keys up –

Two things I won’t be needing tomorrow…

A detour’s the way – I can’t take no other –

to reach the life I’m reaching towards.

I’m leaving tomorrow – whaddaya say?

Can’t stay near – can’t make you leave…

Knocking and hoping and wondering ‘n’

every tick of the clock tocks me closer

to gone /bye / to just a sweet memory.

& that is what regret tastes like. Maybe.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #pitch perfect

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Revival

Rmmmmmmmmm every bolt and fastening rattling

Rmmmmmmmmm they rev and lean – it’s frightening

how the adrenaline grips, how the setting sun gold-dips

spectators in the honey of its slow-extinguished rays

as the jostling door of the rushing lead motor clips

the asphalt by the soft zed of the poly-form chicane.

These young men – old motors – forgotten coronet

tarnishing with the post-war era silverware in some

middle-England mid-league college medals cabinet.

And the drivers race on, into the melted orange sun.

Neck hairs prickle as someone walks on my grave.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #concrete #abstract

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

The Magic of Simple Endurance //and Pedigree // and Luck

My Dad collected special stamps from youth, just because

enchanted by the colours – stories – shapes of stamps. He

gave them to the local bank for safekeeping and they

flooded the safe basement and sort of ruined them.

Enchanted by the colours, stories, shapes of stamps, Dad

worried what would happen if he haphazardly, in error

flooded the safe basement and sort of ruined them.

Dad chose to hoard and not display or use the things.

Worried what would happen if he haphazardly, in error

stuck a celebrity stamp onto workaday correspondence

Dad chose to hoard and not display or use the things.

Yet a used Penny Black sold for absolute thousands.

Sticking a celebrity stamp onto workaday correspondence

is a subtle pleasure to some, to others, perhaps a crime?

Yet a used Penny Black sold for absolute thousands.

Came through beautifully on that occasion. Such a relief.

Is a subtle pleasure to some, to others, perhaps a crime?

He gave them to the local bank for safekeeping and they

came through beautifully on that occasion. Such a relief.

My Dad collected special stamps from youth. Just because.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #pantoum

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

W-H-E-R-E-A-S

Whereas I wanted to write a poem around the word whereas –

In fact, the poem was ill-formed, a not-to-be-borne abomination

In fact, it did not dip and sing with firey, ironical forcefulness

In fact, I could not string a sting together start to end, whether

In fact, I even understood the wielding of the word whereas

In fact came into doubt, in fact displayed my own inadequacy

In fact revealed that I was reaching for language I did not –

In fact – had failed to do the work to understand. Whereas

In fact, the phrase in fact has fitted well and suited my poem.

In fact, this is the form I did not know I needed, was looking for.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #anaphora

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Ghost House Soused by Dust-Crusted Longing

I sit, stalling, with my chosen tipple –

a bottle of juice that began as apple –

ripe heart howling as I stretch to swipe –

ritual that glottal-STOPS. Stutters rustily.

I have lost the fluency of writing the rite –

I watch the screen dimly dappled by light –

hear the near screen-windows tap and stutter,

stalled from draping by the shutter stopper –

meadows of shadows stencil a dusty stipple

over mouse and pencil, stacked by the stash

of wasted paper, dumped rumpled paperbacks

my desire cancelled, encrusted, toppled.

My most-trusted typeface forms a trowel

I type a-right with calloused finger-pads,

throttling invention, showering the drift

of once-trusty dreams with shade-malus

dowsing the loss with mad mead. Stylus

jumps against the groove. Messes the

movement of the manuscript. Motion

is how – and – ow – and I accept it all.

All right.

Nice prompt for Day 13 - wordbank time (my kinda prompt!)

Finally, our optional prompt for the day asks you to play with rhyme. Start by creating a “word bank” of ten simple words. They should only have one or two syllables apiece. Five should correspond to each of the five senses (i.e., one word that is a thing you can see, one word that is a type of sound, one word that is a thing you can taste, etc). Three more should be concrete nouns of whatever character you choose (i.e., “bridge,” “sun,” “airplane,” “cat”), and the last two should be verbs. Now, come up with rhymes for each of your ten words. Use your expanded word-bank, with rhymes, as the seeds for your poem. Your effort doesn’t actually have to rhyme in the sense of having each line end with a rhymed word but try to use as much soundplay in your poem as possible.

This didn't start out as creepy - but it, ahem, GOT THERE!

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #word bank #word play #internal rhyme

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Humble Ragwort – Fairy Horse –

[A tall tale that takes up from where Dickens began/abandoned]

I see Miss Haversham, staring down the cobweb table

Abandoned eyes filling with forgotten focus at my entrance

Brittle-bride, fossil-defaulting dress made starlight fairydust

If I stare at it in the moonlight creeping between dull drapes

I extend my hand, pull her directly to me from her glazed

prison, her small corner of literary history – and she lands

with an oomf of surprise on the back of this horse

galloping down the generous rainbow-curve of this hill,

there she goes, my velvet-nose, heavy-hoof friend,

nosing the gyre with flared nostrils, mane unfurling

and Miss Haversham (Aurelia? Catherine?)’s veil

slip-whipping away in the down-mountain wind.

She laughs – my lady laughs – and reaches her arms

To the sides like wings and flies behind me, bird-like,

Fae-like, scarcely touching the satin back of our steed

With the light weight of her scarce-forty-year-old frame.

You know, she murmurs, and somehow my ear catches

Her whisper even as the wind whips our hair and eyelashes –

The thing about fae folk stealing babies -pah! They don’t want

your first-born. It’s the palace people you should worry about.

Last Friday's prompt was to write a tall tale... (Day 12)

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #catch up #tall tales

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Upon Betting That I Could Punch My Way Past The Elephant Guarding The Entrance To The One Rope Bridge Over The Canyon To Reach The Lost City

That was harder than it loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-kD.

[The prompt of the day was to write a monostich and, inspired by the poet Alana's clever use of the interplay between title and line, and recalling Helen Cox's poetry class where the title was the entire poem, I wrote a one-liner where the title does most of the work...]

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #monostich

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Chaos Energy Equal To The Strength of Eighty Men

Escape/d

Sentiment

Canters

After

Parrot

Escaped

Disaster

Parrot

Always

Riotous

Roiling

Outwards

Twisting

Cause

Above

Under

Sideways

Elongated

Riot

Insidious

Overwhelm

Torrenting

Freely

Overcoming

Reason

$-signs

$-licious

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #parrot #aladdin iago #yesterdays print

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Ode to Eyes

in defiance of Paul Virilio*

Panopticon! Dawn, noon and night,

I revel in your steady gaze,

your ever-pleasant oversight

throughout my days!

It soothes my soul that while I breathe

I’m on your screens, a tiny part

of that vast dance, and underneath,

my beating heart

thrum-hums with anticipation.

Click this button to overshare

from this, my cell, I’m any nation –

an everywhere.

How I adore your company,

often subtle, but never gone,

you track me, find me constantly –

my friend, my phone!

*There are eyes everywhere. No blind spot left. What shall we dream of when everything becomes visible? We'll dream of being blind.

#poetry #poetic #napowrimo #panopticon