A Poem a Day (665): Coasting

 
Coasting
 
It is enough. After the want, the hard graft,
journeying in a bid to rise, the peak of hope,
expectation, only to fall into fruitless coasting,
in secondary. Yet under a stone you may find
scope, breath, being, colour and a little faith.
 
We can walk the line without treading on it,
refresh from water without it passing our lips.
This is an imaginary earth. You sink your feet in
deep, tilt your etched heartlines to the open skies,
while the heady sun shape-shifts into quiet moon.
 
The only souls we can be are ourselves when all else
is done. Do not need. This is your space, carved out by
yourself alone. Here, we shoulder the trees, lest the
burden is too heavy for some. Clouds pass slow,
gather and eject, the sleek cirrus sounding out.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 8, 2024

A Poem a Day (664): Lightning and the rock

 

I wrote this poem using a prompt from Napowrimo.net. 

 
March 31, 2021, prompt: we’d like to challenge you to spend a few minutes looking for a piece of art that interests you in the online galleries of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Perhaps a floral collar from the tomb of Tutankhamen? Or a Tibetan cavalryman’s suit of armor? Or a gold-and-porcelain flute? After you’ve selected your piece, study the photographs and the accompanying text. And then – write a poem!
www.napowrimo.net/2021/03/

 
Lightning and the rock 
(a sculpture by Nonggirrnga Marawili) 

Lightning and the rock,
razor edge. A trick on time,
itself eaten out in stages,
a flick of tongue, span of life.
Against the sea, we erode.
 
Spit-balls of energy served by sky,
a host of aspirations true glazed,
from which we built our skeleton house,
home to the self, scribbled bones,
a betrayal of kindness. These old panes
our defence against trespass.
 
Here it breathes, this dark glass,
our fractured souls, etched so worn,
the metal withstanding pain.
It is a search for the inside
from outside, the back to front,
tilted heart, aghast, so out of tune,
snug inside this blown bubble.
 
We are staggered by the load,
the lack of fuel, the dissociation.
This steel guard with its pieces
unaligned is our body, uneven scatters of
lines, rusted spine, a sudden sweep
of everything that is, stuffed
inside the whimsical.
 
Between these lightning strikes,
this cage or safety so double-edged,
we peek out, seek to steal out,
breathe the freedom of the blue.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 3, 2024

The sculpture can be seen here: 
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search?q=CrdPackageIds%3A658

A Poem a Day (663): Too curious

 
NaPoWriMo April 2024 (www.napowrimo.net) is now over, so to carry on with these cool prompts that get your brain turning, I thought I'd look at the ones from the previous April and write using those. So here goes with Day 1. 

Prompt: take a look through Public Domain Review’s article on The Art of Book Covers. Some of the featured covers are beautiful. Some are distressing. Some are just plain weird (I’m looking at you, “Mr Sweet Potatoes”). With any luck, one or more of these will catch your fancy, and open your mind to some poetic insights.

Too curious
 
Too curious, he said, shouting us down,
too weird, too peculiar, too bold,
too stout, too tall, too small, too colourful.
 
In a word: just too…
 
Too obstinate, too opinionated, too arty,
too confident, too shy, too able, too young,
too old, too beautiful, too plain, too…
 
Too anything. And too here!
 
So we opened the door and left.

 
Vickie Johnstone, May 1, 2024

A Poem a Day (662): NaPoWriMo Day 30 - Kelpie

 
Day 30

Prompt: we challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend, as in Claire Scott’s poem, Scheherazade at the Doctor’s Office.

www.napowrimo.net

 
 
Kelpie
 
It follows the curves of the Scottish heartland,
cuts into it, a deep V of stone granules,
coasted by ribbons of grass, leaves and moss,
dotted with silk buttercups and bluebells.
 
The redheaded girl treks the dip and the hill,
where the narrow road bends at a rusted gate
stood sentinel between two fences frilled by ivy.
Three stallions stand idle, evenly spaced.
 
One black, one dappled brown, one grey.
The third throws back his mane, and stamps,
holds her expression for a momentary while,
glances away. The weather turns, rain spills.
 
The girl carries down in the other direction,
where the downs rise up again, and twist,
and lean, down into the rested pool of sea,
a gathering place for surfers, but empty now,
 
the tumult none too enticing. A chill wind
cuts. By the rocks a solitary man looks out,
a fringed blanket draped around his shoulders,
hair sodden, hung in tendrils flowing.
 
The girl tugs her hood further over her head,
hands dug deep into her pockets for warmth.
The air chills, sky cracks, and she makes to go,
but the movement shocks him to turn.
 
He looks straight into her eyes, earnest and raw,
something familiar about him, as though she
has met him before, in a shadow moment.
In that second, he smiles, and it lights his face.
 
The intention to go forgotten, she stays put,
almost sculpture. He steps forward, pauses
a bare few feet away, pushes back the wet locks
of his hair, and despite herself, she smiles.
 
There seems nothing else to do in that moment.
It’s just him and the water. On the horizon a dot,
a something moves, but above the nimbus are calming,
the sea smoothing. And the lightning stops.
 
The stranger removes the blanket, folds it in his arms.
He wears a simple grey shirt, faded-out trousers,
and a pair of clumpy shoes. His eyes are jet orbs,
a stark dark contrast to his salt & pepper hair.
 
She wonders if to go, but his expression holds her.
He glances at the sea, sunlight blinking to glisten.
It flickers over the waves like a dance, so hypnotic.
She senses rather than sees the man move sideways.
 
In a moment he is gazing down into her eyes,
runs his fingers through her mermaid hair.
For some reason, she does not feel the need to move.
He points out, where a lone boat mars the still.
 
She waits for him to speak, but he steps away,
moves in even tread towards the edge of water.
In that moment she sees that his shoes are not,
but black hooves, deepening imprints in the sand.
 
The girl watches him saunter towards the soft surf,
where he stops and turns just once, his body shifting
into the powerful shape of the grey stallion, his mane
falling full of stars, eyes glistening with life.
 
Her feet carry her over the sand, crimson hair billowing
in the sacred breeze whipping up from the salted mist,
stretching her hands for the leather bridle with which she
will ride him out into the depths of the windswept sea.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 30, 2024
 

A Poem a Day (661): Figure blue

Figure blue
 
Into the blue, we figure it late,
a skater in a dreamless eight,
full-circle swift in always time,
the leaf, so fine, in ever shine.
 
We reflect to fake our own escape,
return always, this blue-wash fate,
the time of us, our always being,
a wreck strewn on a splice of living.
 
In keeping, we wait here for morning,
dawn’s disguise of the dark we’ve seen,
rewash in blue, we try to begin again,
knowing things will always end the same.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 29, 2024

A Poem a Day (660): NaPoWriMo Day 29 - Albatross

 
Day 29 
 
Prompt: you may know that Taylor Swift has released a new double album titled The Tortured Poets Department. In recognition of this occasion, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous, but we’d like to challenge you to select one of these words and write a poem that uses the word as its title. www.napowrimo.net

 
Albatross
 
The largest wingspan
to fly the furthest distance,
to just linger on the updraft,
hung in disciplined suspense,
floating high on invisible threads
connecting islands to states
over the breath of the waiting sea,
open arms that never end,
palms tilted to the watchful gods,
as though he needs a stopping point,
as if he would ever want to fall.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 29, 2024

A Poem a day (659): NaPoWriMo Day 28 - 3 sijo

 
Day 28 
 
Prompt: write a sijo. This is a traditional Korean verse form. A sijo has three lines of 14-16 syllables. The first line introduces the poem’s theme, the second discusses it, and the third line, which is divided into two sentences or clauses, ends the poem – usually with some kind of twist or surprise. Often written as six lines. www.napowrimo.net

 
Breaking

Breaking the still to split the seas in two, a lone figure dips
and rises on a wave, is swallowed whole by the arching whirlpool,
chords smashing and breaking in an endless, seamless dance.

 
Directions

Shells dug into sand, upended, point directions writ in water,
long dreamt of and magicked here, awakening depths of sound,
thank crimson starfish in rhyme, make the day fade out sublime.

 
Set sail

We cast a sail adrift on the ocean blue, wander at its arrival,
a message caught in glass. Set on being a castaway, we strike out
as far as our limbs can carry our sins, trailed by a shoal of dolphins.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 28, 2024

A Poem a Day (658): NaPoWriMo Day 27 - To the bone

 
Day 27 
 
Prompt: write an American sonnet. What’s that? Well, it’s like a regular sonnet but fewer rules? Like a traditional Spencerian or Shakespearean sonnet, an American sonnet is shortish (generally 14 lines, but not necessarily!), discursive, and tends to end with a bang, but there’s no need to have a rhyme scheme or even a specific meter. Here are a few examples:
·        Wanda Coleman’s American Sonnet (10)
·        Terence Hayes’s American Sonnet for the New Year
·        Ted Berrigan’s Sonnet LXXXVIII

www.napowrimo.net

 
 
To the bone

We’re all on the low road,          the way of the wanderer,
    the seeker,         deliberately taking the longest route,
            the other,          the in between,             the indifferent.

It’s a rite of passage        without the right to flow,
                        seeking that old missing thing       that has no name
                                            or identity        because it hasn’t been given one.

        We are our own guide, the lone skin.      Dry Ark.

                        Mine is the sun that scurries down from hunger.
        We are the walking, the unsettled,           the unfound.

                ‘Are you going my way?’ is the question you want to ask,
        but the only encounter you have is four-pawed.

                    An Alsation with a ratty beard,        his own story to tell,
        for he has journeyed further         and harder in his seven years.

            It’s something to chew on.          Like a dog with a bone.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 27, 2024

A Poem a Day (657): NaPoWriMo Day 26 - Down

 
Day 26 
 
Prompt: write a poem that involves alliteration, consonance and assonance. www.napowrimo.net

 
 
Down
 
Tunnelling Tarquin under, in the unseen,
looking low for a clearing in the obscene,
the grey-grime tumult of a city scene
afloat with sold, slick petroleum slime.
 
Visages of visitors, suitcases snagging,
stick and slide in slush and mud and gin,
escaping the smother, the fog, drawn thin,
the slay of a thousand hungry tongues.
 
Someone drew a way out in a line of chalk,
but it only exists if you can walk the talk.
The voiceless view only a cover of dust,
an estrangement in an ever-torn maze.
 
On a wide wood plank, sailors signal times
to the softest seas, mountains, myriad lines
of cirrus cloud, swept out so far it pines.
You will not see its true intention,
 
and it blows, how it blows, and it’s white
upon white upon white, flying for light.
And if you stay under too long this blight,
you’ll wither in the raw of your bones.
 
Starlings swarm where the skies rake dry
from a drip-down dawn, a saved goodbye.
It’s where the old ghosts walk in solitude,
where the lost eventually deign to die.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 26, 2024

A Poem a Day (656): NaPoWriMo Day 25 - What is your idea of perfect happiness?

 
Day 25
 
Prompt: we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the Proust Questionnaire, a set of questions drawn from Victorian-era parlour games and adapted by modern interviewers. You could choose to answer the whole questionnaire, and then write a poem based on your answers, answer just a few, or just write a poem that’s based on the questions. We have a fairly standard, 35-question version of the questionnaire. www.napowrimo.net
 
 
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
 
Too many empty gaps in the question,
not enough breaths of daylight
in an expanse of deep happenstance.
A trip-up. It was a trick question after all.
 
It needed a whole list of answers. And more
questions. It wasn’t just one thing.
But then she’d forgotten.
She lost her smile along the way.
 
He said she used to be fun when they met.
He asked what she was wearing; said she looked
like shit. All her friends were wrong for her,
he said. And her light had gone.
 
There were so many things she’d lost,
at some point, somewhere along the way.
 
Lost, and not refound. But maybe, just
maybe, she never needed those things.
He was no longer there, a heavy weight,
watching. He was an absence. A quiet.
 
Now she could dance if she wanted to,
anywhere in the house, even the shower,
abandon her clothes like an unkempt,
multicoloured body by the front door,
sleep with the cat and not feel him seethe
because an animal was getting more attention.
 
It seemed like another life, a dreamed-up existence,
a postcard bereft of a forwarding address.
 
Turning her mother’s fountain pen in her hand,
she gazed at the bright, young woman on the wall.
Posed against a mountain peak, she smiled,
smiled with that open innocence of youth.
 
‘Dear daughter,’ she wrote. ‘I just thought of you,
as the answer to a question I was asked today.’
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 25, 2024

A Poem a Day (655): NaPoWriMo Day 24 - Moondance

 
Day 24 
 
Prompt: write a poem that begins with a line from another poem. www.napowrimo.net

The first line is from Walter de la Mare’s Silver.
 

Moondance
 
Slowly, silently, now the moon
cherishes this gift of silver starlight.
Reflects the eerie arcs of her face
in the dark dish of swan lake.
 
Weeping willows gather in a wave
of green, hushed, heads bowed,
reeds dripping at the water’s edge.
Still surface breaks, shoots an echo
far into the night to the next bay,
a message of wisdom from the fae.
 
A cloud sweeps lunar cheekbones,
and in that second the willows step back,
sweep the lengths of their leaves upward,
stretch the tips of their limbs to the sky.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 24, 2024

A Poem a Day (654): NaPoWriMo Day 23 - Gingerbread

 
Day 23 
 
Prompt: we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about, or involving, a superhero, taking your inspiration from these four poems in which Lucille Clifton addresses Clark Kent/ Superman.  www.napowrimo.net
 
I wrote the first draft of this today in a pub with a small glass of Merlot by the sea. It's dedicated to my own personal superhero.

 
Gingerbread
 
It’s the smell of gingerbread rising,
fruity, tart, malty. A scent I know well.
It beckons me to follow, unseen,
like a misty finger signalling,
summoning me to do its bidding.
Dough rising from a hard, biscuit base.
It’s the smell I’ll remember decades on
when I am old and she is gone.
 
I don’t know how to make gingerbread,
but I know how it makes me feel,
taking me back to much simpler times
when my hands barely reached the table,
my eyes fixed on the china mixing bowl,
imagining what it would taste like,
if only my tiptoed me could reach it.
If I was lucky, I’d get a lick of the spoon.
 
Now, I think of all the things out of reach,
the times I was just too far from home
to relate the new crisis – the failed romance,
the lost job, endless soul-searching, the always
feeling you’re not quite good enough,
but she was always waiting there,
forever at the end of the telephone.
 
Sometimes she’d say pull up your big knickers
and just get on with it, to let things go.
She was always willing to offer her shield,
always ready to drop everything and listen,
because that is what a superhero really is,
when you’re afraid and you’re far from home.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 23, 2024

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! www.napowrimo.net

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. 
 www.napowrimo.net

 
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. www.napowrimo.net
 

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. 
www.napowrimo.net
 

 
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