NaPoWriMo Day 7: A panda’s day off

Hi, I’m doing NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. Today is day 7. Why am I writing about pandas getting jiggy? Well...

This is the prompt for the April 7 poem:

Today our prompt is another oldie-but-goodie: a poem based on a news article. Frankly, I understand why you might be avoiding the news lately, but this is a good opportunity to find some “weird” and poetical news stories for inspiration.

I looked for something funny on the BBC News website and found this: ‘Pandas in lockdown mate after 10 years of trying.’

And so, I wrote about pandas…

A panda’s day off (or Ying Ying gets some)

Today, we finally did it!

And on a Monday too –

Not everyone’s favourite day,

But it is for me and you!

The day I finally got jiggy

With the enigmatic Le Le.

We were introduced back in 2010.

Yes, that was 10 years ago.

We’re just a little bit slow.

Le Le never showed much interest,

Preferring to chew bamboo instead.

Not to say I don’t, I love it –

About 14kg a day, to be precise.

Which means I take 38 dumps a day.

But Le Le does too – sorry, I mean

Ladies never pooh.

Maybe all my poohing was her fear,

Stinking more than the average bear.

But I digress. It’s all this bamboo melting

My brain. Maybe I just need a nap.

Morning…

Is anybody there?

I hope you’re still interested in my tale.

It gets more exciting.

So, the keepers have been trying,

Trying for 10 years to mate us,

To get us excited about each other

More than bamboo, yams, honey…

It was hard. And I never was.

They made us watch moving images

Of Giant Pandas mating.

And they talked of hiding Viagra

In my yams. I’m only stating.

Problem is females ovulate once a year.

That’s two or three days in 365.

Not much time for me to take action.

I was usually asleep and missed it.

How was I to tell? As a 12-hour

Bamboo-munching folivore,

I just had no energy for funny stuff.

I’d leave my scent and claw the odd tree,

But most of the time she didn’t look at me.

Then suddenly everyone just disappeared,

No humans or little screaming ones.

Most of the keepers didn’t work that day

And someone mentioned fear of a v-i-r-u-s?

All I know is we were suddenly alone!

Let’s just say all we needed was some privacy,

No audience watching our delicate moments

(why watch me dumping 38 times daily?).

And romance blossomed…

For three minutes. That’s all it took.

I hope that was enough – after 10 years!

If this lockdown continues, who knows?

Maybe we’ll manage it twice!

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 7, 2020 

NaPoWriMo Day 5: The stone cow of Surley

I’m doing NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. Today is day 5. Today’s prompt was the hardest so far for me. I don’t like this one much, but here goes. It begins with the sculpture of a cow alone in a field. 

This is the prompt for the April 5 poem:  

It’s called the Twenty Little Poetry Projects and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course, if you can’t fit all 20 projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!

• Begin the poem with a metaphor.
• Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
• Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
• Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
• Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
• Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
• Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
• Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
• Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
• Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
• Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
• Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
• Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
• Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
• Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
• Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
• Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
• Use a phrase from a language other than English.
• Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
• Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

 I couldn’t fit them all in, so I’ve coloured blue the ones I think I managed. That was hard!

The stone cow of Surley

The lowing cow’s heart is stone, cutting and cold.

A scold snorting her approval for another’s ruin.

Her glass half-empty, she filled it with black bile,

Never to drink, but to watch it darken and bubble.

Three on a heath marvelled at her creations.

Over time, the glass cracked in dislike, piece by

Piece, from edge to edge, until it shattered,

Pouring its poison in currents to pool around her

Feet, and she carried it far, like a dog on a leash,

Seeking any excuse to tease, bitch and bewitch.

The stone cow had nothing else to do.

In her castle she gloried in being her own queen,

Her friends her subjects, eager not to be cast out.

I’ll call her Louise, but that isn’t her name,

I’ll say she lives in Surley, but therein I lie.

Does the mirror reflect the spite in her eye?

The postman rapped today with a letter overdue,

Addressed to a john and smothered in twirls of lilies,

Perfume sneaking over the edges, stems curling

Out and all around, offering a safe handshake.

But I have wandered off the point on to paper,

Where the written word is unclouded by prejudice.

I think it might just be a generational balls-up,

Suffering and loss. Flip them. Dump them. Fuck them.

We taste red, hear hot and cold touch, and feel a fox cry.

The song dances, curling like a cat in peaceful slumber.

Over the hills, the stone cow lows for an audience.

C’est la vie. Peut-être.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 5, 2020

Flash fiction (26): The chill

Written for JD Mader's 2minutesgo website. If you fancy writing or just reading, head over there this weekend.  This one took longer than 2 minutes! :) Cheers

The chill

Rain. Drained. Time chimed. It spoke, but it didn’t. It flew, but it stayed low. He felt it and yet it didn’t move him. He couldn’t say that it really did. Rain. The chill of it seeped into his skin, even though he watched it from a place of warmth. It spied into the insides he kept hidden, protected, even a mystery to himself, fearing he couldn’t feel anything.

Perhaps when he was a child. That might have been the last time. Him and Keith would take their bikes up the steepest hills, trudging up panting, so tired at the top that they’d collapse, leaning forwards on the handlebars desperate for a breath. But the view. The view was always worth it. Always worth the silent trudge. There was no breath to spare for speech. And then the reward. Over much too fast. Seconds really, if they counted it.

They didn’t. They never counted it once. The reward was enough. Whizzing down so fast that your throat ate your heart and you didn’t die. That adrenalin rush was something he’d never been able to capture since, although he’d damn well tried. Even the lines of Keith’s body, sighing slightly as it slept, didn’t rustle up the same rapture in him. His mother had been right all along. Make the best of your childhood because things are never the same. You grow up, and you have to grow up fast or you’ll get left behind.

And he always felt left behind. In his career, his painting, even his pace, which had shuffled down to a crawl. Even if he’d wanted to take his bike all the way up that grand old hill, he’d have collapsed halfway. And laughed, probably. Well, Keith would have laughed. He’d suck the whole seriousness out of it, spit it out without a toffee coating, and keep things as they really were, no embroidery, no exaggeration.

“Can’t you sleep?”

Ben twitched and leaned behind him. “No, I was thinking about bikes.”

“You don’t have a bike.”

“When we was boys. The Bridges Hill. Down by the school.”

It was Keith’s turn to laugh, pulling the covers as he turned over, wrapping himself up like a sausage. “You always beat me up that bloody hill.”

“I sure wouldn’t now. Huffing like an old man.”

“It’ll pass. It’s a big thing, surgery. You need to give yourself a break. You know that, don’t you? You’re not Superman.”

“But you are,” said Ben. “You always were.”

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 3, 2020

A Poem a Day (87): Blood Trial

Here’s a poem I wrote for JD Mader's 2minutesgo website. It’s a great place to go and write whatever is in your head, and read what others are writing in the group, and give/get feedback. It happens every weekend. Cheers.

Blood trial

Stone her.

Don’t bury the bones,

Leave them for the crows.

She said this,

But we don’t need to ask her.

She did this,

But we don’t need to ask her.

She thinks this,

But we don’t need to ask her.

She broke our rules,

Say the mob,

Prosecutor, judge and jury,

So we can break her.

We have the right,

And we don’t need a green light.

Trial by mob,

Make it look like a mugging.

Stone the leper.

Let’s televise,

Can we monetise it?

Don’t bury the bones,

Leave them for the crows.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, January 12, 2019

Is it about you?

Is it ever about you? Rarely is my answer.

I was chatting to a friend about writing today. She wants to do a creative writing course, but finds the idea of talking about ideas scary - and what if no one likes your idea or your writing?

I think that scares everyone. And it's even more scary when someone you know reads it... because you know them, they're reading your words and that's as embarrassing as walking the dog naked.

Is it embarrassing cos it's about you? No, that's not it. I write fiction. My latest project has a serial killer in it, so it's definitely not about me, however bad my day got! And even my poetry is fiction - abstracts, fictional characters and imagined situations. They're rarely about me.

So what is so embarrassing?

Because maybe it does make you feel stripped bare, pinned like a butterfly. But it shouldn't. Maybe it's self-criticism, lack of confidence or maybe just fear. But as my mum always told me, you can't achieve anything without trying. And with writing, someone somewhere will get what you're saying. And you just can't please everybody – ever.

I've done three creative writing courses, all different (two fiction, one poetry), and they were great. Inspiring, interesting, fun and supportive. You learn a lot and they get you writing. A great butt-kick for the humble procrastinator.

So go for it, I told my friend. Hopefully she will.


The creative writing courses I've done and recommend:
Writing for children – Writers & Artists
Poetry – Faber
Starting to write your novel (online) – Curtis Brown

A Poem a Day (68): Fifty-six

A flash poem written for JD Mader's 2minutes go writing exercise... It's every Friday, so if you fancy writing something - whatever you feel like - head over there, or just read the flash fiction and poetry.

There's a story behind this one. I started a poetry course yesterday as my writing needs a bum kick and I was chatting with two of the women in the class at the end. We challenged each other to write a poem for homework, giving each other a line. I was given the final line of this poem to use. So this is what I just came up with.

Fifty-six

The night sighs heavy when it stops to think,

The curve of the light a distant cousin,

The nail in the wall a reminder of hate;

It creaks,

This going forward, always coming back –

A tortured walk is this half-dazed oblivion,

Yet I seek it

Or it seeks me,

Day in, day out, week in, weak doubt.

I like to remind it not to be late,

Not to forget to close the door behind it,

And so it is,

This creeping remembrance lost

Of my selfish conscience,

Flapping like a dried-out fish…

Obsolete.

I like the sound of obsolete.

I can trick myself I’m nothing like,

Yet I can see,

I have eyes,

Two of them,

Though this vision of me blurs still –

A twitch at the sides of a smile says so,

This tortured style of mine.

But tell me this:

Did you think of me today or wonder

Who I indulged these languid hours with?

I was alone, but you won’t know this,

You never ask.

But you’re always here, waiting,

Sucking the bar dry until I reappear

To accompany you between the butts,

Breathing the smoky lungs we share,

Reminiscing, laughing, choking

On our fears, always bigger than us.

And so today I will retell a joke or two,

Watch your grin creep up into a drawn bow.

You know I value these simple hours,

You know I’ll always come back,

Dragging my half-spilled bloody baggage,

Bearing my very bones for observation,

Knowing you will never be my judge –

I came for a half and I got a hug.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, January, 12, 2018