NaPoWriMo Day 4: Paws

I’m doing NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. Today is actually day 4, but I discovered this late (story of my life), so I’m catching up this weekend!

This is the prompt for the April 4 poem: 

Write a poem based on an image from a dream. We don’t always remember our dreams, but images or ideas from them often stick with us for a very long time. 

 Paws

Her almond eyes meet mine,

Lighting up the dark,

Seeing into me, through me.

Long whiskers twitch,

Picking up strange incantations

Or movements on the wind.

I swear she smiles.

Do animals smile?

She comes to tell me I am blameless,

Her final goodbye was not my fault.

These are the thoughts I read,

Whether said or not. She nods.

Our connection is unbroken.

I miss her already, knowing it’s the last,

Her only visit. And so she turns,

Her message delivered in dreamtime.

And I wake.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 4, 2020

NaPoWriMo Day 3: Below sound

Hi, I’m doing NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. At the moment I’m catching up as it’s day 4. So I have to post 3 today. 

Day 3’s prompt was a challenging one:

Make a list of 10 words. For each word, use Rhymezone to identify 2-4 similar-sounding or rhyming words. Once you’ve assembled your complete list, work on writing a poem using your new word bank. You don’t have to use every word, but try to play as much with sound as possible, repeating sounds and echoing back to others using your rhyming and similar words.

It was an interesting challenge because the words shaped where the poem went. It definitely took longer than usual and it was fun.  

These are my 10 words and 2-4 rhyming words:

Lizard – gizzard, buzzard, differed

House – mouse, spouse, rouse

Red – dead, fed, fled

Stone – blown, grown, bone, sown

Free – bee, glee, see

Walking – rocking, clocking, blocking

Feet – beat, heat, neat, sheet

Fox – box, rocks, socks, shocks

Stalk – chalk, balk

Man – span, plan,

I used all of my words to make this poem:

Below sound

Fully fed, the red fox fled the yard of the house,

Away from the dark man with hands tightly clenched,

Where the yellow, sown field withered in the heat,

Its crop almost delivered; it differed to him not.

Below, the gizzard of a lizard rippled at the sight

Of a swooping buzzard, turned in mid-flight,

Plunging from the sky to lunge at a mouse startled,

His plan revealed, wingspan blocking the light of the sun.

The man’s face set to stone, grew old and weary,

And the beat of his feet, without socks, did not balk

From the damp grass, rough soil or sharp rock.

Grounded, roots spread, he sank in towards the dead.

Long buried, they almost whispered back to him.

A bee buzzed its glee to see myriad flowers blown,

Grown by the man’s spouse, speared on their stalks.

The man had carried her tight-wrapped in a neat sheet,

Clocking it all, walking his mind away from each shock.

Bones in a box. Chalk marked her grave. Now free.

She lay sleeping, almost rocking in her bed six feet down.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 4, 2020

NaPoWriMo Day 2: Black wings

Hi,  I’m following NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. At the moment I’m catching up as it’s day 4. So I have to post 3 today. 

This is the prompt for the April 2 poem: 

Our (optional) prompt for the asks you to write a poem about a specific place – a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances, the types of trees or flowers, the colour of the shirts on the people you remember there. Little details like this can really help the reader imagine not only the place, but its mood – and can take your poem to weird and wild places.

I started with the idea of my room in the morning, listening to the birds, but then I wandered off into something different.

Black wings 

Notes flying, morning breaks in cadences,
Sweeping, soft, uplifted, carried on breezes.
The red fox bobs his nose up midst long grasses,
Content to stay hidden as long as his rouse lasts.
Another hunts the smallest morsel while he sunbathes.
A blackbird winks, orange beak in stark contrast,
Adding his voice to the layers of birdsong lifting.
I pull back the net curtain to see the egg-yellow sun,
Feel its glance warming my skin, waking my eyes

From a sleep of years. Where we turn, it all turns;
Where we stop, everything falters to a standstill.
We are in-waiting, loitering between exit signs.
In corners we spy the ghosts of our distant past,
Dark and brooding, seeking to rob us of our gifts,
Rendering us incomplete, incapable of free action.
The blackbird reminds us otherwise, the Watcher,
Sending us more than his song in the emptiest times.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 4, 2020

NaPoWriMo Day 1: Numbers game

I'm following NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. 

Today is actually day 3, but I discovered this late (story of my life), so I'm catching up this weekend!

This is the prompt for the April 1 poem: 

Write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – one that typically isn’t done all that often, or only in specific circumstances. For example, bowling or shopping for socks or shoveling snow or teaching a child to tie its shoes. 

A numbers game

With a seven

The dice is thrown;

Eleven?

It’s cheating me

Six grins

Its lucky spots at me;

Nine

Tries to take what’s mine

Three slides

Things into the diagonal;

Four

Comes calling me square

Eight fights

Seeking out infinity;

Five

Gives me a helping hand

Two is restless

For its eternal soulmate;

Then one

For this is who I am.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 3, 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 (119): Off!

Well, it's been a while. Hello everyone in 2020! It's a strange year, to say the least, a difficult one, a tragic one, something we could never have imagined happening. One where I dread to read the news, but need to know what is going on in the world, while feeling powerless to help. Keep safe, everyone. I hope you and your loved ones are well and keeping safe. 

This is a poem I just wrote for JD Mader's 2minutesgo writing exercise on his blog, Unemployed Imagination. If you'd like to write something, or read and comment on other people's writing, head over there. He's open every weekend, or at least his website is! 

Off!

The world stopped, but I didn’t want to get off.

It stopped turning. But I still had things to say.

“Don’t loiter in the throughway.”

My fingers caught the rail tighter lest it disintegrate

To nought, like the globe around me and below

Where the cities stood silent, emitting solitude

While the cherry tree blossoms wilt to grey.

This window contracts, ever-decreasing my view

Of the things I used to do, the faces I used to

Know. Where are you? I spoke to you yesterday,

Yet I can’t see you in my memory of the crowd.

Are you down there, sitting mute behind your view,

Keeping your fortress closed, breathing stale air?

I remember moments sewn in a patterned quilt,

And you, you providing the voiceover to each

Scene. I recall some, but I know some are gone now.

“Don’t loiter in the throughway!”

It’s my turn. Someone is urging me, pressing soft,

Steadily insistent. I know I have to take the step,

This leap into the unknown, the gap between

Here and the below, embrace the nothingness.

I wonder where you all are, every one of you.

It’s been two weeks, but it seems so much more.

I feel time ticking, even though it stopped dead.

The conductor nods his head and I know now:

I have to get off.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, March 27, 2020

Smashwords' Authors Giving Back Sale: I have some books for free

Hi!

Hope everyone is bearing up well in these weird times and keeping safe. And I hope everyone's loved ones and friends are also okay.

Smashwords.com has a sale on at the moment called Authors Giving Back, so if you'd like something new to read, there are many books at discount prices or free.

You can find mine here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/vixie

The books I have for free are:

The Sea Inside

3 Heads & a Tail

Kiwi in Cat City

Kiwi's Christmas Tail

Day of the Living Pizza

Day of the Pesky Shadow

Kaleidoscope (poetry)

Travelling Light (poetry)

Mind-spinning Rainbows (poetry)

Life's Rhythms (haiku)

Enjoy!

Flash fiction (25): Harry

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

Harry

Harry never wanted to be normal, do the usual things, the average humdrum walking-through-life-not-seeing-it-really kind of normal. So he did everything in the book to prove he was otherwise. He grew his hair, got some tats, even a facial piercing or two.

And then he travelled. Everywhere. On a shoestring. And not the usual; the stuff that involved scaling mountains with one hand or hand-gliding in ill-advised weather, giving goofy looking pigeons a run for their money. And money was something he really didn’t have much of, or crave. He didn’t want the wife, Volvo and two-point-three kids, so he bought a guitar and played gigs for a bit, and took up painting houses. But then being skint got boring, so he got the only job that truly scared him: stuntman.

Ah, relationships. Well, he’d had more than his fair share of those. And fair they were, to be sure. Back in the day, he didn’t have to try too hard, there was always someone; always someone who took a shine to him, and whom he took one to back. It wasn’t that he wasn’t picky, he just loved women, and he fell in love or lust frequently. Of course, it wasn’t his fault that these things never worked out. He just never met the right woman who got him where you’re meant to be got. And when he’d finally given up on that, he met her.

Bang! Slap in the middle of town, outside the bookies, walking his so-not-normal dog. The one everyone crossed the road to avoid. His grin was like a graveyard of jagged canines, looking to rip your head off. But no, she bent down and stroked him, coo-ed and ahh-ed, and had the soppy old sod eating out of her hands in no time – both of them. One thing led to another and they married (not the dog). But even Martha couldn’t tame him. She came close, but that wandering spirit couldn’t be rested.

Thirty years of wedded bliss and then came ‘the affair’. It wasn’t even an affair to remember, but she couldn’t forget it. And he could never forget that she left. But he had the most wonderful daughter. She forgave him, still spoke to him. Harry read an article once, claiming people who could never settle, moved a lot, had the wanderlust, had many relationships, carried a special gene. He forgot the name, but some of the world’s greatest explorers had it. How he’d love to get tested for it.

It was just like him to be a stuntman, Martha always said, and “can’t you get a proper job?”. He’d never meant to make it a career. It just looked fun. A pitstop. A break in the road. But a whale of a time it was. He never meant to get a little bit famous, but that happened too. Some might say that’s almost normal, but he managed to put a crazy spin on it. Until the accident, the one that brought him here, to this bed in this ward, this piss-coloured place. Who chose this damn paint anyway?

“Grandad?”

Harry glanced down at the little face staring up at him through a shagpile mop of hair. “Did I drift off again, son?” he asked.

The boy nodded. “Were you daydreaming? I do that all the time.”

The old man laughed, knowing that dreaming was the start. “Yes. And I have some advice for you, son. Be normal!”

The boy screwed up his face.

“Be normal. Don’t stand out. It’s easier. No one will question anything you do. And everyone will understand you.”

The boy bit his tongue and shook his head. “But Mum will kill me!”

Harry turned to the bonnie, red-haired woman holding his hand on the other side of the bed, her eyes creased up in amusement. “He’s a chip off the old block, Dad. It’s too late now! Look at the example he’s had!”

“Well, I never approved of all your tattoos, Joy. Wait til you’re eighteen before you get one, son. These things stick with you for life.”

“Uh-mm, okay, granddad. Can I get a ring in my nose like you instead?”

 Copyright Vickie Johnstone, Friday, 13 December, 2019