This one is about the countryside. Just a meadow of wildflowers. Could be anywhere.
Lemon heads
tall and sticklike, full stretched.
Trees bulbous as round clouds
tend to roll across the landscape,
shadows cast long, distintegrating
in a dry run across the green tops.
They blow in the stopped air,
white pixel flower beads scattering.
Tall trees stride in the backdrop
where the skies roll hearkening,
bidding us step into the centre
of all things, buttercups sunning.
This one was written for JD Mader's 2minutesgo writing exercise on his website Unemployed Imagination. Head over there every weekend to write, read, or comment, or all of them! This one is about a tree. Cheers :)
Tree
It boughs
over peacefulness,
water
caught without a drift.
No ripples
disturb the surface,
only sound
without movement.
Songs of birds
spill over boughs
curling in
a half-circle arch;
they cast
reflections in the scope,
sketches of
wings and feathers.
This tree stretches
due north.
It moves
like a dancer, poised,
almost
skeletal black against light,
its fingers
twisting the chill air.
Beyond, the
white clouds pirouette,
drawing lines
before dusk blows in.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 28, 2021
I once read a news story about a guy who went around the world on his bike, from London and back. So this poem is inspired by that.
Journey’s end
unpunctured but exhausted
upon its final destination,
the round-trip end, a relative
safety. Chained to the metal.
It will take but a moment
to unlock it, remove a wheel,
leave a frame bereft of saddle,
the only reminder of itself
and the journey it has lapped,
from London to Europe to Asia,
always arriving in one piece.
This one is about a pier cutting across the water, disappearing into the distance. It could be anywhere.
The pier
carves the
water in a zigzag
crawl between
dusk’s brow.
It scutters
into the airwaves,
motionless with
nowhere to fall.
Small fences
mark its depth
in metre
dashes spread along,
small men
waiting in line
to hold up
the sky in thrall.
Clouds blow
left to nether right,
skirting the
silent obscured drift.
Nothing crawls
in the in between,
no sounds except
the cicada’s
notes and
the birds full singing
as the
water breathes against wood.
This one is about the conversations we’d like to have, but for some reason we can’t talk to the person we want to.
Long-distance
Travels long-distance from home,
wishing we could call,
just speak on the phone,
all the things left to say.
Scribbles on endless paper,
words calculated like math;
so many words, many strewn.
How we would like to speak.
Throw one to the wind,
listen for the sound it makes,
these vowels and consonants,
rolled out softly in breath.
This is but a whisper,
a small figment of the whole.
Lost sentences are what we have
when we wish to say it all.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 25, 2021
I wrote this for 2minutesgo on JD Mader’s Unemployed Imagination website. If you are in the mood to write or read other people’s flash fiction and poems, head over to his place. It’s open all weekend for your creative input. See you there! http://www.jdmader.com/2021/05/2-minutes-go_21.html
Inspired by a black-and-white photograph of a tram stopped
in a pool of water.
On reflection
On reflection,
carried in water,
rich vibrations awash
disperse, run curvacious
into tiny streamlets.
The 28 tram rides its
echoed cobbled street,
an upside trip
between two cities.
One man boards,
his other enters too,
with two tickets to go.
The rails slide out,
a sleek watery pass,
tall, tilted buildings
look up and down,
create optical illusions
journeying forward,
water sloshing wheels.
Lights spin a haze.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 23, 2021
Inspired by a black and white photograph of a dried landscape and cracked earth.
calls forth
for a rainstorm,
monoliths of
black night.
Cracked,
split, drip-dried,
this rind
sealing the land,
redrawing
lines for Hopscotch,
if there was
not this thirst.
for they
will not fall today.
This
poem was written from a black and white photo of a daisy in water.
Daisy upon water
A daisy, full flower, full head,
lifts itself above water’s edge,
posing
before its reflection,
beauty mirroring
itself.
Petals
unplucked, so white,
surround an egg-yolk core
of symmetrical
cones compact.
“She
loves me” it breathes to all.
It rests
in a kind of dream state,
a pale goddess
to the moon,
which waned
and passed tonight.
We study
her echo in water,
the way
she shifts in the light,
taking
her full space to count
all the
ways the stars sparkle
across her
face, fortune set.
Copyright
Vickie Johnstone, May 19, 2021
This one is about fireworks exploding into the sky.
Explosions of colour
We watch sound
nightly,
spilling colours
undrawn,
collecting in
spirals of chalk
strewn bleeding
over the city.
It drips, this blazing
hue,
sparkling
iridescent ever,
and we rush to
collect it.
This vastness
parts like the sea
to let us in a
little to see it
blaze and burn,
the excitement
of it rising in
colours unspoken,
an explosion of
sound and sight,
taking the
night by surprise,
firing streaks into
the yawning sky.
Copyright
Vickie Johnstone, May 19, 2021
the monthly exhibit
of womanhood,
limbs heavy like trees,
ovaries full yelling,
rock-hard like melons.
this pound in the back,
loins on fire.
our femininity pumping,
happily reminding us
of our fertility.
Chords
scurry, songs high,
casting lighthearted
raptures.
Sonnets for
the sky.
Twit and
woo join up
in
sensations bursting skies.
A tennis of
notes.
The sky
cracks open
in full colour,
notes ablaze
With full-throated
glee.
We listen
to songs
they send
us over rooftops,
nothing between
us.
A magpie
wakes us,
bursts a
repetitive cry
that we
take notice!
Turning
notes softly,
he calls
us, a lullaby
to send us
to sleep.
It stops
abruptly,
these dusky
songs of the birds.
The display
over.
Copyright
Vickie Johnstone, May 13, 2021
The birds
are going nuts tonight with their dusk singing so I scribbled these.
Birdsong drift
clatters
in the
hedgerows, fuelled perch high,
myriad chords
mix.
Sleek blackbirds
whistling,
a chorus
line of feathers,
wisps of songs
enchant.
Notes for
the dusk light.
Sinking sun
envelops the
horizon with
song.
We listen wrapt, birds
chattering on
the blown breeze.
They hasten
the night.
Notes circle around,
casting
light and sound, fresh food
for the
silent soul.
The whistling
time.
Tiny ruminations,
light
on the faintest breeze.
Copyright
Vickie Johnstone, May 12, 2021
Here's one about school, imagination, being a kid, talking science and fantasy, and mixing them up, and coming back down to Earth from childlike dreaming.
Cheese moons
You won't take your ticket,
but start small. Kid steps
way out on to a cheese moon,
leaps & bounds on the Milky Way,
night undisturbed, bright lights
bursting your mind's synapses,
telling you this is how it is,
this new reality born of old,
a whistle on a distant hum,
the bold holding pieces aloft,
looking like a science project,
but you'll walk out, hold steady,
circumnavigate that moon yourself,
make it your own. Feels like home.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 6, 2021
A mix of haiku today, from school days to the sky looking about to rain to football fields and flowers blowing in the wind to silence and colour, music and thoughts churning.
With this poem, I was thinking about the murals in The Mission area of New Orleans, which I saw while on holiday a few years ago. Many spoke about the displacement of people due to rising rents and life becoming less affordable. I wrote about it when I got back in a poem called Murals. So many people became homeless. And then I started thinking about gentrification and changing neighbourhoods, and just how expensive things are becoming, and how many people can't afford what they used to.
Gentrify and displace
This is the coming circle, time-in,
the balance, rebalanced, timed out;
wretched egg. Grey tenements pour
stern brickwork etched, lines of lives.
Words pounded out upon blank walls
call out the politicians who disregarded
while neighbourhoods got ejected,
words strewn on dollar bills blowing,
unspendable. Hoisted, they spin on air,
bought out, sold out, played out.
Where people can’t afford to spend,
we see exile. Homes perch empty,
remembering voices, bodies, love;
does anyone have a heart to say?
A blue teddybear sits on a throne
ungoldened as concrete seeps years
of solitude, full wrung out it seems.
Placards bellow of rising rents
and faces stare blankly in between.
We can ill afford this gentrification.
The launderette spun its last,
now sits a barber’s red velvet chair.
People lounge, shed their despair
as the man cuts hair, hoovers up.
Developers stride in, saunder out,
and clothes spill from windows,
the wind a giant washer/dryer,
a recycler of our former selves;
lives we can ill afford come winter
with its etched-on coldest days.
Words made of ice can only melt
with no cap on poverty’s misery.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 4, 2021
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