A Poem a Day (509): A bird’s eye view

Written to a prompt from Writer’s Digest’s Robert Lee Brewer: write ‘a different way of seeing the world’ poem.
 
 
A bird’s eye view
 
The rainwater is too appealing
to resist – thirst’s relief,
a welcome bath.
 
A wild wind blows our feathers up
into peaked hats, mohicans
flicked, looking forwards.
 
On the ground a little bread,
flecks of sandwich-fillers,
the Holy Grail of peanut.
 
We take a route home over lush
gardens, hunting feeders,
a delightful second course.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 29, 2022
 
 
 
 

A Poem a Day (508): Orange on white

I didn’t stick with the NaPoWriMo prompt today. Here’s a poem about winter on this 23C day!

 
Orange on white
 
In the lost winter,
snow flecks blow free in the yard,
lift lightly, skimming.
 
Carrot-coated fox
creeps, paws trudging twisting lanes,
sniffs the ice-blue air.
 
Snow slides from branches,
intricate patterns of lace,
the cold pinches all.
 
Old fox pads lightly,
searches the spiky hedgerows
for dropped morsels.
 
Bins are easy prey,
these cottages a haven
in the white night.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 22, 2022

A Poem a Day (507): Minnie Mouse’s to-do list

 
NaPoWriMo 2022 was a fun month of writing, so for May I’m using the prompts from April 2021’s NaPoWriMo to write poems.

Day 8

Our (optional) prompt for the day is to write a poem in the form of a “to-do list.” The fun of this prompt is to make it the “to-do list” of an unusual person or character. For example, what’s on the Tooth Fairy’s to-do list? Or on the to-do list of Genghis Khan? Of a housefly? Your list can be a mix of extremely boring things and wild things. For example, maybe Santa Claus needs to order his elves to make 7 million animatronic Baby Yoda dolls, to have his hat dry-cleaned to get off all the soot it picked up last December, and to get his head electrician to change out the sparkplugs on Rudolph’s nose.
 
 
Minnie Mouse’s to-do list
 
For the party of the year
in the house of little Miss Mouse,
there was a lot of organising to do,
from the decorations to the invites
to the cleaning and the food,
the last chore being the most exciting.
The biggest expense was going to be
the cheese, lashings and lashings of it.
 
A big hunk of cheddar, rubbery Edam,
triangle of Brie, one Pecorino Romano,
a chunk of stinky-feet Gorgonzola,
little biddy Derby, rolling Camembert,
some lemony shavings of Mozzarella,
cue the Danish blue, bits of Parmesan,
a vibrant orange Double Gloucester,
fresh squidge of Cottage Cheese,

some crumbly Feta, firm Ricotta,
gooey Goats Cheese, sturdy Gouda,
a fancy Gruyere, and a few jugs of
sweet red wine to wash it all down.  
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 21, 2022

A Poem a Day (506): Waking the sky

 
NaPoWriMo 2022 was a fun month of writing, so for May I’m using the prompts from April 2021’s NaPoWriMo to write poems.
 
 
Day 8

I call this prompt “Return to Spoon River,” after Edgar Lee Masters’ eminently creepy 1915 book Spoon River Anthology. The book consists of well over 100 poetic monologues, each spoken by a person buried in the cemetery of the fictional town of Spoon River, Illinois. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in the form of a monologue delivered by someone who is dead. Not a famous person, necessarily – perhaps a remembered acquaintance from your childhood, like the gentleman who ran the shoeshine stand, or one of your grandmother’s bingo buddies. As with Masters’ poems, the monologue doesn’t have to be a recounting of the person’s whole life, but could be a fictional remembering of some important moment, or statement of purpose or philosophy. Be as dramatic as you like – Masters certainly didn’t shy away from high emotion in writing his poems.
 
 
Waking the sky

We all walk through the fire sometime,
when the days are too hazardous,
too long, too cruel, too jaded,
too something we can’t deal with,
but we all have our own small gathering
of friends and family, and pets,
an assembly of all we love,
whom we can refer to as home.
 
We’re not sure how long we have,
even the Tarot cards won’t tell us how,
and so we try to live well and positively,
sticking to our ethics and inner compass,
treating others as we’d be treated,
and making the most of a timeless day,
seeking out the good and lighthearted,
trying to avoid the grim and overdone.
 
And, so I lie here, staring up at the sky,
watching the birds flit to and fro,
remembering when I was just a small boy,
and the summers seemed endlessly fine,
filled with bike trips and conversation,
new adventures and places to discover,
until we were called in by our mothers
to wash our hands and eat our tea.
 
The sky is blue today, fresh after rain,
and I travelled long before sleeping here.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 16, 2022

Just published: new charity book of poetry and fiction in aid of Ukraine

I’m happy to announce the publication of this charity book of poetry and short stories to raise money for a Ukraine charity. I contributed two poems.

Stand Together: A Collection of Poems and Short Stories for Ukraine

A collection of poetry and short stories about war, warriors, hope and sunflowers.

Click here to buy

The writers: 

L. Butcher, Roman Nyle, Charles Yallowitz, Vickie Johnstone, Andrew P. Weston, Rebecca Miller, Michael H. Hanson, Charles Yallowitz, Victoria Zigler, Joe Bonadonna, Richard Groller, Rhavensfyre, Andrew P. Weston, Anthea Sharp, Marta Moran Bishop, Colene Allen, J.C. Fields, A.L. Butcher & Diana. L. Wicker, Inge - Lise Goss, Sean Poage, Rebecca Lacy.

A Poem a Day (505): White on blue & Snake

 
NaPoWriMo 2022 was a fun month of writing, so for May I’m using the prompts from April 2021’s NaPoWriMo to write poems.
 
Day 7
 
And now, for our prompt! There are many different poetic forms. Today, I’d like to challenge you to pick from two of them – the shadorma, and the Fib. The shadorma is a six-line, 26-syllable poem (or a stanza – you can write a poem that is made of multiple shadorma stanzas). The syllable count by line is 3/5/3/3/7/5. Rather poetically, the origin of the shadorma is mysterious. I’ve seen multiple online sources call it Spanish – but “shadorma” isn’t a Spanish word (Spanish doesn’t have “sh” as a letter pairing), and neither is “xadorma,” or “jadorma,” which would approximate “shadorma” in sound. But even if this form is simply the brainchild of an internet trickster who gave it an imaginary backstory, that’s no reason why you shouldn’t try your hand at it. Every form was made up by someone, sometime.
 
 
 
White on blue
 
Blue sea blows.
A white gull dips, sifts
ice water,
tripping surf,
lifts high on warm breeze to soar,
glides on the updraft.
 
 
Snake
 
Gilded snake
curls, smooths its slow way,
gold echo,
bends in bold,
glides its glittering hide out
through long olive grass.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 14, 2022

A Poem a Day (504): The summer is grey now strange evening

 
NaPoWriMo 2022 was a fun month of writing, so for May I’m using the prompts from April 2021’s NaPoWriMo to write poems.

Day 6
 
Finally, here’s our daily (optional) prompt. Our prompt yesterday asked you to take inspiration from another poem, and today’s continues in the same vein. This prompt, which comes from Holly Lyn Walrath, is pretty simple. Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you. Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line. Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely.
 
I’ve chosen the first line of the poem After a long dry spell, from The Half-Finished Heaven by Tomas Transtromer.

 
The summer is grey now strange evening
 
and daylight is a figment forgotten
as the land wrestles with the sky
for a spit of line so hard to define
we fail in dreaming of it. Distance
is a wild expanse of neverending time,
blown in on the tide, cast in and out,
an effervescent rush of hope. And now
we bend to the trees gaping at the wind,
rustling, whispering among the shadows,
making spectres thin, leaves whistling.
The air carries the subtle scent of green,
speckles of the early evening rain hang,
bubbles of light drawn in upon silence,
impenetrable, believing in the morrow.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 12, 2022
 
 

A Poem a Day (503): Film reel

NaPoWriMo 2022 was a fun month of writing, so for May I’m using the prompts from April 2021’s NaPoWriMo to write poems.
 
Day 5

And now for our prompt (optional, as always). I call this one “The Shapes a Bright Container Can Contain,” after this poem by Theodore Roethke, which I adored in high school – and can still recite!
This prompt challenges you to find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem. If I used Roethke’s poem as my model, for example, the first line would start with “I,” the second line with “W,” and the third line with “A.” And I would try to make all my lines neither super-short nor overlong, but have about ten syllables. I would also have my poem take the form of four, seven-line stanzas. I have found this prompt particularly inspiring when I use a base poem that mixes long and short lines, or stanzas of different lengths. 
 
 
The foundation poem is Ariel by Sylvia Plath, from her Collected Poems. This poem follows the initial letters, structure, syllables and word count.
 

Film reel

Seeking lost pleasures,
teased out of our spent time,
pursed be our lips, speechless.
 
Go find greatness,
happy as we sow,
pining for its might! ­– This fortune
 
slows to a film reel, bends to
time’s slight touch,
of being and living in light.
 
Now stolen,
burial brings
honour –
 
books and dreams are
shimmerings.
Stolen ideas
 
hail from somewhere –
thoughts flown;
fluid walks a life.
 
Weary
gods, they listen –
dark karma will guide you.
 
A moment stops,
frozen, an empty course of water.
The still pause
 
makes all things melt.
And time,
a simple thread.
 
This is the new,
sewn into the sun-struck morning,
into the blue,
 
Everyman waking, reliving it all.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 7, 2022

A Poem a Day (502): Misted

 
NaPoWriMo 2022 was a fun month of writing, so for May I’m using the prompts from April 2021’s NaPoWriMo to write poems. For this one, I took the image from May 4, but I’m unable to paste it here. 
 
Day 4
 
In honour of the always-becoming nature of poetry, I challenge you today to select a photograph from the perpetually disconcerting @SpaceLiminalBot, and write a poem inspired by one of these odd, in-transition spaces. Will you pick the empty mall food court? The vending machine near the back entrance to the high school gym? The swimming pool at what seems to be M.C. Escher’s alpine retreat? No matter what neglected or eerie space you choose, I hope its oddness tugs at the place in your mind and heart where poems are made.

 

Misted

Misted light,
a heart of deep blue.
Cars skate in white lace,
strewn across the ground
like rice, sinking in sound.
Windows stare out blankly,
silent and solemn from angular
walls, waiting for a semblance of
light. But there is just this half-glow,
a slight wink, this partial serenade
to the beckoning night. All things
must close. The firefly lights in the
rooms flicker off, one by one, until
only the blue survives.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 5, 2022

A Poem a Day (501): The four-pronged fork

 
NaPoWriMo 2022 was a fun month of writing, so for May I’m using the prompts from April 2021’s NaPoWriMo to write poems.
 
Day 2

And now, for today’s (optional) prompt. In the world of well-known poems, maybe there’s no gem quite so hoary as Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about your own road not taken – about a choice of yours that has “made all the difference,” and what might have happened had you made a different choice.
 

The four-pronged fork

 
It was a metal fork I picked up,
four-pronged, pointing in its steely way
on this dust-shevelled road.
A gust of rain seemed to choose,
but I was having none of it.
My own footprints veered to the left,
and they say right is always right,
but I chose to go straight ahead,
towards the rain-drenched horizon,
beneath the dripping sky,
sun-bleached and damp-warmed.
The blackbirds charmed me,
a flying long-tailed tit my guide,
and all was quiet on my way,
stepping from one zone to the next,
one time into another,
the past into the future stance.
And we are never ready for the move
until we can think ourselves in it.
The invisible gateway once opened,
what remained behind was left there,
gone now, a misted remembrance,
sealed inside a battered suitcase.
We see circles in the night sky,
of stars and moonlight curves,
and we know we’re on our way.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 3, 2022

A Poem a Day (500): Planet pop

 
NaPoWriMo 2022 was a fun month of writing, so for May I’m using the prompts from April 2021’s NaPoWriMo to write poems.
 
Day 1 

And without further ado, our daily prompt (optional, as always)! Sometimes, writing poetry is a matter of getting outside of your own head, and learning to see the world in a new way. To an extent, you have to “derange” yourself – make the world strange and see it as a stranger might. To help you do that, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by this animated version of “Seductive Fantasy” by Sun Ra and his Arkestra. If you don’t feel after watching it a little bit like the top of your head’s been taken off, and your thoughts given a good stir – well, maybe you are already living in a state of heightened poetic awareness!

 

Planet pop

 
Coloured waves of sound
punctuate, take us on a trip,
blowing faint, blowing loud,
sound under sound, a sonophonic
breath. Spiral echoes of the same
float in and out on rolling surf
of plenitude. The planets swirl,
alien faces peek from clouds of pink
neon flutters. Leafy long plants pop
and grow, in rhythm, to be sucked
back into ground. It’s a planet pop.
Red glow the fluorescent butterflies,
the Salvador Dali strokes of paint,
sliding and dripping picturesque.
The trumpet sounds its dreamscape,
outstretched hands hold life up.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 2, 2022
 
 

A Poem a Day (499): The hotel room

 
The hotel room
 
We wander through empty rooms,
stroll lit, indelible silences.
Catch the mood in your eyes,
steal sunlight with your arms.
 
One table, one chair, one bed.
There’s a paucity to the room,
laid out strictly for one person.
Even the rug recoils from two.
 
The moon moves slowly into orbit,
casting a pallor on the steel balcony
upon which we squeeze ourselves,
ready for the night and its alone
 
time, the sky a hazy dash of non-
colour. It opens still and cloudless.
We raise our glasses, clink,
taste Prosecco on our tongues
 
and repaint the day into a Pastoral.
In our imaginations we will fit.
The bed will widen, accommodate
our mutual sleeping patterns.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 2, 2022