Day 8
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intermission, a drip into
space,
this silver gasp of webbing,
light as air, heavy as
dew,
snaps its effervescence.
the Cruel Sea’s Pink
Lady opens,
its core burrowed into. Hidden
heart
exposed, its juices ooze.
Inside, out,
slithers an arching beetle,
black.
Day 7
Prompt: write a poem
titled Wish You Were Here, which takes its inspiration from the idea of
a postcard. Consistent with the abbreviated format of a postcard, your poem
should be short, and play with the idea of travel, distance, or sightseeing.
Wish you were here
A red sky at night,
they say it’s shepherds’
delight,
this deep bleed into
the black,
a bloody tide washing
canvas,
dust trapped in the
atmosphere.
It beckons a fair-weather
day.
We drive the straight-line
split
pounding this flat
earth in two,
grassy mounds of lazy
ground rising
into the tender bosom
of a mother.
We listen to her soft
heartbeat,
the thinking hum of the
engine.
Ahead rear the barren
peaks of Mars,
a craggy pink soaring
barricade,
and we enter the deep-set
gulch
into the unknown, the
untouched,
or so I imagine, that
is only for us,
this forever land we expect
to find.
Our outgrown homes lay
far behind,
the old lives, the
traps we set ourselves,
the crazy rules we
could never follow.
We ride high on our
wanderlust
in the knowledge we don’t
know where
we are heading or where
we will stop.
There’s a postcard in
my pocket,
waiting. Not knowing
what to write
as a goodbye, I wrote
nothing, but it burns.
I’ve rewritten it in my
head over and over
a time, but just four
words ring true:
wish you were here.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 7, 2024
NaPoWriMo Day 6
“I resent having to read
20 pages of something that even you didn’t find interesting,”
he wrote.
The words sat there and shouted.
First year of uni, first piece of homework.
I can’t remember what
grade he gave. There was a hell of a lot of red.
I was staggered. What could
he mean?
To write 20 whole pages
on one thing, you had to find it interesting,
and that didn’t include
the myriad ‘boring’ bits I chopped out,
I was trying to write my
response to a Shakespeare play,
explain how it made me
feel (I can’t remember now which one,
but I went on to read every
single one, the sonnets too),
but they wanted you to
regurgitate other people’s views.
So maybe we weren’t really
supposed to have our own,
or at least you had to
back it up with the accepted thought.
We just needed to hoover
up what had been before
AND NOT WRITE 20 PAGES…
maybe just stick to one,
which someone ‘big’ had already said.
and your take on a piece
of writing was valued and cheered.
It was something I heard
said many a time, so it wasn’t just me.
We all had our shy dreams,
and somehow they got battered,
maybe a little, maybe a
lot – it depended who you asked.
I guess we wanted some
kind of 60s-style literary commune,
where we sat around
peering at the stars, relating stories,
getting drunk on cider
(well, I was teetotal). You get my drift.
Perhaps he missed the
croissants.
The room was very small.
Lots of brown. Lots of wood.
I guess the writing was
on the wall: you can’t win them all.
Maybe he was trying to
say, ‘you’ll never be accepted’,
‘you’ll never be a real
writer’, ‘you just don’t have it’,
whatever ‘it’ is. I don’t
know.
I’m still hunting for the
rainbow.
We were all expecting
things: to feel inspired, supported,
feel a connection with all
these writers we admired, all these pages.
We were faced with a
mountain. An obstacle course of deadlines.
Go to sleep and a breeze
of papers chased you down the street!
“A proper reading is to
read a book three times.” When?
I kinda needed a hologram,
being a person who loved to sleep.
Yet somehow, we did it.
We found a way. And sailed on through.
this freedom, the learning
anew about every single thing,
the conversations, the
people, so so many people,
more than I’d ever met in
my life. My little book opened.
NaPoWriMo Day 5
Prompt: start by taking a look at Alicia Ostriker’s poem, The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog. Now try your hand at writing your own poem about how a pair or trio of very different things would perceive of a blessing or, alternatively, how these very different things would think of something else (luck, grief, happiness, etc). www.napowrimo.net
the plucking of a four-leaf clover.
You button it in a pocket,
a ticket for you to travel light,
transported by fevered wanderlust
in the belief it guards you like a sword,
or press it between the pages of a book,
nightly read by the invisible hand
of providence, tucking it in
for the longest night.
a hard, metal version of U,
nailed to the wood of the front door
to sprinkle hope on the heads of visitors,
careful lest a bad day sees it swing down.
You tie flowers, a pink ribbon all around
to jazz it up, soften its heavy gravity,
yet it is so bold, steely and strong
that it will always see you through
to the bitter end.
a piece of silver to grace your hand.
Feel its weight, make a pact with it,
wander into the sunstrip meadow it depicts
with green shamrock, thistle and rose,
and read the message it endows:
the Defender of the Faith.
So even when the black nimbus brew
and the fiercest torrent gasps,
you can still walk the line that’s true.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 5, 2024
NaPoWriMo Day 4
www.napowrimo.net
you may hear a distant song, imagine its fine origin,
in the gleam of the moonlight lead a merry dance,
chance upon the tide turning out, over and about,
put one ear to a conch shell to find the source of it,
and look to the horizon for the sacred sirens of the sea.
their sonar waves misdirected by the endless chitter-chatter
of the singing fish bathing in glorious bioluminescence.
It may be a song for supper or just idle merry-making,
or describing the quickest route to the next coral reef,
but visitors come on back in their droves just to listen.
the fair moon’s ardent beams emit an enticing, seductive lure,
love letters on an invisible chain when the night is so full-calm.
You’ll hear a chocolate fish make a twilight call, the echo of
a firecracker, deep within, so far down it spills like tinsel trembling,
while soft & light, sweet & tinkling, erupts the song of the scaleless
fish.
NaPoWriMo Day 3
The prompt: we’d like to challenge you to write a surreal prose poem. www.napowrimo.net
Night shift
In a breath of night, the delicate marigold crumbles into starlight, reborn in the webbing, the ice caught in a glance of the echo of the being at the end of the world. He strides in sentience, his night shift, the distant roots of the underworld beneath his feet shaken, turned, upended, the sand sinking, seeking an escape.
A shadow strikes the wall and we are still, our breath suspended
in our mouths, tasting dust. In front of our faces, the wisp of curtain
flickers. We stay silent. So loud it needs to be pierced. My toes are blocks of
ice. I am chill. My bones ache in the draft evicted from the struck open
window.
But here, in this space, he walks. Like a tide opening the
shadows, the despair, the darkness of his being seeping into all the myriad cracks
and spaces, seeking to prise them open and bleed inside.
We are as we were, still as the wall. In a second the one true
candle will flicker out and we will be trapped, like spiders, never to be seen
again.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 3, 2024
NaPoWriMo Day 2
The prompt: write a platonic love poem. In other words, a poem not about a
romantic partner, but some other kind of love – your love for your sister, or a
friend, or even your love for a really good Chicago deep dish pizza. The poem
should be written directly to the object of your affections (like a letter is
written to “you”) and should describe at least three memories of you engaging
with that person/thing.
www.napowrimo.net
the power in your strength,
faint accent, chilled space,
your armour like an embrace.
by the rain piercing the sky, and you,
you tip your hands up to catch it all,
let it trickle soundless to the earth.
snaking. I listen to the sap bubble within,
my face etched by the rough of your bark,
no bite, just this subtle scent of green.
these branches curving around me,
a warmth, a silent understanding,
an incoming, this return to nature’s being.
For April, I'm doing NaPoWriMo with Napowrimo.net.
Day 1
as to lose its shape, the echo inside,
this wise roundness, the eternal line
of it, a rushing sound, so precious,
of the life-giving sap that flows, vibrating,
carrying every word, the language of
the flickering fae between the branches
of the glorious, high-stretching trees.
All around, the forest glows verdant,
green moss transporting, communicating.
the sights, the sounds, the subtle waves
of the lush leaves warming on the breeze.
Dame Washalot bustles to her window.
A scream, and the people below sidestep fast
to avoid the slush, the flush, the bubbly
flood of dirty dishwater cascading down.
The red squirrel halts, flicks his bushy tail,
stares up, tiny black eyes on full alert,
tufted ears pricked, paws up, freeze-frame.
all scabby knees, jagged elbows, unkempt hair,
patched clothes; eyes not long devoid of sleep.
The notes of their recognisable jabber float,
carried up on the back of the circling wind.
It’s time to climb, so up they go, branch
by sturdy branch, steady and true, each one
wondering which land they’ll find today
right at the very top. Those turning worlds,
alternating, vibrating to a sudden halt.
as he watches them make their way.
He knows it’s the World of Topsy Turvey
that waits and the secret is pressing,
but he’ll keep it. Red squirrel bounds up
to sit beside him. Silky waves her dusky wand,
her laughter sparkling like water gushing,
a waterfall of stars dancing round her skirt.
Moonface takes her hand and they rise to greet
the three explorers expectant of magic.
I just watched a cool film, kinda romantic, set in Ireland, drinking a few glasses of Spanish red wine. Before the film finished, I started thinking about light, and all these different variations of light, and then I opened my laptop and wrote this. It was 12.51 am, which is a bit late to write a poem, but I put on some of my favourite music by one of my favourite bands, My Sleeping Karma, and I felt inspired, and I wrote this, clicked off at 1.02 am and posted it. It is what you make of it. I hope you have a gorgeous Easter. Stay in the light.
The
seeker
this clear,
white light,
a distillation,
recognition.
We look
straight through,
reconcile
who we are, this happening,
this
circle round, this halo, this…
this fleck
of bluest blue,
this hollow
tide full-turning wide,
this pure
incandescent true.
of pure white
light.
this left
of being,
this turning
over of becoming,
inside
out to inside in.
an even
through,
this being
true
when even
bereft of light.
this being
as we were meant to be.
this neverending
rhythm,
this truth,
this being,
this art,
this
light.
The room
with a view
a single
gust of stalest air,
unencumbered
presences.
upturned
book, spine rigid,
black
pen devoid of ink.
liquid seeps
in a tie-dye ring,
teaspoon
perched wounded.
sucked
out by the wind,
lace nets
blown in rhythm.
read once
and abandoned.
On the
pillow a white, white rose.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, March 4 (draft 1), March 8 (draft 2) 2024
Poetry, poem, apoemaday
