I can’t face myself in the mirror anymore, bloodshot eyes from too much coffee, and the twitch, the nervous tic – it’s too much – it scares me almost as much as sleep, as you…. I haven’t slept in days, well, I have tried not to, even though my body is screaming out for rest and relief, I dare not go there. I fall anyway, fitfully dozing, into the waiting nightmare and come to with a start mere moments later – for you are always there waiting for me, remorseless, relentless, implacable hunting me down, chasing me ceaselessly away from the light, away from reality, your mantra always ringing in my ears “I am the creature who smells your darkest thoughts”. Is there no help for me?
“We’ve got you now.” I hear a voice say far away. ”Nurse, start him on Olanzapine 2.5 milligram’s…”
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Prosery invites us to write Of Jaguars and the Night, prose—fiction or nonfiction— up to 144 words, not including the title and incorporating a line from “Jaguar Song” by Artur Sze.
Ask a baker for a dozen rolls and he may give you out of the kindness of his heart thirteen a baker’s dozen so with the Poets Pub you go there not merely to read and listen to poems but for that bit extra…
Artwork in collaboration with Midjourney and unknown artists…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Mish in OpenLinkNight, offers us the chance to post a poem of our choice but it is also the 15th Anniversary of the pub opening its virtual doors to poets from all over the world and so I have decided to repost this poem, my 11th on the site, from back in 2023 since the pub was the subject of this poem…
I thought myself chosen as the moon kept pace with our car speeding home through the night my sister’s squabbling before falling asleep I told no one of how the moon was watching me occasionally, hiding behind clouds but always reappearing the face of the man in the moon communing with me
By teenage years I knew the truth the moon was, well, just a moon a celestial body orbiting the Earth sloshing its waters around to create the tides and allegedly influencing lunatics and mayhem in the general population
If a god had made the world then what a trickster to make the circumference of the Moon, the same as the Sun seen from Earth giving rise to panic-inducing eclipses when peoples as primitive as my younger self felt their personal connection to the god’s of the heavens imperilled
Eventually, I owned a telescope and gazed at the moon afresh as it moved slowly across my field of view, its details craters and “seas” in sharp relief and at the outside of the sphere the crater walls visible as a ragged edge and I saw with newfound clarity that we live on a planet with a companion moon in the vast space between the stars and I was once more in awe…
1.- The slow-growing Allium flower has now reached it’s final size and fully coloured up…
2.- Talking of slow-growing plants that require patience – we have had this Yucca? for at least 15 years and this is the first time it has flowered – clearly worth waiting for…
When is a weed not a weed?
3.- We live on a backstreet and a bloke from the council comes around with a weed killer spray at least once a year, but this is not really enough to keep the weeds at bay and perhaps also, with this year’s weather, the weeds have flourished but some of them are too pretty to be considered weeds and so the answer to the riddle is “When they are garden escapes!”
This one I think is Lavateria
No idea what this one is but I award it “Weed of the Week!”
This one is surely a garden escape – some kind of Campanula?
4.- This weed may have struck terror into the hearts of those of you who garden, even in a photograph, or brought on apoplexy, and you may feel that it is inappropriate to allow it anywhere near a gratitude, but i have a sneaking admiration for Equisetum, or Mare’s Tail since in the Carboniferous period, it grew to the size and form of rainforest trees and composes much of the coal that formed then…
5.- This plant is growing in a garden, indeed has been deliberately planted by a neighbour, but it grows wild – hence a weed and so is the opposite of a garden escape lol…
I think it is a Mullein if not a Great Mullein?
6.- Grateful for Municipal plantings…
Who doesn’t like Lavender…
7.- This butterfly was, I’m sure, grateful for this (weed) Thistle, of some kind…
Not bad for a phone camera…
8.- I awoke to the rising sun reflecting in a tiny beam from the neighbouring houses and striking the net curtains in my bedroom, which have a rather nice pattern of birds, leaves and bird-cages and the sunlight has melded the curtains with the garden plants seen beyond…
9.- My grandson and his girlfriend have just moved into their own flat in London, he is a Doctor and she is P.A. to Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) so they have been able to afford somewhere in London which is quite a feat in this day and age. They have long desired a large painting of mine of a box of fish in a shop doorway in Naxos and so I have given it to them as a house-warming present. it leaves a large hole in the painting array in my bedroom but I’m sure I will fill it… I used to paint so infrequently (still do really) that I hung onto paintings as if to remind me that I still could, but I am learning to let go now…
10.- The Poetry Postcard Festival has begun and somehow, I hav been put on TWO lists and I can hardly withdraw from one so I now have 62 cards and poems to send before the end of August. Good job I have picked a simpler theme of printed cards this year…
Another Cyanotype print – this one near Kettlewell nearby in the Yorkshire Dales. The effect is rather as if the photograph is taken in moonlight…
A random music like which popped up on my Spotify playlist and which I am grateful to a friend for introducing me to…
Have a great week y’all – hope it is neither too hot, too wet or too windy where you are…
I would love to have a muse, I think faced with a blank page or a knotty prompt she would be there in a blink with ideas and inspiration chewing the cud, I imagine her gifts to me quite gratis she would require no acknowledgement of our collaboration a relationship too good to be true
Why are muses generally “she” or is it in opposition to the poet’s gender – opposites attract and all that can I pay to go on a course to get my gal is there an Agency for muses that pairs you up like speed dating could AI write me the perfect letter of application – guaranteed to find the perfect match a muse for life – no shallow fling here today abandoned to blank page tomorrow
Instead, if I choose to accept this prompt or if I wake with an itch that only the laying down of poetry can sooth I face each piece of poesie on my own, flying solo never knowing where the words will take me on today’s adventure but within a moment the idea arrives the point of departure then buckle up for the ride here goes blue sky thinking…
If only I had been born Catholic a Saint for every occasion Saint Anthony would have been on speed-dial since I was always losing things I was well known for it—that and forgetting what I was going to the shop for but now I have acquired the habit of carrying a little black notebook sadly not for the phone numbers of paramours but that I might return from the shops with what I went for, amongst other things and when, as a vicarious observer of the sainted folks, I heard of Saint Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes I had a sneaking affection for him I bet he would know how to help a serial forgetter of shopping.
At the eleventh hour we stop for tea biscuits – bourbons, custard creams and digestives birthday cakes for birthday boys and girls we see abstemious or decadent their choice lives or dies, pointer to their personality but cake is cake, no judgement do we give anything that elevates the office day is most welcome so we always like to say a merry office band forged in this routine so that whatever friction there has been dissolves in tea, lasting discord seldom seen…
Is poetry a written form or is it meant to be read aloud if only by the voice in your head Concrete poems would convey nothing of their shape by recitation whilst Limericks demand reading aloud their ribald rhymes no hesitation and if as poet you hope for someone else to do the honours consider giving a little guidance in the matter of delivery a comma gives the slightest pause especially midline for line breaks require not the little tadpole or even a period’s emphatic end I like a space hyphen space to indicate a slightly Longer pause or see line three for a positive gap a dramatic pause a pause for effect
In Ulysses James Joyce gives us a manifesto for stream of consciousness but Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway reads so much easier the stream guided with a modicum of punctuation
Unlike composers of music we poets are not tyrants issuing cryptic instructions in superscript for volume and speed forte and piano andante and lente leaving limited room for conductors’ interpretation we poets trust our readers to read and rehearse to infuse the best intonation
The semicolon has no place in poetry or fiction that tadpole crowned with a dot and do all questions require a question mark I’ll let you be the judge
And so to round off poems stories and comments my addiction is to the ellipsis whose merits I have debated with tonight’s muse and I think she is persuaded that it means so much more than duh duh duh for me the ellipsis leaves a little open forgoes finality invites contemplation if not response and so I give you an imaginary ellipsis
I sometimes wonder if the internet was made for people to share their 101’s with others first came porn, stimulating the medium just as it had with home cine film then the cat lovers started sharing cats doing the strangest things long before AI allowed you to craft such behaviours to order
Companies got in on the act and no firm was complete without its website schilling its wares in better or worse fashion after all, you get what you pay for with advertising and websites
Steadily, though, in the background the democracy of individuals shared their passions in ever more sophisticated 101’s. How to make kombucha, kimchi, and sauerkraut How to do Tunisian Crochet and Why You Should 4 Ingredient Low-Carb Bread seedy crackers, cottage-cheese cheesecake recipes from every culinary tradition and country liberally seasoned with adverts As 101’ers try to monetize their craft
But where is Break-up 101: 50 Ways To Tell If Your Relationship Is On the Point of Collapse – is this too negative for jaunty bloggers will it fail to garner followers and accrue comments old-timey newspapers and women’s mags had Agony Aunts who responded to readers’ letters “Dear Joyce how will I know If he loves me so…?” And songs dispense wisdom “There must be 50 ways to leave your lover” “Should I stay or should I go now If I go there will be trouble And if I stay it will be double”
Did the meme of inevitable collapse fail to make the grade on the World Wide Web or am I just stuck in the wrong silos…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, paeansunplugged in OpenLinkNight, Uncategorized, invites us to submit a poem of our choice… I wrote this in my writing group in the shadow of “My Mother’s Love” by James Allen Hall to the prompt, “Write about a time when collapse was inevitable…”
Something old, something new Something borrowed, something blue And a sixpence in her shoe.
Something blue blue notes? Blue Moon full twice in a month Singing the Blues but not today – getting married in the morning! this morning no more Harvest Moon fear and fumbling stripping off something borrowed – for the hope of fertility Making Whoopee though we know how that ended up will you still love me When I’m Sixty-four? – there may be trouble ahead Stormy Weather Life is an ocean Love is a boat put a sixpence in my shoe here goes nothing…
