My Inner Emily

Emily dickinson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Daily Prompt:  Unleash Your Inner Dickinson.  National Poetry Writing Month is nearly at an end. To celebrate it, try your hand at some verse.

Huh.  I thought I just did that.  And how come I didn’t know it was national poetry writing month?  Do you suppose I wasn’t informed on purpose?

No matter, another poem probably won’t kill us.  Well, me, anyway.  I don’t know about you.  I just hope poor Emily doesn’t roll over in her grave.  Or come back to haunt me.  Because I am about to update one of her poems.

A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!

Emily Dickinson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Emily Dickinson

A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!

Your prayers, oh Passer by!

From such a common ball as this

Might date a Victory!

From marshallings as simple

The flags of nations swang.

Steady—my soul: What issues

Upon thine arrow hang!

A Prompt!  Help! Help! Another Prompt!

by grandmalin

A prompt! OMG, another prompt!

Give me a break you guys.

Such a seemingly simple request

Might cause INSANITY!

You prompt and prompt and never stop

The stress is making me mad.

Hold on, my soul:  No worries

Just write something really bad.

The only thing I like better about Emily’s poem compared to mine is the use of the word “swang”.  That is a truly awesome word.

And this post, my friends, should prove once and for all that poetry writing and appreciation is really not my strong point.

elders (Photo credit: sbpoet)

 

Broken

Broken chair (Photo credit: Martin Bartosch)

See these beat-up pieces, this broken-down chair?

Bedraggled, battered, neglected, bare.

Like me it is wasted,  the worse for wear,

Hurt and defeated,  filled with despair.

We are worn out, broken, beyond repair.

 

 

 

 

The Trifecta Challenge this week is 33 words about anything you want.  Your piece must include at least one
hyphenated compound modifier.

Now see freaked-out me completing a first draft which ended up being exactly 33 words.  So it’s as is, with very little editing.  Why mess with a happy accident?  Next time I will try to be more cheery.

 

April Friday

In my mind, April is my brothers month, just like May is mine, and June and November belong to  my sisters.  He was born on the 19th, a Good Friday in 1946.  It’s been half a year already since he was ‘stolen’ from us, no longer a child of course, but still a child of the earth and the universe and lost to us much too soon.

So here’s a rather melancholy tune for our last April Friday.  Poetry set to music.  I guess I’m still in my saudade mood.  Bring on the rain.

A fairy offering wishes, illustration by John Bauer to Alfred Smedberg’s The seven wishes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Stolen Child

(Words by W.B.Yeats-Music by Loreena McKennitt)

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats
There we’ve hid our faery vats
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries

Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

 

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light
By far off furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
Whilst the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Dream Fairy (Photo credit: Alexandria LaNier)

Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

 

 

 

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams

The Visit (Loreena McKennitt album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

 

 

 

 

Away with us he’s going
The solemn-eyed
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

 

Smoke and Mirrors

The Enchanted Forest (Photo credit: isoLord)

 

This forest is enchanted with devilry and spells.

It pulls me in and holds me where black voodoo magic dwells.

Bewitched, afraid and powerless, lost and all alone

I cannot think what alchemy has turned my limbs to stone.

Cold and icy fingers are clutching at my heart

What wizard worked this sorcery, who changed the light to dark?

Some ancient incantation, some trickery, some scheme….

That’s all I need to free me from this nightmare of a dream.

The witching trance is much too strong, impossible to break.

Out of the mystic rising now the runes spell out my fate.

Why can’t I turn my eyes away and just refuse to look?

Why must I face this prophecy, the ending to my book?

The divination now reveals the truth it won’t conceal.

Life is an illusion.  None of this is real.

The Enchanted Forest (Photo credit: isoLord)

 

Trifecta Challenge Week Seventy Two:   using the 3rd definition of alchemy - an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting.

 

Bear Has A Bad Day

Trifextra challenge - We are giving you three words and asking that you add another 33 to them to make a complete 36-word response.  You may use the words in any order you choose. Our three words are

remember, rain, rebellion

 

Teddy bear (Photo credit: macieklew)

 

No toys at the table, remember?

Please put Bear away.

No baby, wait -

What are you doing?

Hey!  What’s this?

A three year olds fierce rebellion,

Flinging Bear out the patio door

Into the pouring rain.

<<<<<>>>>>

 

Under the Wire

The clock is ticking down on this weekends Trifecta challenge – exactly 33 words written in first person narrative.  Ha – how simple should this be, since I do it here every day.  It is forever and always, ad infinitum, all about me, me and me.  And then a bit more about me.  The hard part of course is saying something worth saying in just 33 words.  That’s probably why they call it a challenge.

Happy Pills (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I SO do not understand

All the unhappiness

In this crazy world. 

Honestly it confuses the hell right out of me! 

So, yeah, whatever.

Time to take my pill

And get a grip.

 

Trifecta! (Photo credit: OctopusHat)

 

All He Wanted

He could not abide the woman

And her squawking, huge and urgent need, for long.

Quietly he took off, left.

So what?

Inner blankness all he wanted.

Sensation of quiescence,

Blanket of relief.

Olive Kitteridge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Trifecta Challenge :  This weekend it’s another word game – seeing what can be done with a particular word bank.  From the 33rd page of
Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, scour the page, choose 33 words and reshape them into a piece of your own.

This is so much harder than it looks.  And that was a great book, by the way.  Happy Weekend.

 

Assoil Us From Rainforest Homebrew

Rainforest pool ferns. Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Daily Prompt   Free Association

Write down the first words that come to mind when we say . . .

. . . home.

. . . soil.

. . . rain.

Use those words in the title of your post.

I’m totally cheating on this one, because the first thing I thought of was ‘ what happens when it rains on insects who make their home in the soil?”  But I couldn’t really make myself care enough about that to take it any further. They get wet and wallow around in the mud for a while.  And that’s that.

My second choice could be beautiful words taken from a prayer.  Assoil is archaic and kind of biblical sounding, meaning to absolve or free.  And people pray for the rainforests while at the same time frowning on excessive alcohol consumption.  So who could not totally elaborate on all that?

 

Not the Lords Prayer

Our male person who dwells in Utopia

(What was your name again?)

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,

In paradise and our own backyards.

May we all have what we need to survive today,

May we all forgive and be forgiven

(especially for blasphemous nonsense which ultimately means no harm)

Please don’t mess with our minds making us do even stupider things than we can dream up on our own to do,

Assoil us from rainforest homebrew and similar evils,

Because we are all small parts of the big picture and the power and the glory

And would not like to be responsible for messing things up,

Now and forever and ever,

Amen.

(Ummm….no, I haven’t been into the wine yet today.  Why would you ask me that?)

 

The Little Man Who Wasn’t There

A comment by gooseyanne (The everyday ramblings of Anne and her Goose) sent me on a bit of a wild goose chase to find the poem she quoted, and I’m delighted to share it back in its entirety.  Is this not what friends and google are for – helping us to add to our personal massive piles of random information?  Well, yeah.  So here you go.

Main Street Antigonish, Nova Scotia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Antigonish, by Huges Mearns, 1899

(Inspired by reports of a ghost of a man roaming the stairs of a haunted house in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.)

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away

In 1939 the poem was adapted to a song called “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There” and recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra.  It was on the Hit Parade for 11 weeks.

This innocent little poem has appeared in variations in literature, film, comics, television and music for over a hundred years.  Amazing!  Imagine some small thing popping out of your head and becoming the stimulus for further creativity, awakening and motivating future generations!  Well, it’s a nice thought, anyway.  We all have our delusions of grandeur.

Hope you all have a happy Tuesday.  Stay away from those staircases.

 

Last Words

This is the you I will remember,

My other brother.

The you so lost to us

For such a long, long time.

Take with you all the love that never stopped

To the peaceful rest you searched for all your life.