a poem for lippy

 

a mood is lippy on a cup of something crucial

a person’s choice of lip shows social preference

hear your red and you’re redolent with riches

touch your pink and you’re prior to other pinches

taste your lip and you’ll experience that fully

see your beaut and you’ll believe you are lovely

smell your grey and you’re grazing something truthful

listen to shade: you’ll touch your wounded core place

Poem for Day 5 of NaPoWriMo 2020: partly achieved

a poem for uplifting things

 

Just when I’m about to give up on a creative life,

things from nature remind me of who I am and what I’m here to do…

 

The pale, pert optimism of spring daffodils

that always come up, no matter what, each spring.

 

The rustle of breeze against branch, a shiver of nature

that brings goosebumps when I’m aligned with my truth.

 

And a sudden, surprising deer, stopping in its path to pause and stare:

An emblem of creative spirit come to visit.

 

NaPoWriMo 2019 Day 9: write a list of things

if I were a cloud…

If I were a cloud I would love all my shapes,

shifting and wisping and forming with joy.

 

If I loved all my shapes I would welcome all change

and flow in harmony with the sky and the stars.

 

If I welcomed all change I’d feel freer to fly,

to carry aloft my dreams and ideas.

 

If I felt freer to fly I would grow my wings wide

and glide through the arc of a rainbow.

 

 

NaPoWriMo 2019 Day 6: Write a poem that emphasises the power of “if,” of the woulds and coulds and shoulds of the world.

a mind-reading villanelle

Second-guessing makes me lose my own mind.

Yet I spend my life seeking approval from outside.

Pleasing others is a fault in my design.

 

I’ve begun projects then ended up frozen,

unable to complete an abandoned idea.

Second-guessing makes me lose my own mind.

 

Reading minds is a skill I think I’ve mastered

but it leaves my creative output empty.

Pleasing others is a fault in my design.

 

I’d love to roam free in the land of imagination

freeing my thoughts to dance on the page.

But second-guessing makes me lose my own mind.

 

I can’t take the critic, it pierces and bleeds

my fragile self to the point I submit.

Pleasing others is a fault in my design.

 

I’ve spent my life waiting for the outside judge

to give a thumbs-up to my latest fudge.

Second guessing makes me lose my own mind.

Pleasing others is a fault in my design.

 

NaPoWriMo 2019 Day 5: write a poem in the form of a villanelle

the secret of night blossom…?

What message for me in this fleeting fragment of spring?

Street illuminations shift the softness of blossom

to the moodiness of night.

The pink-white petals cluster in midnight suspense

like candy floss clumps skewered through the dark.

I twizzle my blinds,

the streetlight dazzles my walls with slats

and what do I sense?

A springtime promise, all hopeful and pert,

an epitome of creative grace?

Or a reminder of potential soon to be lost,

a petal carpet of regret to embrace?

 

 

NaPoWrimo2019 Day 2: Resisting closure by ending on a question

NaPoWriMo 2018 day 26: Senses of Spring

 

Come see with me, as the spring light fades,

a delicate pale dusk that hints at May,

a gentle hue that shimmers through

the retreating winter mists.

 

Come hear with me, as the birds make nests,

a caw and cackle from beaks unseen,

above me the drone of planes in flight,

beside me the sounds of nature stirring.

 

Come smell with me, as mowers emerge

from musty mould of damp old sheds,

to give a lawn its first shear of the year,

the encouraging scent of freshly chopped grass.

 

Come feel with me, the patio touch

of a lilac cushion, smooth bumps of rattan,

a still cool breeze upon the skin,

as fingers graze the pot-plant petals.

 

Come taste with me, this springtime zest,

let ice-chilled soda sparkle your throat,

the tang of past no longer bitter,

now savour feeling alive.

 

NaPoWriMo 2018 day 18: the wind on a not so brilliant day

I tried to tend it, but nature overwhelmed my efforts

What’s the point of even trying

with all that withering around me.

Yes, take the leaves and petals, leave the ground free and clean

as I want to face life, not death.

All the flowers are gone, and I want them back

No, you can’t take their smell away from me

and I’m not sure about your odour of jasmine.

If it’s meant to be the call of my soul

then I’ll wait for the wind to blow it in.

 

This is an upside-down take on original poem The Wind, One Brilliant Day, by Antonio Machado

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

‘In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odor of your roses.’

‘I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.’

‘Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.’

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
‘What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?’