It’s Poetry Wednesday - prompts
Beth Kempton prompt - 10 mins, no revision.
Hello all,
Last month
gave us a series of prompts for #tinywinterpoems. A single word, 10 mins only, and definitely no revision. Oo, that’s hard. But, it made me stop and think and go more slowly, hard to do when you are under a short time limit, and I ran out of time on Winter. After posted his poemsI was inspired to do the same. So this week I’m posting 3 of these poems (cos I’ve only done 3 so far basically). Winter, Whisper, and Shoreline.Winter
It’s cold, and dark, and it smells like freezing metal.
The damp pervades and brings its own tang on the tongue.
Feet crunch on hardened frost, shattering ice crystals reaching skyward.
Fingers pink and grow numb, stuffed deep into pockets.
Dragons breath hangs in the air with every exhalation.
Stamping feet in thick boots ring out in the suffocating quiet.
Time is slow, thick, languid; waiting, slowly waiting.
Light edges warmly up the street, rumbling nearer until
It stops and the doors open, warmth tumbling out,
I take my seat with a brief nod. Relaxing perceptively
As I unwrap the scarf, pull off the gloves and remove my hat.
“City centre please.” A small yellow ticket proffered and taken.
Street lamps flicker by and the day starts.
Given the chance I would revise this quite a bit. I knew the image I had in my head and it’s not quite there yet. I’ve used the word ‘feet’ twice in short succession and I would change that. And the last line was very rushed. This was written this morning just after breakfast cos I needed a third poem.
Next.
Whisper
Whisper my name, my love
Let it ease from your lips
With unbridled desire
Let it linger in your heart
Until your blood congeals
Let it lie in your chest
Until all breathe is gone
Let live in your brain
Until all thoughts are of I
Let it consume you
Until we are as one in mind
As one in body,
As one in soul.
Whisper my name, my love
And I will whisper yours.
I appear to have lost some punctuation here. If I could I’d revise that. And as a non religious person I always feel a bit odd about mentioning souls, so I would possibly remove that, and get rid of the cliches. I don’t really like the soppy stuff, I much prefer the anatomical detail instead.
Next.
Shoreline
Frothing bladderwrack oozes along the wet sucking-sand edge,
Carelessly dropping sodden fronds on broken shells.
Scuttling crabs seek safety in the low tide foam.
Salt spray wind-whipped skyward scattering tastes to chilled skin.
Bleakness encountered, gathered, cherished
on that long winter shore.
This was the first one I attempted. What I am finding with one word prompts is that I find it difficult to take them anything other than literally. Give me the word ‘whisper’ and I want to write about whispering, but I also don’t. I want to find a way to twist it and find something different and it’s been humbling to see others do that with seemingly relative ease. I blame the autism and black and white thinking. Thinking outside the box is occasionally hard, and often also I find it incredibly difficult to think inside the box. Go figure. Single word prompts seem to be more inside the box prompts that I want to make outside. I’m trying to write something for
at the moment and am struggling with this very same thing. Go take a look if you are in any way neurodivergent and fancy entering a competition. The word is ‘weave’ to do with inter connectivity, and not writing about dusty in dark Yorkshire mills in the 18th century, with child labour is difficult for me, cos I have that image we were taught at school in my head.
Till next Wednesday.
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