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 Poems for years 4, 5 and 6 of the Promptly Poetry Challenge. |
| A year's worth of poems, every week for 52 weeks, spanning 2023 and 2024, plus the years following, from August 2024 to August 2025, 2025 to 2026 (provided I live that long, of course). |
 Bedtime Blues A nursery rhyme’s a dangerous place to be there’s no comfort in the message to me the hunter may help out Red Riding Hood that hardly does poor Grandma any good. Hansel and Gretel may enjoy gingerbread yet they ruin the witch’s wee homestead though the witch’s intent may be too bad the kids responses are murderous a tad. The three piggies are variously lazy and their architectural ideas quite hazy but the wolf is doing only what wolves do and it’s true that pork makes a fine stew. So consider the villain in these tales they’re not always deserving to fail there’s two sides to every bedtime story and the ending does not have to be gory. Line count: 16 Rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 9 Prompt: As per illustration. |
| For Jonathan My friend he lives in old Cape Town, far off in southern hemisphere, and so, for us, he’s upside down. As kids we grew in Africa - savanna heat don’t turn him brown, too blond and pink to ever tan. So now it really makes me frown that he’s down there and I am here, toes all iced in a northern town. Line count: 9 Form: Magic 9 For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 8 Prompt: Magic 9 - Nine lines with the last word of each line rhyming with the scheme abacadaba. |
| Luck My life may be a charm, I might be safe from harm, but ascribing it to luck is something I would duck. Perhaps a greater power with fortune doth me shower, yet it seems there is no reason; it’s more like He’s just teasin’. The trick, you see, my friend, is clearer near the end - to hear what your life sings be happy in all things. Line count: 12 Rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 7 Prompt: Write a poem about luck. |
| Perchance Possibilities positively proliferate past previous positions pertinent perhaps to pontificate for previously potent physicians. All actions activate attention alerting assumptions to arise and asking about ascension as aces act as allies. So sound the sentry’s siren sonorous and sure the sound serious and certain in Sidon sixteen solutions to surround. Line count: 12 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 6 Prompt: Write a poem about possibilities. |
| The Dream Attainable The dream attainable is like tomorrow we can reach for it hands eager to receive forever betrayed as our touch transforms the day into the present tomorrow become today. And so the dream on realisation always evaporates into reality now grasped and owned and from the shadows comes the call alluring of another dream. Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 5 Prompt: Write a poem about something that will always be out of reach. |
| Reflection And I should speak of age as it once was a thing to be grasped and honored wise in the ways of the world and heaven free forever of the enthusiasm of youth with its wild roller coaster of passion and with a story to tell at last. It’s not as if anyone told me. How did I miss the betrayal of the body this slow disintegration to pain and frailty? Too eager was I to reach for the prize of settled convictions and blessed insight unaware of the failing motivation in a being too tired, too weak, too sick to claim the dream of ambitious morning with twilight dimming the sight. It’s not as if anyone told me. Nor is it worth complaining on arrival I have worked too hard for this and a lifetime has its laurels though unexpected for nothing is wasted and the light still welcome though it shine upon elsewhere and a better home to come. It’s not as if anyone told me. Line count: 23 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 4 Prompt: The Bop form. The first six-line stanza introduces the problem, the second eight-line stanza expands upon it, and the final six-line stanza explains the solution or failed attempts. There is a repeated refrain line after each stanza. |
| Twenty-five Was I ever twenty-five? That youthful age when the world was young with such passions and dreams and life seemed endless and exciting certainty being my constant companion and answers to all the world’s problems in my pocket while eternity whispered in my ear and I only ever wanted more unconscious of the passing years but satisfied with nothing. Three times that age and more I have what I hungered for and wonder where the taste of those vibrant years has gone too short to savour, lost in the wind and all I have is memory and thoughts turning elsewhere. Line count: 18 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 3 Prompt: In celebration of WdC's 25th Anniversary, write a poem involving the number 25 or a birthday/anniversary celebration. |
| Dawn Daybreak is a quieter thing than evening when gathering night is spilt upon the ragged skies and chattering rooks go jostling to their trees while homeward plods the ploughman and his horse. There’s drama in that last kiss of sun to earth and nightly prowlers slipping from the shadows. Not so the silent coming of the dawn with hint of colour in the looming heavens. It’s hush that greets the growing light and subtle changes in the tones of dark; in deepest sleep the dayshift still abed clings yet to dreams of the risen day. The day may tear itself away with painted passion but the morn does gentle announce return. Line count: 14 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 2 Prompt: Use these words on your poem: Kiss, daybreak, tear (or tears). |
| This is the first of the poems for the sixth year of Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, 2025/2026. I Remember Most people do, I know, and sometimes I am carried away, like a dandelion seed wafted on the wind, just another old fool lost in memories of elsewhere. I guess we all have our elsewheres, where childhood friends run strong and free in a land so bright and clear, forever young. Change does not sully that perfect place nor faces tire and grow old; they stay unbent and unafraid, ever green and innocent, undefiled by the tumbling years. And I’m no different, age conforming me in draining strength, life closing down as a faded store, shuttered and locked in urban decay, turned inward with no future. I am but an archive of a life not special but savoured as the light wanes, so I turn to elsewhere while dreaming of home. Line count: 24 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 1 Prompt: Title your poem: “I Remember” and then write a poem about a memory, real or imagined. |
| This is the last of the poems for the fifth year of Promptly Poetry Challenge 5, 2024/2025. The Place in Between The wood between the worlds, where silence reigns becalmed in shade while dreams are like the ferns unfurled and stillness cloaks pools in every glade. Just one thing moves in all that hush, a guinea pig with ribbon tied a yellow ring, thus memory returns with childhood rush, magician’s test to this place brings. Each somnolent pool beneath the trees is gateway to a different place, to terrible Charn of mortal disease, or new world waking in light and grace. The wood between the worlds, a magical land accessible only through a book, its secret is curled in Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew. Line count: 16 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 52 Prompt: Use The Place in Between as your title. |
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