© Olga Naida
Into the balmy blue of a spring wind. Premature and devouring. Earth air grows green in the midday lens. Some kind of humbug illusion. I came dressed for adventure. Where were you? I waited. Watched…
…you can read the rest of the poem here.
© N Nazir 2023
My greatest thanks to Visual Verse for publishing my poem ❤
Shared for dVerse Open Link Night.
© John Towner, Unsplash
The season brings a delirium of time
shifty as quicksand, but I’m too far adrift to
fathom it. It’s just so damned hard to get
into these dreary daily doings, so I’m drunk
on a procrastination of coffee. I don’t
want to unravel, unanchored, just want to be
a charming plaything, winsome, not martyred
as house elf, one of those unseen slaves
who ensure the spick-span purification of
sparkling quarters, a place that swallows time
with its early phantoms. Only when asleep I get
to better chase the perfect escape, a drunk
devouring wolf sleep, rogue and sham. I stay
bed-long into Sunday morning, an earned drunk
aftermath of a night’s unspooling of limbs on
the comfort and cooling of sheets, the taste of wine
iron scent in my hair, my long-abandoned virtue
lost somewhere, a hyena of chores circling my poetry
but for now, I’ll deliquesce, vegetate, do whatever.
© N Nazir 2023
Written for Shay’s Word Garden, where we are given inspiration with a word list from the surreal poetry of Rimbaud. Words used: season, delirium, charming, plaything, phantoms, asleep, wolf, sham, hyena.
Written also for WWW at the Skeptic’s Kaddish, where the poet of the week (Angela Wilson) challenges us to write a golden shovel poem, a form that entails us to incorporate a line or section of a known poem as the final word in each line (similar to an acrostic). I’ve never done one before so I was keen to have a go. I included a section of Baudelaire’s well-known poem Get Drunk.
“…Time to get drunk!
Don’t be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!”
*You can read the full Baudelaire poem here.
*Of course, my poem is not true. Though such a Saturday night is familiar to me, it’s been a while. Last night, I had a nice cup of cocoa and was all tucked up in bed at a perfectly reasonable time 🙂
© Jael Rodriguez
We eat dust cake moon
with our tea
sipped in the silence
of a sunny afternoon.
Key ingredients:
a claiming of space
no gibbering, no masks
a gong resounding
into the noon and beyond
as confetti of thoughts
dissolve, euphonious.
Here we sit
I and fellow lunatic
at fully waxed table
while tea leaves steeped
in memories of the future
are herbivorously drunk
in between bites
of body of moon
cake-dust-sweet.
© N Nazir 2023
Written for Shay’s Word Garden, where we are given inspiration with poet George Hitchcock (words used: gibbering, mask(s), gong, confetti).
Written for Sammi Scribbles Weekend Writing Prompt: Key, 71 words
When all seemed well, I stepped out. The sunrise a bleach streak of exalted non-yellow. ‘Twas not a normal Sunday. I, gauche femme, frostbitten, fingerless mitten. When the mind is loquacious. Then pauses to drench. Quiet jives. Time is a slipstream. Rendered lucid in the giddy light. Karma’s overgrown hair blowing into spring. A familial scattering. And here I land – pop! – in a gasp of winter sun. Homeland. In motion. But. Waiting for a bus. Clashing colours. Empty stomach. Sleep-deprived. And always, always just a little bit late.
© N Nazir 2023
Written for Shay’s Word Garden where Shay brings us inspiration with William Wordsworth (words used: yellow, lucid, overgrown).
Written also for Sammi Scribbles Weekend Writing Prompt: loquacious, 88 words.
but for a lone hobo and his dog.
I went to say hello, it was on my way
after all. He didn’t look well
nor did the hound, who I petted anyway.
Come to the shelter, I said
you’ll get a hot meal and a warm bed.
The hobo shook his head
they don’t let you in with a dog.
Oh, I didn’t know that. Sorry. So trite
to wish him merry christmas after that.
I’m sorry, I said again and gave him some change
little good it did, everything closed on the eve.
Then I walked to the shelter, huddled against the wind
late for my shift at the kitchen.
© N Nazir 2022
*Thankfully, this rule has now changed and dogs are allowed to stay with their owners if they check in at the homeless shelters over the Christmas / New Year period (in the UK).
Shared for W3, hosted by David, where Murisopsis, the poet of the week, invites us to write a poem of exactly fourteen lines on the topic of poverty (moral, romantic, financial, etc).
Shared also for dVerse Open Link Night, hosted by Linda.
*
And here’s my Throwback Thursday for you. I love this band. Couldn’t Care More by the Fine Young Cannibals from their album with the same name, first released in 1985. What have you been listening to lately? 🙂
Sunra Rainz 