Hail Poetry!

Well, today is the last day of the poetry challenge. And that gif pretty much sums up my feeling for the past month. (You have no idea what of what I am speaking? For SHAME! Click here for the song :-)I feel very conflicted about it coming to an end. On one hand, I doubt I could go on writing a poem a day indefinitely - after all there were a couple days I missed this month, though I figure the days I managed two made up for this, (I a rather think I came out ahead on the whole deal - not that ever single one of them was a winner, mind. But I think I managed some keepers.) On the other hand, there was a sort of exhilaration about so much writing. I have not managed that much creative writing in.... well, I can't remember. A long time. It was fun. And challenging. And rather inspirational. I feel quite passionate about poetry. I might very well run about creation, singing along with the Pirate King. 

The prompt for our last day was on one of those fill in the blanks that seem to be so popular there. In this case, bury the something. I started with a slip of paper containing such things as: bury the bone and bury the sword... bury the fire... bury the piper.... Heaven help us if a co-worker ever comes across it! What I eventually came up with is this: 

Bury the grief, for Victory

Must always bear the weight of loss.

Do not lament the hero’s choice,

The valiant do not count the cost.

They have earned the Resurrection,

In the carrying of the Cross.

And that is that. Thank you all for reading all my poetry, and leaving encouraging remarks. I am very shy of my poetry (yes, truly) and it was not always easy for me to put these out for everyone to see, so I truly do appreciate all of you who took the time to comment. It helped.

I intend to keep up a more regular posting schedule now - not daily, obviously, but something more than the hit and miss stuff I was pulling earlier. 

And I have not forgotten the 3 tags I got earlier this year. I will get to them soon. 

TTFN

Hahahaha! I Made It!

Today's prompt was to write a nobody knows poem, and for some reason - even though I could think of quite a number of things that nobody knows (where George Washington's Wallace Oak Snuff box has gotten too, for example) I could not make a poem about any of them. I think I ended up abandoning at least 3 actual written attempts, and several more ideas that never made it to paper at all.

What I came up with is not exactly what I wanted. 

The Communion of Saints

Temptation seduced him
And sin smelled sweet.
Virtue was treacherous in that place.
In the barren wasteland of his soul,
He cried out in pain for grace.

She knelt in the shadow
Beneath the Cross
Where only God and Grace may be,
And waged her prayers for the souls of men
Who stand upon eternity

The demon was routed
And war was done.
He took hold of grace in pain, and rose.
A thorn-crowned nun in a silent room,
Saved his soul and no one knows.

On Matter

Today's prompt was "matter, the stuff from which all things are made"... or you could elect to write about anti-matter. It was all one. Now, I have mentioned before that I am not a scientist - nor am I a physicist, theoretical or otherwise. My reaction to the magnitude of created matter, is see it shot full of God's power, and be quite overcome. Poems on matter, therefore, are not the sort of thing that I can knock out at a moment's notice.

This is what I came up with:

All things that are and may yet be

Complex in particle and quark

Are formed forever in the Mind of God

In the reckonless time of eternity.

The atom bears His finger's mark

Ions His electric power

All Matter, charged with Divinity

Is vital with His creative spark - 

All things that are and may yet be,

Forever are in Him.

Twofer

Today's prompt was "looking back". I did not feel like waxing philosophical about it, so I waxed flippant instead:

I lost the fight to a flourish of wit.

I was right - but he won it.

His clever tongued had out-fenced me.

My mind, too full of things to say,

Rendered me speechless - my dismay,

That I, so right, should voiceless be.

So I lay, insomniac, on my bed,

Thinking of all I should have said...

I won that fight at half-past three.

That is the one I wrote for my prompt. One of the odd side-effects to writing so much poetry, is that I have started reading a lot more of the stuff lately - a rather wide range of it too, including far more modern verse than I care to make a habit. On that: I have got to a point where I can see where people are going with some of that formless, meter-less rambling free verse stuff. I've come across lines, and phrases that impress me enough to make me re-evaluate my idea that free verse kills poetry. That being said, it seldom holds my attention for very long. I get wildly frustrated by the lack of completion in the lines - the sentences wander and break off in a way that I think is supposed to mimic the cadence of daily speech. It doesn't work for me. I find it effected and aberrant. 

So I mostly stick to older poets - which meant that I was trying to get my head around Gerard Manley Hopkins this morning. He is a remarkable poet, who wrote brilliant things... And I have a love-hate relationship with him. He uses accents marks to show how to the poem should be recited. And he has a curiously Germanic tendency to long word-phrases in his descriptions:dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, for example. Now I am very fond of kennings, and of word phrases, such as sword-bright courage, but I find the sheer abandon with which he uses them quite overwhelming. But his poetry is gorgeous and astonishing. I was reading The Windhover this morning (whence came dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon) and this came at once into my mind:

Meditation

An Eagle, unfurled against the sky

King of Birds, wind-lifted high

On mighty wings that Cross-wise spread.

So did our King His arms wing-spread,

When Love had lifted Him on high,

Unfurled in Death against the sky. 

And that is that. I have things to do. Things to clean. Things to buy for dinner. I shall see you all again tomorrow, God willing, and the Prompt be not too difficult.

I Could Write a Sonnet

Today, we were supposed to look at a list of which Shakespeare is credited with coining, choose one for a title, and then write your poem. I browsed through the list. Wasted some time looking up the etymology of some that I was reasonably sure pre-dated Shakespeare. Wasted more time reading articles about Shakespeare really being a great coiner of words, but that some of the words generally associated with him were likely older. He merely got them into print the first time. But, I digress. 

After all that hemming and hawing, I decided to go with 'hobnob'. In Shakespeare - if the Merriam-Webster dictionary may be trusted - hobnob meant something along the lines of hit and miss, By the 1700s, the phrase had come to mean "to drink to each other". So you get.... (drum roll, please).... a drinking sonnet.

Hobnob

God save you, my friend, its been too long

Since we sat together with shot or pint

Making us merry with laughter and song,

Sitting up talking far into the night.

So sit by the fire and drink with me - 

A bit of old whisky will do us well,

And we shall contented and pleasant be - 

Now up with our glasses, our toasts to tell.

Here's to good whisky and to the past,

Honour and courage and all holy things,

The day that's done and the one coming fast,

To our Cause and the joy that friendship brings,

To our Faith, and King O'er the Water - 

Raise your glass and toast to one another!

I Must Go Down To the Sea Again

I like it when the prompt so naturally fits me, that poetry simply comes, and I hardly have to think of it. Our prompt today was "across the sea" and I am somewhat enamoured of the Sea at the best of times. Nowadays, I am also working on a story about the Sea, so I have been reading about the Sea. And looking at pictures of the Sea. And listening to Sea songs. And reading other people's Sea-centered poetry. So, obviously, I was just itching for a chance to write my own Sea poem.

This one is sort of connected to my story - I needed a bit of poetry for a character to recite, and I had not gotten around to looking for any yet, so this is very likely going to end up in the mouth of my main character - I was thinking about him when I wrote it:

This bit of Earth has been my home.

Rock and sand have grounded me.

And I have loved the cedar tall, 

The coast-pine and the apple-tree.

But Autumn's come, and tastes of salt,

I must go back to the Sea.

Her currents run through all my blood.

My name she calls and sings to me.

I cannot bear the touch of Earth.

I'll loose my boat and set her free,

Take the Sea-Road to the West - 

I must go back to the Sea.

This is the Moment!

I had to write a poem on 'moment' today. 

I also had to attend a staff meeting today. All library staff for the entire county had to gather themselves together and discuss librarianish things. We had to wear tags (I didn't. I am not a parcel and I do not believe anyone has a right to my name.) that contained our names, a book cover and a coloured border. For the first half of the meeting we sat at a table that matched the colour that border, so that we would be sitting with totally random people. For the second half, we had to sit at a table that matched the book cover, and a completely different set of random people. We had to participate. I have a low threshold of toleration for group activities. So I came home and wrote this:

For just a moment

You captured my attention

I caught your fire.

Gone is the moment

I am bored to distraction.

Have done. Cease fire.

However, today is also the anniversary of the Easter Rebellion, which began on Easter Monday, 1916. The Irish Volunteers took over various key locations in Dublin, with the General  Post Office for their headquarters. Their leader, a poet named Paidraic Pearse, read out the Proclamation of Independence from the steps of the building, though few people paid much attention. For all that, it was a pivotal event in Irish history - an odd, tiny, gallant little uprising that lasted less than a week; but the influence it had was enormous. So I wrote a short little moment poem for that too:

You stand - 

     Brave as joy

     And soldier-tall

You speak - 

     To a Nation

     And none at all

Just a moment - 

     Scarce of notice

     Few to mark

But Ireland - 

     Flames to Freedom

     At that spark.

So there. A comic poem, and one that is a bit more on the serious side. And that is better than I expected to do after a day like today. Five days left.... God help us!