She Sees Him

sipping Earl Grey
through
Flora Danica porcelain

she tastes traces
of his mouth
singing echos of Nirvana
at speed

she plays a fingerprinted disc
again
walking
loose-linked hands
cutting steps
in the sand
she
closes her eyes
kissing
like a ravenous hyena
or a sucker fish
running her tongue around her lips
licking for flashback

laughing too loud
loving too high
alive> < evil a
beach-bleached
white paradise

she tugs a necklace memento
the cowrie shell grins
hanging solo

sleeping
sugar-spooned
calm breath
arm-wrapping
dream-napper

she stays awake

sinking
through pot-holes
shark shoals
foiled
wrapped
and crushed
weeping scars
bleeding
raw words
hushed

she could not save him

Posted in Life & Emotion, Love & Romance, Poems In Text | Leave a comment

A Time

 

d'verse

Victoria has set the Quadrille prompt for today. Dverse Poets Pub.

 

A Time

It was the end of a long,
damp summer

late mornings
early elation

discovery
learning

innocence
guilt

the end
the beginning

all we had been
shimmered away
leaving the ghost
of first love
to haunt me forever

Posted in d'verse Prompts, Life & Emotion, Poems In Text | Tagged , , , , , , , | 23 Comments

Musical Dip

Victoria has set the prompt at dverse pub poets today.
It is a Quatrian Refrain comprising eight lines:
two tercets and a couplet,
eight syllables per line or iambic tetrameter, your choice,
first line is a refrain, repeated as the last (some variation acceptable).

cruise-417078_640

Musical Dip

It was indeed a fated trip.
She wanted music endlessly.
It pays to listen properly.

The cruise was meant to mend her hip.
‘Over here’, I cried, self-satisfied,
and whooping loud, ‘A band on ship’.

She jumped, feet-first, straight in the sea.
I won’t forget that fated trip.

Posted in Comedy, d'verse Prompts, Humour | 31 Comments

Daphne’s Diet

d'verse

Open link night at dverse.

Daphne’s Diet – Day 1

She’d signed at ‘Slimming Zone’ and paid her dues,
determined she would stick to it and lose
the weight that so miraculously formed
around her waist, her thighs and upper-arms.
She didn’t eat a lot and moved about
so couldn’t understand the fat throughout

her visceral muscles – so the doctor said.
‘You’ll have to get it off or you’ll be dead’.
The choice was clear. She had to motivate
herself to reach a healthy weight. A state
she had aspired to since nineteen eighty two;
before the kids, of course, and Chicken Vindaloo.

‘I’ll just use up the last of this’. She hated waste,
and couldn’t bin the Galaxy or resist the taste.

Read more about Daphne’s Diet in

newly published ‘Tickled Pink’

Pickled_Tink_Cover_for_Kindle

Posted in d'verse Prompts | 28 Comments

The Simian Line

d'verse

Mish has set the dverse prompt for today.
‘So,today I am asking you to write a poem that pays homage to hands’.

SimianLine

The Simian Line

The single palmar transverse crease
is etched across your hands –
both of them – rare, I believe.
You’re a one percent boy to man.

Head melding with heart – confusion.
Emotion is a record on faces.
Mind matters most; a skewed fusion
of logic built on moving bases.

Frustration dogs you frequently.
Your crystal clear view – invisible
to the naked eye of all and sundry
who don’t/won’t see – or are unable

without your cursed clarity
and one-eyed reason. The brain,
reluctant to sleep, peddles endlessly
its dilemmas, solutions, think-pain.

You don’t feel a real part of it.
An observer; disregarded.
If only they knew how little
they know – climbed over your guarded

wall into your silent bluff.
Your hands curl in, hiding you palms,
just as your body armour rebuffs
the warmth of a mother’s arms.

Posted in d'verse Prompts, Life & Emotion, Poems In Text, Spiritual | 18 Comments

Stressed To Kill

d'verse

Bodhirose has set today’s prompt.

Our challenge for today is to use the following fourteen words in the order presented: stay, sits, play, wits, fits, comedy, flits, tragedy, eye, smart, cry, heart, moan, stone.  These words were borrowed from a sonnet by Edmund Spenser.
So we will be writing a fourteen line poem with each of these words being our end line rhymes and they must be used in the order presented.  You may choose to write a sonnet using iambic pentameter if you wish (as was traditional) but it isn’t necessary.

PS. I’ve changed the ending on this. Apologies to early commentators, but I should have stuck with my original idea 🙂

 

If you were I would you ask me to stay?
Considering the way consorting sits
with you. Your inability to play
a simple game of chess. Where are your wits?

I’ve heard them call you numbskull – well it fits.
In fact you could be labelled comedy
on legs. Your concentration dives and flits
from here to there. It’s such a tragedy.

And please don’t try that melancholy eye.
You ought to know by now I’m much too smart
to fall for your pathetic ‘love me’ cry.
It’s not that I am mean and have no heart,

but don’t you know, you silly dog, I’ll moan
when mud’s awash the best Venetian stone.

Posted in Comedy, d'verse Prompts, Poems In Text | 19 Comments

Elysia

d'verse

Elysia

it was a strange awakening
glass sharp.

we rode tandem through the blur of an old film
she breathed promises on the back of my neck
laughing

the air tingled with sepia summerness
drifting bon-fire smoke
cut grass.
hushed kisses
virgin brushed lips

she was August in December
heat through ice
drawing me into her like liquid

I ached to lie there
closer than I could be
stay there
be long there

hippy jewel in a thorny-crown town
elevated

I was the Walker-on-Water,
first Man-on-Mars doing anything
if I’d wanted to be doing anything else but
touching her skin.

rippling black-water hair
she danced on the core of my consciousness
gathering me
flying me hard and fast

sky skimming our skin
to a moon so big
you couldn’t blank it out
with your hand.

there were no choices
just her
and my need, greed,
passion-poured
pawed
lips and loins
life-forced

felled

I lay
a crumpled flower-child
burnt out
ripped up
stripped down
shielding my face from her indifference
watching her silhouette into the sun

seeing her with me
over and over

Posted in d'verse Prompts, Life & Emotion, Love & Romance, Poems In Text | Tagged , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

In A Stew

d'verse

In A Stew

Mother said,
‘Simmer it, don’t let it bubble’.

The trouble is
the thermostat is knackered.

I stood there, stirring it
over ninety minutes
blending OXOs, cornflour
and mixed herbs in it.

Then the bell rung at the door.
Stew bubbled all over the floor.

Posted in Comedy, d'verse Prompts, Poems In Text | 20 Comments

In Memoriam

d'verse

The dVerse challenge today is from Whimseygizmo, a Quadrille to include the word ‘bubble’.

quiet togetherness

golden memories
floating forever

suspended
in rainbow bubble-glow

inspiring

your graceful
one-mindedness

innocent
open-mouthed wonder
viewed from a place

shaded with hues
of mellow
orange/yellow
lighting your face

asking for nothing
but to survive

you simply were
the cutest little
goldfish alive!

 

Posted in Comedy, d'verse Prompts, Poems In Text | 41 Comments

Contemplating Dating

People tell me I should try a little dating.
Go on, dear’, they trill, ‘It’s just the tonic’,
Their nagging tends to get a
little grating,
so, I’ll meet you, Geoff, as long as it’s platonic.

It’s not easy for a spinster to engage
(at the age of sixty nine), with men at all,
and especially on a dating escapade.
I feel a tad embarrassed overall.

I’ll meet you at the library at six.
We’ll discuss the type of books you like to read.
Myself, I’m keen on art and politics.
I knit a bit and propagate from seed.

Grecian architecture tends to float my boat
also Romans and related artefacts.
More productive and engaging, take a note,
than spending time on body fluid acts.

There’ll be no talk of etchings in your room
so please don’t think I’m wet behind the ears.
It’s not the ears with urge incontinence, you know,
I like to have convenience quite near.

If we dine at all, I’ll do it Dutch, that’s fine,
but you mustn’t touch my veggies or my passionfruit soufflé.
Food exchange is unhygienic, kindly keep your hands off mine
or I might pick up a virus. Golly! What would Mother say?


It’s companionship I fancy, not a physical display.
If we venture to the cinema, eyes front toward the screen.
I like a film that’s jovial, uplifting in some way.
Mary Poppins is my favourite. She’s never been obscene.

You may walk me to my cottage – ‘round the back,
avoiding twitchy curtains. Mrs Davenport’s the worst.
Don’t try to slip your hand inside my North Face anorak,
and no kissing. Too familiar, and you must meet Mother first.

Hello…hello, you listening or just a trifle deaf?
Say something…speak to me…I doubt I’ll ask again.
Geoff?…Geoff? That’s strange. The line’s gone dead.
I’ll speak to him on Tuesday. He can make his mind up then.

Posted in Comedy, d'verse Prompts, Love & Romance, Poems In Text | 35 Comments