Rydia's Repository

I'm preparing my thread super early this year and starting to think about themes and structures! Maybe I'll have a clearer idea of what I'm doing by the end of the month, but I'm sure there will be lots of experimenting and poe-tree gaming!

#1 In My Safety Deposit Box

The pebble was my first -
ordinary
in its early yearning.
I washed it in the wash
and watched it
turn hostile in the fading
aubergine.

When I was five a feather
fathomed from the sky like thunder;
at six a stolen soldier
from my brother's underwear
drawer

and then at thirty, there was you.
One shoe black, the other blathered
from too much talking
and you were my cul-de-sac
with no road through.

I meant to save your cuff links
in my safety deposit box
with the pebble and the soldier,
but somehow I left them in the rain
to rust.


If you didn't get it, the message is I'm rusty There's too much playing with words, but there are a few lines or patches of imagery I might be able to rescue and that was better than I expected.

One shoe black, the other blathered
from too much talking
and you were my cul-de-sac
with no road through.

This is perfect. This is an awesome and true suburban image the way I read it. It's of people stepping outside their doors to speak to neighbors, and the geography of a neighborhood. It reminds me of making maps of my block and the blocks around my block when I was a kid.

Thanks Hannah

#2 Crossing Over

The day my father died I got a rabbit.
Floppy eared. Sad eyed.
He didn't eat for a week and then
he died.

We hid the rabbit's hurt in the back garden
(wooden box; dig dirt)
but over night the bodies crossed like
fretwork.

I went to visit daddy in the morning.
Daisies laid. Ash tree.
The spirit of my father came and talked
to me.

He said the rabbit died because of nature.
Baby clothes. Blank lives.
Big words I couldn't transpose though
I've tried.

We see my rabbit dad at the graveyard
(pebble strewn; small sad)
but only the garden grave makes me
feel bad.


A/N: I asked my sister and her boyfriend for themes. He gave me misery and she gave me happiness. So I glared until she laughed and turned it into bunny rabbits. "Do you think we're opposites?" she asked. Not in my poetry...

The lines are trying too hard to be formatted and my tutor would tell me to stop playing it safe and to throw the box away. I'd ask him 'What box?' and he'd say 'Now you're thinking.' Of course, my other tutor would say 'Bravo, now write it again as a sonnet'.

This one's for that second tutor who always did love my dactyls. It's a double dactyl for anyone interested.

#3 Hickety Pickety

Hickety pickety
girl with a ticket, she's
off to the theme-park to
leap on a ride.

Queues are so finicky
invisibility
wished for by people still
held up in line.


A/N: Luke said I had to write on theme parks and mining, but the mining got dropped somewhere along the way. I like it. Inspired by a section of Neil Gaiman's 'Stardust':

Spoiler

Neil Gaiman

3. Hankety pankety
Boy in a blanket, he's
Off on a goose-chase to
Look for a star

Incontrovertibly
Journeys through Faerie
Strip off the blanket to
See who you are.

#4 The Value of Values

We had a head teacher called Andrews
who tried to teach all of us values
but his words went to waste
with a sour after taste
as we smoked up the Valium by handfuls.


A/N: Luke said I had to write on Valium and I misheard him and thought he said values. This was the result and it quickly decided to pretend to be a limerick, but the form is off.

You are so awesome, Rydia. I love hickety-pickety, and I love the little fragments that are so punchy in the rabbit dad poem. ahhhh.

Number four is really funny.

#5 The Art of Breaking

I used to break people
to see the cracks
in their shell
and I'd wonder:
did I put them there or
find them.


A/N: I don't know if it's a poem or half a poem yet...

I don't think I tell you enough about how much I love your poetry.

The 1st is my favorite. It's just that first stanza and the sounds and the play with words, ahhh <3 :3 and then:

When I was five a feather
fathomed from the sky like thunder;

those sounds! those sounds! *glomps*

But you continue to play with your words through all of this, so it's just great fun reading through them all. ^_^

#6 Distance for the Discontent (a pantoum)

My sister travels to forget
the frailty of autumn snow;
distance is for the discontent
who passing by will pause to know

the frailty of autumn snow
but never stop to hear its words.
Who passing by will pause to know
the dialect of autumn birds

but never stop to hear its words.
Distance is for the discontent
the dialect of autumn birds
my sister travels to forget.

A/N: I tried to write this poem yesterday but it refused to be written. I did a little better today. Failed attempts in the spoiler in case they're of interest.

Spoiler

1. Distance is the disadvantage of
Dystopia

2. My sister travels to forget
the frailty of autumn snow;
distance is for the discontent.

The brush of history has rent
a shadow on the roads we know.
My sister travels to forget

Looks like someone can't help being awesome. :p

When a poem rhymes, I love it. When each line rhymes, the love is doubled squared.

Thanks Animal!

This one's for Audy, no points for guessing why <3

#7 Playing Games

No sense and nonsense
in a world with an heir
not destined to rule,
suckled on the bough of
ancestry. and there's no air
and no ruler so our lines are all curved
and everyone knows
that the noes have the answer.

and how do you console
the console owner
who spent his fifty cents
on a faulty device
but it breaks and he's broke
and he's looking for a bit
of free advice.

and how much is a byte
of the apple? Do we err
on caution's site?
or sell him fifty shades
of a paperback and tell him to
recite his rights.

and what about the girl on her cell
who's concerned about her cellulite,
do we bow to the ayes of our society
or open up our eyes and use
our sight.


A/N: Nonsense? Yes. Fun to write? Certainly. I've had a stressful day at work so I made myself a list of homophones and played with them. Maybe it will be fun to tidy up, or maybe I'll shake my head and groan.

#0 Writing with Dr Seuss

That feeling you get
when you're reading a book
which someone else writ
and you think what it took.

A/N: Not a NaPo poem but I need to put it places before I forget I wrote it. It's also to remind me to finish the ones I was working on before NaPo.

#8 What it is not to write

I can feel it some days
as an ache in my right,
shackled to my carpals like
Delilah.

A/N: I started writing this, but that sense of despair passed too quickly so I'll have to pick it up again when I'm in the right frame of mind. It's hard to write a poem about not writing.

#9 Don't Feed the Penguin

I think of you curled o-
-ver the laptop,
sleeping but unable to
close yourself
against the backdrop
of city lights

where castles cluster
and fold in concertina
flight

and you linger
on marshmallow clouds
as the dragon slumbers
and the sword of an
off duty knight-

but the signal rumbles
and I promised not
to feed the penguin
to-

#10 The Painting that Was

She used to read a book,
about the last supper and the holy grail,
but my bible was written from the road
like her charcoal smile -
she’s put her fist through too many paintings

and a new page turns in the shatter of glass
and her heart is cheap,
the glass pages burned black by holy days
and I pray the planes will Passover us -
fly overhead hiding the stars

but her lipstick redraws me in the charcoal,
the stains of Da Vinci on my shirt and
I read the road and cross my bible,
our frozen faces lie bro
ken at the foot of the stairs [a painting that was]

for broken hearts make exquisite paintings


A/N: With many thanks to Meshugenah, niteowl and SparkOfDoubt for allowing me to steal their words >> a result of the Poetree game.

I'm a little bit in love.

#11 Living in Reading

We approach Earley at sixteen past
the hour we were supposed to arrive
but I read my book and let the irony depart
like the constellation of trees
beyond the railway track and the snow falling
like shredded paper.

A stranger holds a conversation with
his phone, his silences broadening into
the evening as a suited gentleman scribbles
frantically in a black notepad.

Then Earley is behind us and the trees give way
to streets and buildings, the echo of boots blustering
down Montague street and the close of Dickens
as the train slows and this is Reading.


A/N: A lot of work still needed. If you're wondering, my route home on a lazy day is through Earley, into Reading, take the bus to Montague street and walk past Dickens Close. This is yesterday's poem; nothing so far today. I'm starting to struggle.