from red kite to wren

Go on then, let's do a NaPo again.

2023: pine trees and plane trees and pavements and parks
2020: Dragon: Disconnected
2019: A Dragon of Carefully Chosen Words
2018: Hopes and Fears of a Sleeping Dragon
2017: Cadi's Caterwaulings

#1: Pinecone
meticulous, she peeled away each scale
extracting my core from its defensive mail
set them out in her notes
with the frog from my throat
and then our fifty minutes were up

#2: Songs
sing softly to yourself at night
half-remembered lullabies,
or nineteen-eighties rugby tunes
rendered in a gentle croon
each deep note that you recall
lowering that cortisol

#3: Laundry
It's been three weeks. The washing pile still grows
and grows, and grows. It's wild to think that we
have anything at all still fit to wear.
Each day, more pants, more sweaty shirts and socks
appear atop the stack, til I can bear
no more of this - we need to wash the clothes.

Context: to add some interest to NaPo this year, I've picked up Stephen Fry's book The Ode Less Travelled, which I bought and enjoyed many years ago. It's a handbook of poetry, including exercises to practise the techniques described. This poem is one I wrote for Exercise #5, which asks you to put together twenty-four lines on the topic "television": two quatrains of iambic tetrameter, two of alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter, one of pure trochaic tetrameter and one of trochaic tetrameter with docked/weak endings. I'm one syllable off doing it perfectly!

#4: Television
On streaming sites across the land
the latest drama's close at hand;
from task to traitor, cake to clay,
there's something new for ev'ry day.

My problem, then, is one of taste:
I don't like what's come out of late.
Instead, I'll take a noughties show
and rewatch things that make me glow.

I'd rather read a chunky book
of elves and dwarves and trolls
and sorcerers who with a look
can trap you in a thrall

or watch a film from decades past
(from LA's Golden Age)
with witty lines and awesome cast,
the stars of screen and stage.

Furthermore, my next suggestion
takes us farther from the question:
step outside here while we're talking,
fill the afternoon with walking.

If at first you don't succeed,
here's a warning you should heed:
find a hobby that you like, [or]
live a boring, dreary life.

#5: Advice

Nothing is perfect,
Nothing could be,
So pick what will please you -
It works out, you'll see.

#6

Skulking just below the surface
Simmering softly under the skin
Something strong and overwhelming
Bursts out, blows up

#7: Blood Sugar

Caught out again: I'm sitting on the train
commuting, almost halfway home when it hits:
a quiver, shiver, shake in my shoulders and fingers,
a light and floating feeling in my head.

The time now: almost seven
My last meal: half-past one

Oops

#8

Having once failed
I have doubt and I have fear
And the future with success in
Has faded from view

Having once failed
All the pressure is relieved
And I might as well keep trying
What is there to lose?

#9

Poems can be short and sweet
like this one here, with just eight feet

Thank you, alliyah!

I guess I lost the momentum a little bit, but here's one that popped into my mind over lunch today.

#10

Finish the spinach! my grandmother said,
it'll warm up your blood and it's good for your head
but I HATED the fuzz that it left on my teeth
so I filled up my belly with chocolate instead.