A Poem To Celebrate NaPoWriMo

It’s National Poetry Writing Month in the States; of course, the whole world is joining in, including me.  I’m writing like mad so I’ve been even more absent than usual.

By way of apology, here’s a poem I wrote eighteen months ago, which made me smile when I came across it in a notebook.  Something the whole family can enjoy.

 

Dog Walk On Bonar Park

Fresh-cut grass!

Here’s a pile – let’s wee on it
Here’s a pile – let’s wee on it
Here’s a pile – let’s wee on it
Here’s a pile – let’s wee on it
Here’s a pile – let’s wee on it
Here’s a pile – let’s wee on it
Here’s a pile – let’s wee on it
Here’s a pile – let’s wee on it

Can we go home now?
I’ve an empty ass.

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101/1001 (5)

Task-wise, it’s been a quiet week.  Some things go up by themselves, like stats and comments.  Some things I’m working on, like reading a book.  Some things I need help with, like more suggestions of tasks for my list – but please, people: no more vegetables.

I did complete a task – I can now upload photos from the camera to the computer.  I’m rather proud of that one, given my techneptitude.

That’s five tasks of forty-nine (needs to be 101) completed in four weeks.  Not bad going.

2/101

I have visited several new blogs in the past month, many because of Napowrimo.  I forgot to record details, however, so the tally is officially only two.  Perhaps ‘improve my organisational skills’ should be added to my list.

54/101

I wrote twenty poems last week.  That takes me over half way and I still have two and a half years to go; I may need to re-think that task.

Pretty dull, I’m afraid. 

Task no. 50: Live a more interesting life.

The good news is that Sarsm, whose idea this all was, has possibly persuaded another two people to join us.  Yay!  Another sixteen and we can start our own cult.

Go and check her progress – she’s panicking; it’s hilarious.

101/1001 (3)

I hope to get this update in under the wire.  I’ve had a busy day and you’ll hear about some of it tomorrow.

I haven’t done much on my list but I did

Hug a stranger.

I did that tonight; well, she hugged me, but in the nicest way.  I’ll tell you more tomorrow.

Colour my hair.

A wash-in-wash-out shampoo but it’s the bravest I’ve been with my hair since 2003. 

18/101 new poems.

I wrote sixteen this week – hooray for Napowrimo! You can check them out at Imnotaverse

I Really Wasn’t Intending To Blog Today

Honest; I swear.  But then I got the email to say the readwritepoem anthology for napowrimo has gone live and it looks so good I had to share it.  Find it here.  I’m on page 20 (or 34-35 if you use the bottom bit).  It’s well worth a look – where else can you read a whole book of great poetry for free?

As I am already here, I might as well share this poem for Writer’s Island.  We were asked to use this visual prompt:

Vane Kosturanov: FISHERMAN   You can check out the artist here; I didn’t know of him until yesterday but I love his work.

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A WAG’s Tale
WAGs: collective noun for wives & girlfriends of sportsmen; it originated in British tabloid newspapers
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Fish sits in his bowl.
Mouth opens.  Wide.  He swims side to side.
Feed me, he says.  Feed me today.
Feed me.  Feed me.  Feed me again.
Fish is a bully; he feeds on her guilt.
He swims round his fake castle, fake flowers, fake lake.
Left side right side front side back side.
Forever the same view, same home, same space.
Feed me, he says; feed me again.
Fish is a parasite.  Fish is bored.  Fish is alone.
Fish must wait for his manna from woman.

WAG waits in her opulent home.
Mouth opens wide, her yawns become sighs.
Need me, fame says.  Need me today.
Need me.  Need me.  Need me again.
Paparazzi are bullies; they feed on her gilt.
She swans round her fake castle, fake marriage, fake love.
In Hello magazine she glows as she shows off her home
(secreting the fee for an uncertain future; she has hate expectations).
Need me, fame says.  Need me again.
Fame is a fiend; it tires of her, even as she waits in her manor
for the rich man who made her his woman.

 

 

  

 

I Am Still The Pigeon

I got two pieces of good news yesterday: I passed my interview and I start my work placement on Monday; and I won £100 worth of shopping.   I am a little relieved about the interview because it could all have gone horribly wrong: I went to freshen up beforehand and there was an incident in the public toilet.  I can’t give you details because I have embarrassed my sons enough and Tory Boy is still hoping for a career in public service; it all worked out for the best in the end, is all I can say.

The competition was run by my landlord, Stockport Homes.  A woman phoned to say I had won for this area in their ‘shop local’ competition.  I had to say in 100 words why I use my local shopping centre in Castle Street; it was part of the ‘use them or lose them’ campaign, as independents are being squeezed out by big business.   Think about it: you can buy your groceries, your furniture, your clothes, your pet needs, your insurance, your lunch, and pretty soon your bank services from Tesco; and you can get it cheaper than any single shop can offer you.  Sounds good, but will you think that when the next general election is sponsored by Asda?  The candidates will have to start the day with a group hug and a yoghurt.  Makes me queasy just thinking about hugs that early in the morning.

I have to spend the money in the local shops and claim it back.  I’m not sure how it will work because the lady promised to send me an email with the details and I’m still waiting.  Could it be cat-and-mouse, Stockport Homes style?  We promise you something great – money, a kitchen – and then you never hear from us again.

It is ages since I last won anything.  At least I do occasionally win stuff: the poor Hub has only ever won one competition, and that because the odds were stacked in his favour.  He put petrol in the car one day and went to pay for it, when he noticed a sign above a box inviting him to put his name in for the chance of winning an England shirt; the date showed it was the last day of the competition.  As he dropped his entry form in the attendant said, ‘You’ll probably win that.’  ‘Really?’ the Hub replied.  ‘Yes,’ she said; ‘You’re the only person who’s entered.’

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I still miss napowrimo so I am going to take part in some weekly poetry prompt exercises.  This first one is from http://rallentanda.blogspot.com/ We have to write a poem inspired by Feet Beneath The Table  by Charles Blackman, 1956.

Here’s mine:

Feet Beneath The Table by Charles Blackman, 1956

Alice – louche, right-eyed and pushy.
Nailed by the artist.
There are no shivarees at this party.

Carroll quivers in his grave, unveiled
to 21st Century eyes as
Charles Dodgson, paedophile.

Truth huddles, sad, like long-held pain.

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‘Shivaree’ was yesterday’s Word of the Day from Dictionary.com and I just had to use it: 

1. A mock serenade with kettles, pans, horns, and other noisemakers given for a newly married couple.

2. An elaborate, noisy celebration.

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This prompt is from http://writersisland.wordpress.com/  We have to write about an imaginary friend.  My poem is based on something that happened with my boys when they were younger; I have to find a better title:

A Tale Of Friends And Brothers

Two brothers, eleven and six.
Six – being six – had John
and Michael living in his head.
John and Michael and Six
were inseparable until the day
Eleven – being eleven – ate John.
Six wailed; Mother bellowed,
‘Eleven, sick him up at once!’
Eleven feigned retching.
John was returned
to his rightful mind.

 

 

Pardon My French

I’ve been updating my poem folder this morning after last month’s writing orgy and I came across one that I didn’t publish for napowrimo:
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The Heralding Smell

Flies alight on dog

shite.  Their mess is everywhere:

spring is in the air.
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Apologies for swearing; it’s not something I normally do now that I have learned to ignore my husband’s one or two hundred imperfections; but it seriously annoys me when I have to clean my dog and my shoes after walking him.  I pick up my own poo; why can’t other people do the same? 

This is a recurring theme in my life.  Just yesterday, a little girl spotted the plastic bone on Toby’s lead that holds the poo bags and she told me I was ‘a good lady.’  I think I am; in this instance, anyway.  I don’t know how dog owners can be so lazy; it’s disgusting.  I lost count of the times that Spud would toddle beside me when I took Tory Boy to school, then topple over into a steaming pile of irresponsibility.  Fortunately, there was a large bin on the way so I was able to strip off his keks and chuck them in.  Not so bad in summer, but his little legs turned blue in winter.  In case you think I’m cruel, I always had his pram and blanket with me but he would not get in and covered up.  That child loved to walk everywhere.  At less than two years old he spent fourteen hours in Blackpool on a family day trip and we used his pram to carry the junk people always buy/win in seaside resorts because he refused to be wheeled.  Except for one larcenous half-hour at the fun fair: we walked through the shop, looking at tat, and it was only when we got back to the car that we discovered he had snaffled three sticks of rock from one of the low shelves.  He did a similar thing in Mothercare when he was eighteen months old, but that time it was a pack of plastic ducks for his bath.  I’m raising a villain.

It is at this point that you must leave a comment telling me what a great mother I am, in spite of my reprobate offspring; I read this quote from Trackle the other day: Everyone needs recognition for his accomplishments, but few people make the need known quite as clearly as the little boy who said to his father: “Let’s play darts. I’ll throw and you say ‘Wonderful!’

 

Feeling Good

I got an email this morning to say I have had two poems accepted by Four and Twenty, an American ezine. Their requirements are for poems no longer than four lines and/or twenty words – right up my street. I would share the poems here but Four and Twenty now have first publication rights so I will have to wait until the end of July.

After napowrimo I really miss having a poem a day to post and I have been told that I should carry on doing it to up my stats, so here is a bit of fun for you:

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21^st Century Marriage

Two minds with but one

single thought: can I have a

fling and not get caught?

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I’b Godd A Code

You bay hab sub trouble understanding be today; I’m fud ob a code.  I hate habbing a code.  By face leaks, by eye is swoden shut, I can’t sleed and I cough so buch I need reinforced bloobers.   If I eber see dat man again, I may hab to kid him. 

I followed Viv’s excellent advice (see comments) and kicked the Hub out of bed in the middle of the night to make me a hot toddy.  He is a master at the art of mixing alcohol and hot water, and it’s one of the reasons I won’t let him escape.  I am seriously sleep deprived this week, in spite of the revivifying properties of rum and lemon, and I am a little disappointed that the mucus wouldn’t let a poem in for the penultimate day of napowrimo. The prompt was to write about something in the news, but yesterday was a slow news day, if I remember correctly: nothing going on but a little political fallout from the most inept politician of a generation; and in the evening, just three blokes chatting about what they’re going to be doing next Friday.   However, writing poems about events in the news is one of my favourite things to do, so I have a few that I have written over the years to share with you.

The first one was originally a series of senryu that I wrote as events occurred; once Mr Blair resigned, I thought they would work better as an overview of his time in office.  Apologies to my non-UK resident readers, who may not understand the references or the reason for the invective.  Also, apologies to those who may have seen some of them before because they have already been posted on my blog (I’m not too worried, though, as I only had three readers when I started).

Ha!  Talk about a Freudian slip – I accidentally left out the ‘s’ when I typed ‘Mr Blair resigned’; look what’s left: ‘Mr Blair reigned.’

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Lies, Damned Lies and New Labour

The Blair Which? Project,
One: EC or not EC? 
Was it a question?

The Blair Which? Project,
Two: To bomb or not to bomb? 
Iraq’s the question.

The Blair Which? Project,
Three: To loot or not to loot? 
Why, without question.

The Blair Which? Project,
On Going: To freely duck
each awkward question.

Blair’s Bonus Project,
Ongoing: To harass the
usurping PM.

Coda  

Prime Minister Brown’s
Day: so many decisions,
so little spine.

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 This one refers to the huge row over MP expenses.

Parliament Fiddles as Britain Burns

Marx is writhing in his grave:
Government is the
odium of the masses.

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 Michael Jackson Died

Troubled man.  Childhood
fame is not worth the gravestone
it is written on.

 

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An Explanation For The 1000 Students Taking The 2009 Politics Exam Who Complained That It Was Unfair Because They Didn’t Know The Meaning Of The Word ‘Despotic’

Despot
Pol Pot
Bad lot

P.S.

Future of Britain:
Worrying

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Good News 

Idi Amin’s dead.
Enough said.

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Today is the last day of nablopomo (National Blog Posting Month).  I succeeded in writing a post a day but failed miserably in the task of commenting on at least ten other  nablopomo posts; but I did squeeze in a few posts on the theme, ‘BIG’.  I failed because I was overtaken by my enthusiasm for napowrimo.

Sadly, today is also the last day of napowrimo.  I won’t be posting a daily poem anymore, though I will revert to my habit of posting an occasional one as the mood takes me.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of having to write a poem a  day.  I’m not sure I succeeded, but it was fun trying.  I would like to thank everyone who commented on my poems and the rest of my regular audience who don’t care much for poetry but tolerated it anyway.  I would also like to thank my husband my children my dead mum my dead dad my deceased nans my dog my dead cats (3) my time in South Africa awful as I sometimes found it cheese & onion crisps chocolate (love you forever, darling) BGT this country’s ridiculous government toilets bees You Tube snoring Shakespeare Mango Groove my determined to help me get a job Launch Pad tutor and the town of Stockport.  Sorry if I missed anyone out.

Determined to stick to the principle of writing and posting the poem on the same day at least one more time, I cobbled together this from the final prompt, ‘free day,’ as in, write whatever you like; you’re on your own now, dear. 

Just when I think my South African collection is finally complete, up pops another prompt to remind me that I really ought to see a therapist to get my time in South Africa out of my system once and for all: for me, the word ‘free’ always conjures the image of the first free and fair South African election, in which the Hub and I queued for twelve hours to vote – bizarrely, one of my happiest memories.  Tory Boy was also there but Spud Bud was two years and one drunken night away (just kidding, sweetie pie, honest). 

It is actually called ‘1994’ but the underline cuts it in half.  I typed the number out for the blog and I’m thinking of keeping it because I like it’s Orwellian overtone.

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Nineteen-Ninety-Four

Free at last!
Free at last:
random deaths;
the odd bomb blast.
Carjack, rape,
home invasion –
all in the name
of emancipation.
Burglar bars,
security gates,
armed response…
…packing crates.
Free at last.
Free at last.
South Africa –
I’m free at last.

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Poor Sue

The full story can be found here.

Is there anyone left in Britain who thinks that our Prime Minister should be allowed to run a bath, never mind a whole country? I don’t know who ‘Sue’ is, but she’s going to get it in the neck when the boss gets back to the office. Still, she has only herself to blame – fancy letting him loose in public like that. It was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I actually have some sympathy for him: everyone is entitled to dislike anyone they please; and they are also entitled to bitch about them behind their backs. It’s not nice, but it’s human nature. What worries me, however, is that he seems to think that merely raising the immigration question makes one a bigot. He’s going to drive a lot of people into the BNP’s arms if he can’t talk rationally about something that worries so many voters.

Two curious things: Mrs Duffy seems to think – from her comments to the media – that he called her a bigot because she asked him about the national deficit; while he thought the conversation was a disaster, when it clearly wasn’t.

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Day 28’s prompt was ‘inspiration’. You will see from the length of today’s poem that I wasn’t feeling it:

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On Looking For Inspiration

A lot of sweat
for not much yet.

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…Ummmm…just went to embed the prompt page and discovered that the prompt was actually ‘intuition’. I am mortified at being caught out in this way.  I can only claim that I misunderstood what Prompt said to me, due to being bunged up in every facial orifice. I have made my sincere apologies to Prompt and she has accepted them, though she won’t be voting for me when I bid to become Poet Laureate, despite being a lifelong Poetry supporter. I will be sending an email of apology to everyone who fears me and wants me removed as their Beloved Leader.  Jeremy Vine has also asked me onto his Radio 2 show so that I can be filmed with my head in my hands, realising that I have just lost my job and I’m serving my final week’s notice.

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Just went to my Virgin home page and it’s official: Cheryl Cole is the world’s sexist woman.  Who’d have thunk it?  You’d think Richard Branson could afford to employ a proof reader; I didn’t realise the economy was quite that bad.

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Did I just break the world record for the most use of the word ‘just’ in one post?

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I’m Sick

I apologise for not replying to your emails and comments or for checking out your new poems for napowrimo yesterday.  On Monday, a man who must have lost the use of his arms because he couldn’t raise them to cover his mouth, coughed on me.  Now I have a throat that could star in a Ninja Knives advert and enough self pity to revert to teenagerdom.

I spent yesterday at my do I really have to get a job when I feel like this? course and chasing printers around Stockport (a story for another day).  Then I went to bed.  I have dragged myself out again this morning and I am overdosing on vitamin C in an attempt to get mobile because, actually, I do really want a job even though I feel like this.  I may not get to your poems and emails and comments today because it has taken me thirty minutes to write this between the dramatic hand on fevered brow and checking for plague pustules on my arms, so apologies again.  I quite understand if you ignore me.

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We only have two more days of napowrimo and I don’t want to fail so close to the end, but I really wasn’t up to writing yesterday, so here’s  a pair of acrostics I prepared earlier:

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Countdown 

Death is sweet instants away; or perhaps bitter
Years.  We know not when, or how.
Sure that it will come, patient
Time counts each day; softly
Opens the doors to
Paradise and elsewhere,
In certainty.
Always.

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A Response to Complaints About My Last Poem 

Unlike
Thomas More
Or his seminal
Piece – his peace dream –
I have no hope that
Any future world will be agreeable.

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To Bee Or Not To Bee

Never judge a book by its cover _ I am not a bee; I am a hover fly

  

The bee is back. It came in through the bathroom window yesterday morning; had a look around; disdained the decor, and left. It did the same thing this morning. I’m not sure my nerves can take it. In the spirit of know your enemy, therefore, I looked up some bee facts:  

• they have five eyes, as if they’re not weird enough
• life expectancy is 28-35 days, so I may have another month of this
• honey is nectar that bees have repeatedly regurgitated and dehydrated.  Bet that puts you off your breakfast, doesn’t it?
• in her whole lifetime (it is always a her) a worker bee will produce only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey. Makes you wonder why she bothers.
• a bee is not born knowing how to make honey; she goes to bee school to learn
• male drone bees do no work and spend their time copulating.  Some things never change
• it would take around 1100 bee stings to cause the average human being to die; I find that strangely comforting
• honey bees have hairy eyes
• honey never goes off: a jar of 2000 year old honey in an Egyptian tomb was said to taste delicious.
• Bees vote on when to swarm or which food source to concentrate on, and they vote by moving nearer the proposer they support (proportional representation by any other name would smell as sweet)
• it is against the law to kill a bumble bee in Britain
• Ancient Rome’s tax system was paid in honey, not money
• bees don’t snore – I want a divorce right now

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I was woken again by the Hub’s nasal activity at about four this morning.  Instead of tossing and turning or throttling him, this time I got into Tory Boy’s empty bed and went straight back to sleep…to sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there’s the Hub.  

I am beginning to suspect there’s a connection between the bee and the snoring; think about it: bzzzzz/zzzzzz….I bet the bee is lost and thinks it can hear the hive in the distance.  

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Yesterday’s prompt was to take an old abandoned poem and work on it again.  This is one I wrote in 2002 and I keep going back to it but it’s still not right:  

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On Reading Make Believe  

Gerda Mayer still
mourns her Dad
decades on.  Time
not had.  My
Dad died; aeons
ensued…count
the days is what
we do.  Killed
by Nazis, cancer,
hatred, disease:
still our dead
stay dead.
We living grieve.  

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Friends, Romans, Countrymen: Slice Off My Ears

Isn’t it funny how you can love someone with all your heart and all your mind, but not with your ears?  I have been awake since five-thirty because the Hub is snoring.  Have you ever slept with a snorer?  It ain’t pretty. 

Although awake so early, I have only been up since six because I gave him every chance to moderate his behaviour: I stroked his back; I cuddled him, which usually makes him hot and he moves away, settling down again without snoring long enough for me to go back to sleep; I tossed and turned and thrashed and harumphed in the hope of waking him up without having to poke him in the side and shout, ‘Oi! You! Shut it!’ but he was so deep into the Land of Nod I could have brought in a brass band to serenade him with Wake You Up Before I Go-Go and he’d have death-rattled through it.  I did briefly consider violence but decided against it on the grounds that I would not sleep well for the next twenty years in whichever prison I found myself in; I got up instead.

I had better confess at this point that the Hub may be a snorer but I am a super-snorer; I am so bad that every night he has to wear ear plugs and refrain from smothering me with my own pillow.  I blame Spud (another good reason to have children): I never snored at all until I was pregnant with him.  He made me so huge that I didn’t leave the house for the last month of my pregnancy, apart from Christmas Day, when the Hub took eight of us out for Christmas Dinner (him, me, Tory Boy, four parents and a niece) because I couldn’t reach the stove top unless I lay on my back on the kitchen counter and slithered along it with my arms stretched above my head.  Makes it difficult to mash potatoes, I can tell you; I have the scald marks on my scalp to prove it.

I have a feeling that this post isn’t finished; it needs a pithy ending.  I am so tired, however, that I’m out of pith.  Make it up yourself; I’m going back to sofa.

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We had to find a common phrase and write from it; I have read some fine poems over the last 24 hours that have arisen from the prompt: mine isn’t one of them.  I’m afraid it just didn’t inspire me.  It happens like that sometimes.  Maybe I just need some sleep.

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A Clichéd Life

At the end of the day
comes tomorrow
and tomorrow
and tomorrow;
and all our yesterdays
have been and gone.

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Toilet Humour

I haven’t talked about Spud for a while so I thought I would mention that he is at the schoolboy toilet humour stage.  He always giggles when we pass a butchers called Tittersons, and he think it’s hilarious that someone keeps changing the second ‘o’ to a ‘c’ on the Cook Street sign.  He told us that in P.E. they were given equipment called ‘nuts’ to use and the teacher got fed up with the class not listening and yelled, ‘Will you lads stop messing with your nuts!’  And then she blushed a mighty red.

He came home one day to say that he had accidentally got into trouble.  He came across a crowd of students walking to the hall and, being a nosey little git – for which we are always scolding him – he followed the crowd to see what was happening.  What was happening was that they had all been up to mischief and they were being sent for punishment in the hall, and Spud found himself being punished right along with them.  He told a teacher that he hadn’t been involved and she said he could take it anyway for being a nosey little git (or words to that effect).  He was surprised to find that instead of indignation, all he got from us was a ‘serves you right for being nosey, you nosey little git.’ 

Talking of being nosey…once, on my way into the school where I help out, I passed a group of staff in the head’s doorway, chatting, and as I passed someone said excitedly, ‘My husband phoned and said “Madonna’s bouncing on our trampoline!” ’  I passed back that way at least four times before I was able to collar the head and find out what had happened.  Turns out ‘Madonna’ is the name of the woman’s pet hen.  Either way, it’s a bizarre image of a scrawny old bird bouncing on a trampoline in someone’s back garden.

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This prompt was to write about an unlikely pairing – a speaker and an event that wouldn’t normally go together, for example, Nick Clegg becoming Prime Minister.  It led to an idea about racism (the Lib Dem’s terrible immigration policy still being fresh in my mind) but it’s not quite there yet; it has no title and I will definitely be coming back to it.  I must post a poem a day, however, so here it is:

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Dog asks, ‘Cat, will you marry me?
I’ll give you dedication. 
Add your devious nature and
we could found a nation.’ 
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Cat sighs, ‘Dog, I am surprised:
you’ve ideas above your station.
We could never marry;
it would be miscegenation.’

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I have been dying to use the word ‘miscegenation’ in a poem ever since I first heard it when studying Dracula.

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Bill ‘n’ George’s Excellent Adventure

I have the day off today.  Yesterday was good again, particularly my home-made lunch of chicken & coleslaw sandwiches and a pudding of jelly (sorry, Tory Boy; but you forgot to take them with you and they have a sell-by date).  I haven’t eaten jelly for years; it was delicious, if mushy.

It was while eating lunch that I overheard this: ‘I have to clean three times a day, every day; I think I caught that OCD off me mate.’

I have learned some stuff this week, so it has been worth the effort of getting out of my pyjamas before ten.  I am a bit slow on the uptake, though: it was only yesterday that I realised the course has an actual name, Launch Pad; we are ladies who launch.  It also clicked that everyone except me is a single mother.  That explains the three-hour session on childcare provision and benefits.  I was wondering.

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I thought last night’s leaders’ debate was much better than last week’s; we saw some blood and guts, at least.  David Cameron’s problem is still that he’s too polite, however; that’s the problem with being well brought up.

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Today is St George’s Day and Shakespeare’s purported birth and death days.  As one sounds like a great story and the other wrote a great story, it is fitting that they share a date.  I will be out waving the flag in our local park tomorrow; I wonder if the George Formby Society will be present?  Nothing says ‘English’ like a bunch of old men on ukuleles.

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This prompt is a wordle:

 

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If you haven’t come across it before, a wordle is a picture of words, like a category or tag cloud on a blog.  You put in a whole bunch of text and it makes a picture, with the most-used words appearing bigger than the least-used words.  Here’s a wordle of what I have written so far:

 

Um, scrap that…I’m on the Hub’s computer and I’m not allowed to change anything without his permission and Wordle wants me to install thingies before it creates a wordle for me and I dare not on pain of prolonged tickling of the feet, so you’ll have to have a go yourself.

We were supposed to use one or all of the words in the wordle.  I went with ‘reverberate’ because I was thinking of ‘the shot heard around the world’ which exemplifies the meaning of the word, but I left it out in the end, because it didn’t work in the poem.

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Why I Left South Africa

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A bullet cudgelled

a child’s skull,

forcing hatred from me.

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A Good Day

Good fun yesterday at Housewives ‘r’ Us: we had a debate on the relative merits of employment versus unemployment. The consensus seemed to be that the number one reason any of us wanted to work was to escape the kids. Second was money, because it enabled us to bribe them to let us go.

I have to say I am really enjoying the daily routine of having to shower, catch a bus and take a packed lunch. It’s nice to have a reason to get up in the morning besides beat my best score. I have been floundering a little since graduating; I just don’t have enough to do and housework has never interested me beyond straightening the cushions in the lounge. I am really hopeful that this will lead to a job. I hear the hospital is looking for cleaners.

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Day 20’s prompt was ‘perfectly flawed’.  I’m going to paste part of it here because I like the story: In ancient times, Persian rug makers were deeply religious and believed that only God could make something perfect. They would deliberately drop in a small faulty stitch, a flaw, into each Persian rug. In doing so, a ‘Persian Flaw’ revealed the rug maker’s devotion to God — Karel Weijand.  Yesterday was a good day and I got a senryu out of it; I had to really think to find the flaw because I was happy, but I have a good standby; see if you can spot it:

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A Perfect Afternoon

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No money, but sun,

my love, and the hope of what

may come.  Contentment.