10 - Sweet Symphony

#NaPoWriMo Day 10 and tonight I’ve been writing a free verse inspired by the Random Song Generator giving me a track by RAYE, and autoplay taking me to another in the album, and suddenly I was hooked and looking up the lyrics and then bigger pictures of the cover art and what seems like no time later, here is a free-write stream-of-consciousness. Enjoy the album – I intend to!

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the nine preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/sweet-symphony-155326024

---

Image first this time, since the poem is responding to it, sourced from the artist’s website, and I dearly hope I’m not going to get into trouble for this, as this piece is, essentially, a recommendation…

She flies a kite;
bright above the flat
land, she opens a door
to impossibility.
She has carved a blue-white
place beyond the tumult,
she is saying ‘This too will pass.
but ask yourself if there’s a way
to make it hurry up, come on.’

‘See me: I am red against the green, the
grey, I am day in night, and
night in day, bathing in contradiction,
strong arms straining against the
gravity of the situation, dazzling in
satin, not just waiting for it to
happen. I demand happiness, and
I will lean my whole weight into this.’

It is theatre, my dear – it is all
a show, and you should know that,
on closer inspection, the clouds are
a flat on wheels, the light too
bright and focused to be anything but
electrical. But the woman glimmers,
real as red against green against grey,
saying, ‘I stood on one foot for this,
I wrote my heart into the lyrics
underpinning it, everything is as palpable
as the feelings invoked by my voice,
my words, the soar and surge of chorus,
don’t ignore this, it can contain hope.’

And so this barely edited free write
takes flight, despite any misgivings,
singing home the lingering visions
inflicted on me, joyfully, carrying a
piece of blue dutifully with me.
The grass will rebound from under
the wheels, the bare feet; the satin
will lose its heat and uncrease, but
these feelings remain real, and
that’s a gift worth writing home about.

9 - Maximal Drama!

#NaPoWriMo Day 9 and, owing to ill health and another day of sleeping for what turned out to be 14 hours(!), I’m catching up a little frantically today, knowing how difficult it gets if you let it slip and keep saying “Oh, I can catch up – it’ll be fine! So, given an interesting combination to work with by my Prompt-o-matic Spreadsheetatron™, I’ve been writing a piece of alliterative verse inspired by Max Devrient. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of him either, and it took getting an automated translation of the German Wikipedia page, which is (unsurprisingly) packed far more with information, to find out enough to make this piece, where I decided that “alliterative” in this instance meant “all the words have to begin with either M or D”. (If you’re keen to find out more about this fascinating chap, this page is quite the treasure trove, including some delightful photos I wasn’t sure if I had the rights to use!)

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the eight preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/maximal-drama-155321764

---

My mother made me
delve deep, destiny’s
metric demonstrated.

Disappointments dog
men mirroring me.
Dented masks; dull drips.

Dynamic mastery
marries, denied divorce,
making do, multiplying.

Deflected, movies magnify
my dramatic definition,
monk making much money.

Deep down, darkness
deals death; daughters
dispense desperate doom.

Diverted, my midwinter
directs, monarchs match
my merits dutifully.

Döbling decorated,
my moniker delineates
driving. Magnificent!

Max Devrient as “Zawisch” in Grillparzer's “King Ottokar’s Fortune and End” at the Vienna Burgtheater, courtesy of Wikipedia

8 - Erasing Eris

Things you need to know:

1. Eris is the unpleasant, bitter, Greek deity of Chaos and Discord.
   
2. This took me for-bloody-ever…

#NaPoWriMo Day 8 and yesterday I sculpted an erasure poem, inspired by a prompt of “Eridanus”, courtesy of my handy-dandy randomised prompts-and-topics spreadsheet. And, being me, I went a bit extra with it all (we’re all astonished, I know), and decided that the thing I would be erasing would be the entire bloody Wikipedia article, and then, in order for the audio version to match the spirit of the visual version, that I would record me reading the entire bloody Wikipedia article aloud and cut the concomitant bits out of the recording for authenticity.

I can certainly say I’ve learned some things, though what they might be, only time can tell… (The image description for this is going to be… special, for one…)

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the seven preceding it) there. And it is certainly an experience! The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/erasing-eris-155174189

---

Two halves of the redacted article side-by-side:

Or, if you’d like to see the whole darned thing in a oner:

---

Fine, I’ll have pity on you – here’s the version rendered into plain words:

Eris stretches along the south.
It is a river. It remains one of the
real features of the blue-white years,
whose tradition means “the end”.

Peculiar observations indicate poles
spinning extremely rapidly.
The noteworthy Beta tradition called
a blue-white Earth. Its foot gives
indistinguishable amateurs primary
binary magnitude; visible, divisible:
a triple system consisting of an
orange main star,
a white dwarf,
and a red dwarf.

The maga is easily visible white.
The maga have a period of 50 years.
Artists impress, ran –
one extra orange-hued star,
one planet, a period of 7 years.

Supervoid cold spot is large
(devoid of gaies),
meter superseded only by
speculation that the void may be
due to quantum entanglement
between our universe and another.

Deep-sky visible in small amateurs
with large instruments
light the northeast. Eris is a faint reflection,
an ancient remnant illuminated by grand design.
barred gays center an unusual structure:
a grand design spiral that exists tightly wound.

The Nu Eris shower radiate cons every year;
the parent is unidentified.
Another peaks, dips his paws into Eris;
this mirror depicts a river,
flowing into the south.
According to one theory, the marsh is
held sacred to the domain of the Abyss:
a myth of the father, no strength to control
and so veers, scorching both Earth and heaven.
Zeus intervene and cast him to the burning river!

Eris cannot be seen from China.
The White Tiger of the West was
classified knowledge of western stars.
Citation needed.

7 - Advance

#NaPoWriMo Day 7 and today I’ve been writing a sonnet inspired by the prompt “JD Vance Learns in Real Time Trump Left Him Out of Iran Attack Plans”. This one will also get sent to the weekly Rattle: Poets Respond challenge, because hope springs eternal, and why not get another twofer in there? (And if you fancy learning how to write your own sonnet, why not come to one of my workshops on exactly how to do that?)

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the six preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/advance-155057788

---

Exposed, you send a memo to yourself,
as, in full view, you’re ridiculed, alone.
They ask why you’ve been left up on the shelf –
it’s something you can’t see; you must be shown.

You’re never more than one nudge from the drop;
when elevated, check your footing’s fast,
or else you’ll end up head-deep in the slop
that’s everywhere – how long can this thing last?

A while ago, you chanced upon a show
that demonstrated toxic benthic vents,
and even though it poisoned all below,
the best-adapted worms thrived on the scents

of threats to normal ways of backboned life.
Your mission? Stay afloat on hot-aired strife.

---

The Yeti crab (Kiwa hirsuta), discovered at a depth of 2,300 meters on a hydrothermal vent of the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge; photo by Alexis Fifis, via Wikipedia

Because that’s how these things go, subsequent to writing this, I got lost in a maze of trying to find pictures of hydrothermal vents (and/ or their creatures) and now I know a bit more than I bargained for…

6 - Douché

#NaPoWriMo Day 6 and today I’ve been writing a piece of free verse inspired by the “official” prompt yesterday to write about things we dislike, “… particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.” Challenge accepted!

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the five preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/douche-154960772 (and it has sound effects!)

---

I hate taking showers,
growling at the necessity
for nakedness and standing,
and my skin sheds anyway,
take the grime with it!
Stupid, itchy, blithering,
witless skin. Shut up!

I’m in now, glowering at
flat, white surfaces, shivering
in the chill of an unplugged
updraft from somewhere,
staring at familiar objects,
objecting all the while,
grinding my teeth.

UGH! The water hits my
griping feet, sleet-cold,
growing violently hot,
scotch bonnet sensation
grating, turning skin from
blue to red, and I hop and
test and flex and grimace.

I sweep the grudgingly correct
temperature up my shuddering
frame, blame society’s weird
propriety and turn to get drenched,
wrenching a comb through
tangled locks and cursing,
nursing each strand free.

I go through the soaping
motions, swaying in the heat
beating against scalp and
shoulders, moulding my
mouldering bits by ancient ritual
into a different me, free of
crust, chemically sweet.

Then my timer chimes, the
real world flits in, reminding
me of outside responsibilities,
a grief of gravity claiming
this blameless mer-wraith,
making me desist, persistent
in its insistent linearity.

I hate quitting showers!

---

Portrait of the Poet as a Wet Little Guy

I went searching for a Creative Commons picture which responded to “grumpy shower”. What I got was a swamp of GenAI nonsense so, on the grounds that doing it yourself badly is better than using GenAi, behold, an original!

5 - Inflexible Meritocracy

#NaPoWriMo Day 5 and it is Sunday, so I’m taking advantage of the bibliomancy prompt I gave the Allographic Write-In to make what turned out to be a somewhat fatalistic rant against the symptoms of autocracy, on a variety of scales, via a quote from a book about astronomy, that I happened to have nearby because I wanted to check about Rhiannon’s place in Welsh astrography for yesterday’s piece. I bounced via Perseus and Medusa to misogyny and marginalisation, and thereby pattern-matching and prophesy. So, you know, nothing too major… The title speaks to the etymology of the names of the Greek Fates, especially Atropos.

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the four preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/inflexible-154851101

---

Where the arm of Perseus curves around to hold his shield, there are several interesting star clusters worth observing.

Dark Land, Dark Skies (The Mabinogion in the Night Skies)
Martin Griffiths, 2017

Where his arm curves, something glimmers,
a shimmer in the half-light, a collection of
burning elements that may protect him.
Some say it had a woman’s face, once;
something to possess, cursed for its
rarity, high market value, hanging in the
balance of men’s regard – something
only the divine could stand against.

And yet. How fearsome to be someone
used and rejected, ejected from humanity,
disappearing into myth and yet made
to go on serving after being cleaved from
the weft. We are a warped warning;
for daring to have ungovernable hair we’re
a sinful admonishment to freeze, petrified by
whispers that those the gods favour
can be cast lower than a snake’s belly,
and jealousy is bitterest when it
echoes from the mouths of power.

This stanza should be a volta, a turn from
the established narrative, a way to make
this story happier, the powerless rise up,
abusers affronted at being confronted,
but I haven’t found the solution, hope
only we’re not doomed to repetition, and
that lessons learned from classics can
be steps; foundations, not predictions.

Fate’s a tricky thing, and eavesdroppers
on the future never prosper by it,
locked in an agony of wanting to stop the
jackboot, halt the tide, and craving the
grim frisson of being right. Tucked far enough
into the margin, you get a better view of
the larger pattern, and, hampered by the need
to see it complete, we compete with curiosity
to grasp the shears, delineate what’s next.

And maybe this time…
Maybe. Please.

Image is of a Medusa cameo ring from the Altes Museum via Wikipedia

4 - Yr Eos

Day 4 of NaPoWriMo and I made a spreadsheet to give me random prompts of form and topic. While testing it out the other night, it gave me “Blank Verse” and “Rhiannon”, who happens to be one of my favourite mythological figures. (I was once cast as her in an audiodrama and I nearly expired of excitement – the title for this came about because the sound designer used nightingale birdsong behind my voice.) She has no connection to inspiration/ the awen that I know of, being a shrewd stateswoman and strong woman associated with horses and sovereignty (and sarcasm), but her advice to go slow and her association with (healing) birdsong turned into an exploration of patience in association with creativity. And I thoroughly ignored the notion of blank verse and used a series of chained clogyrnachau instead…

If you’re subscribed to my Patreon, you can hear an exclusive recording of this (and other things) read aloud. The recording is here.

---

She is still with us, don’t you know?
She tells us: “Take your time, be slow…
“The trees are heavy
“with birds, so merry.
“Listen, let the words flow.

“Child, the muse exacts no levy,
“the fruit comes in its time, very
“generous and true,
“because it is you,
“and creation’s messy!

“Cariad, take the longer view:
“the words will come out when they’re due.
“If shy, you must coax,
“not lash them to yokes.
“Trust in patient virtue.”

Her voice lingers beyond the oaks,
I close my eyes, let it invoke
magic, sweet and slow
(she’s still here, you know).
Let her guide my penstrokes.

Image from the Lady Charlotte Guest translation of The Mabinogion, by S. Williams, via Wikipedia

If you’d like to try out a clogyrnach or two, why not use my Repeating and Concrete Forms spreadsheet, which also has some syllable-counting forms like this, to help you?