2021.12 Count Your Blessings

1. Night-quiet, everything distant (save ancient heating).


2. The pervading fragrance of clean laundry, new paper, pencils.


3. Food safe from contamination or theft (though not forgetfulness).


4. My hand on the volume.


5. My books on the shelves.


6. My laugh, as late or loud as I need it to be.


7. A throat full of song to lay on quivering air.


8. Space in which to be fatigued. (Sleep, sleep, sleep!)


9. Space in which to be energised. (Dance, dance, dance!)


10. A farewell to jealousy.


11. A farewell to lies.


12. Knowing my worth, my priority.

My response to the @allographica Day 12 prompt (create a 12 step guide to happiness/ unhappiness) became so incredibly convoluted that I had to abandon two separate versions until I said: keep it simple, love, and so I did.

I found this image in a LOT of places, with no indication where it originated!

2020.6 Sins of Omission

I am not:
• Baking my own bread
• Remembering to clap for the NHS
• Setting up a new enterprise
• Exercising

I am not:
• Learning how to knit
• Sitting daily in meditative contemplation
• Abating my binge-rewatching sessions
• Exercising

I am not:
• Polishing the floor
• Forging a new neighbourhood spirit
• Lifting my tits on the regular
• Exercising

I am not:
• Spring cleaning
• Defragging my hard drive
• Writing a magnum… anything…
• Exercising

I am not:
• Reorganising my bookshelves
• Delving the depths of old mistakes
• Making the most of all the opportunities in existence
• Exercising

I am not:
• Brewing my own beer
• Re-roofing the garden sheds
• Heading to bed nightly at an advisable time
• Exercising

I am not:
• Rediscovering photography
• Weaving my own bamboo pants
• Gathering nettles for nutritious recipes
• Exercising

I am not:
• Finding fresh new ways to make my brain develop
• Devoting my existence to my accidental pet
• Getting any more fluent in Welsh
• Exercising

I am not:
• Particularly clean
• Lean or green
• Meaningfully occupied at all times
• Exercising

I am not:
• Coaching my (imaginary) children
• Mending any of my ways
• Persuading anyone successfully to finish Will-writing
• Exercising

I am still not:
• Drinking any alcohol
• Hopping off any of my other wagons
• Flagging neighbours as Undesirables
• Exercising

I am still:
• Writing poems (slowly)
• Socialist (to an increasing degree)
• Feeling love and that maybe I can thrive
• Alive

Illustration of Lazarus at the rich man's gate by Fyodor Bronnikov, 1886
Source: Wikiart

2019.6 A List of Things

Things That Bring Smiles

You breeze through the door;
You rock sideways in your seat,
Bursting with rockets.

Things That Won’t Leave

That sparkly bath bomb;
Grand National 2010;
Hair dye fingerprints.

Things You Don’t Remember

How I take my tea;
Open crisps: invitation;
That Grand National.

Things That Wake Me Up

Slammed doors – car or house;
My name, a kind hand stroking;
You suppressing tears.

Things That Send Me To Sleep

A kind hand, stroking;
Your voice shares that well-loved book;
Crackling woodfire.

Things That Bring Tears 

Too much compassion;
Sister Act: that one high note;
July’s final gasp.

Things That Spark Poetry

Injustice; work stress;
Family; love; eavesdropping;
Pivoting seasons;
Memories of home; the sea;
At the right time: anything.

Already falling behind my self-imposed target of two per day for the rest of the month, but I continue to strive with this Pillow Book-style poem (thanks for the prompt, NaPoWriMo), done as six senryū stanzas and one tanka, because that seemed appropriate for the original material.