Category Archives: Challenges and Writing Prompts

enough

Peace for Ukraine
enough

it is too horrible to bear
the evil rained on innocents
by megalomaniacs bent
on spreading terror everywhere
women and children, they don’t care
the world sees with open eyes
the fire falling from the skies
the cities leveled, sirens sound
while families huddle underground
this is how democracy dies

close your eyes and ears
act like everything’s okay…
enough! i cannot

~kat

Napowrimo 2022 Day Three - Off Topic. I just couldn’t bring myself to lift entire stanzas of work from another poet. I know what it’s like to bleed for those words and lines that fit together just so. I gave it a go, spent hours perusing anonymous’ poems and public domain listings…but my initial feeling was the same. It is unlike blackout poetry where one lifts a random word here and there to create something new. And so here is a late entry for the third day, on a matter that tears at my heart, as it must for many of you. Peace to you…oh let there be peace.

The poetry forms i’m using here are the Décima and Haibun.

vernal vespers

The view from my front porch…how I love this place! -kat 2022
vernal vespers

hush, ‘tis evensong
day’s fiery dénouement
sol’s final glisk

~kat

NaPoWriMo2022 - Day 2 Prompt: write a poem based on a word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account devoted to obscure and interesting English words. My word of choice: Glisk.

A GLISK is a brief glimpse of warm sunshine.

A Dinner Date Dilemma


A Dinner Date Dilemma

“Darling, dinner’s at 8,” George called to his wife of twenty-two years, we don’t want to be late.”

“Almost ready,” she winked, sashaying by, “I couldn’t resist, was on sale, what you think?”

As he glanced at his watch, George thought to himself, ‘Don’t say it Rita….please don’t…there she goes!’

“Does it make me look fat?” Rita blurted, fluttering her lashes while striking a pose.

Any gentleman will tell you it’s a no win situation… a trap that few escape unscathed!

“I love the color Rita; how it brings out your eyes, it’s new you say? And your hair…like it swept off your beautiful face in that way. Always love that perfume how it wafts through the room…”

“Geooorrrge…!”

“Are those new shoes? I hope they’re comfortable. Can’t have them pinching your toes while we dance, come now, let’s go.”

Rita shifted her pose, tapped her foot on the floor, and side-eyed this lovely man she adored. “You didn’t answer my question…!”

George squirmed, ‘oh hell,’ he thought. “Well…”

“Shhhhhushh, Georgie stop. Don’t answer me that, of course I look fat, no dress can hide that!”

Rita rushed to his side, kissed his shiny bald head. “I love you,” she said.

“And I love you Rita, my beautiful girl,” George smiled, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.“

~kat

Day One NaPoWriMo 2022 - The idea is to write your own prose poem that, whatever title you choose to give it, is a story about the body. The poem should contain an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one crisp visual image.

ode to an aging fragile heart

ode to an aging fragile heart

the icy tip of Reaper’s sickle
lightly tapped her shoulder yesterday
her breathless voices gently whispered,
“winter is coming”, she heard Hel say

oh hush you pounding pitter-patter
elephant dancing upon her chest
it’s just a passing ‘bleeping’ blip
but maybe it’s time for her to rest

let someone else with nose to grindstone
deal with the dread deliverables
the Piper’s fluting, shrill, pricks her ears
background ‘music’ to this crucible

forced to face the inconvenient
unpaid debt now due Mortality,
“it’s much later than you think, my dear”
youth is but a fleeting memory

Shadow follows close, a breath away
she’s not ready to engage Her yet
‘she will survive’, the mantra of her life
drives her in this battle to the death

~kat

NaPoWriMo 2022 - Early-Bird Prompt - I decided to do a rhyming poem that borrows some style quirks from Emily Dickinson and her poem “Because I Could Not Stop Fo Death”.

The artwork is a little something i whipped up in a drawing app on my phone…my canvas is digital these days! ❤️

mother oak

mother oak

she stands, deeply rooted
amidst a grove of shallow-footed
firs, bursting with fruit; her evergreen
friends taunting her as she blushes
red, surrendering her modesty
to the cool winds of autumn

what dreams she’ll dream when
winter comes, memories wakened
in the deep, dark loam, buried there
where only her roots can taste them,
memories of seasons past, of
seed-burst longing to breach the
grave, to life, to feel the sun upon
her face and the sweet seductive
breeze, the thrill of greening

she stands, deeply rooted
amidst a grove of shallow-footed
firs, some felled by tempests, or the ax
destined to waste away to dust covered
in gaudy baubles and tinsel, their
ever-greenness an illusion laid
bare at the altar of lost souls, and
rendered to ash at vanity’s bonfire

yes, she stands, deeply rooted
in the bosom of she who keeps
this blue orb spinning, sailing
through a sea of sweet milk just
far enough from the sun not
to be consumed and close enough
to the moon to see her reflection,
light and shadow colliding, in
ecstasy, heart and soul all-knowing

~kat

-Inspired by a new book I’m reading… “Seeds From the Wild Verge” by Brendan Ellis Williams