Bastille magazine

I’m soon to be appearing in Bastille magazine, a new(ish) lit magazine based in Paris. Definitely looks worth a read. You can also follow them on wp at http://spokenwordparis.org/issue-zero/

Defeated … by the ballad

Apparently there is just something about ballads that I cannot write. Day 25 of the napowrimo had an exercise to write a ballad, and I just couldn’t do it. There is something about the rolling, rhyming lines of the ballad that I couldn’t do. Not that I can’t rhyme. I have written quite a few rhyming things in the past and all of them seemed to work fine. But the ballad seems an insurmountable obstacle.

Oddly, this isn’t the first time that this has happened recently with a ballad. I’ve also been working through exercises from Stephen Fry’s excellent ‘The Ode Less Travelled’, a book I would absolutely recommend to beginning or even advanced poets everywhere. What is an advanced poet exactly? I’m not sure. But anyway. There was an exercise in that book to complete a ballad started by Stephen, and I couldn’t do that either. I’d written one once before (done the same exercise) and all that kept popping into my head was the lines I’d already written. Clearly there is something about the ballad that drives one towards insanity, or at the very least, non-productivity.

So I shall end this quick post with a question or two. Have you ever run into a block when writing something, especially a ballad? Do you have any advice for me writing ballads? And finally, what on earth is your appendix for anyway?

Day 24 – Anagrammatica

My voice

Lacks rime

Or racks lime

If you prefer

I’m a Mac liker,

A cadaver kid/crave kid,

Chaser of evil drama,

It seems to trip me up

Acid, viral,

Possibly suicidal lemur

Experimenter

Card diva, card carrying chemist

Qi manipulator,

Random word particle accelerator.

 

Day 23 – triolet

A triolet is a poem of the form ABaAabAB where A and B are repeated lines and a and A rhyme, as do b and B. I’m sure I could make all that into a poem but I don’t think I shall.

It makes me think of diamond rings

the house all empty and decayed

a lonely voice, abandoned, sings

It makes me think of diamond rings

All falling and precarious things

An eye so pretty, yet dismayed,

It makes me think of diamond rings

the house all empty and decayed

Day 22 – Earth day

In the beginning was the word

And the word was ‘ouch’

And the word was in pain

And the pain was palpable

In the beginning was the word

And the word was ‘seriously?’

And the word was flabbergasted

And the word looked upon all that man had made and said

‘It is not good’

In the beginning was the word

And the word was considered

And the thought behind it was great

And from the word sprung many tiny violets

And the word was settled

And the word was peaceful

And the word was ‘earth’

Day 21 – Fortune cookies

I found a new place for prompts – thank you http://www.napowrimo.net/.

 

You will bring great happiness to others

You will be as fluid as mercury

You will travel to strange and unusual destinations, and stay inside the whole time you are there

You will meet a tall handsome stranger on the bus, and never say hello

You will fall in love and out of love and in love and out of love…

You will have a child whom you love above all other things

You will bring great unhappiness to others

Beware of those who throw tomatoes

You will never stop moving

People in glass houses with stones are probably up to no good

You will have an unhappy birthday

You will eat too much and feel bad about it the next day

You will never learn your lesson

You will stop, and in stopping, learn to live

Day 20 – Love

After today there are no more prompts on the prompts post I’m using. Does anyone have any ideas for prompts I could use?

 

So.

The sharp points

In days gone by

All pointed at me

And I said ‘Look at me’

Whereas now I would say the opposite

And by saying it I met you

Always sitting at the front of the class

(I always sat at the back)

You wore that skirt I loved

And clutched your books in slender fingers

And we crashed together like two waves bound for the same shore

And we held hands under the table

And I caught you when you jumped off the steps

In a puff of rosin

And we read together, our fingers entwined with the lines

You touched me like punctuation

We skimmed stones over the tai hei yõ

And I felt my present drift away

Like little fluffy clouds

There was an ocean of you

I could dive into

 

Sure, sometimes there were storms

And the waves would crash against the beach huts

And the rain would run down the buildings like tears

But, until the day I poured away the ocean

You always had your piano-slim hand in mine

And your smile brushed against me

Like light shining off the ocean

Day 19 – Guilt

A day behind again, sigh… I shall have to keep up better with myself

 

I remember

That day

When you wrapped yourself in my pixels

Sent that poisoned note

Written in my poisoned hand

With my poisoned arms around you

And I told you that those letters

Were each little lies

That they added up to deceit, slander and aspersion

Vile calumny

I poured out words onto the red hot surface

Watched them fizzle and disappear

And I never told you

That every horrible word

Was true

Day 18 – Betrayal

You are

Dark trickster

Hidden in the hollow of the hand

The pill

That opens the eyes

The coin

That flashes across the palm

These feelings

Are not my own

The locus of everything is this little white pill

And you said

That the pill would become a calendar

Would become a star

Would become the world

And now I am trapped

In the sphere

Of this little white pill

Link

Bad Robot Poetry

Today you can find one of my pieces on Bad Robot Poetry. End statement.