I’ve run 48 hour poetry challenges for over a year and they were really popular.  But many people didn’t get their challenges in in the 48 hour window.  So for 2009, I’m doing it differently.  You now have 30 days to send in your poetry challenges.  So of you go – feel free to send me a TITLE or THEME to write to in the comments section and in the next 30 days, you’ll find I’ve responded by posting a poem here addressing it.   Come on, give it a try.And, because some of you are budding poets yourselves, this is now where you can also ask other commenters or me to challenge YOU with a title too. So let’s see what happens!

Also if you are a published, self published or street poet, this is where to let people know.

Donna Williams *)

author, artist, composer, screenwriter.

author of the poetry book, Not Just Anything , published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

http://www.donnawilliams.net

Kicking off the poetry for January is this one

THE NEWS by Donna Williams, Jan 09

We got a flag
and we got a nation
three cheers for right to mental masturbation
at push of a button, it’s neighbors be gone
’til the nine o’clock news sings it’s same old song

There’s streets full of body bags in Palestine
there’s rape in the Congo, but, hey, it’s not mine
there’s children aspiring to be a human bomb
there’s child soldiers whose childhood’s gone

there’s people missing who once had voices
and prostitute mothers who ran out of choices
there’s slavery making your labelled shoes
And it’s told to us nightly there on the news.

PENNY by Donna Williams, Jan 09

I found a penny.
A shiny penny
It’s mine, it’s mine.
How shall I spend it
spend it
How shall I spend…
A penny…
For your thoughts
for your… thoughts.

And in response to the request by Kathleen for ‘Terrier’ here’s my naughty rendition:

 TERRIER  by Donna Williams, Jan 09
Catch a falling dog,
and put it in your pocket
Save it for grumpy day.

Give it a tiara
Name it Doggy Princess Zara
It’ll wear designer coats on the right day.

It has the maddest little parties
With all the arty-farties
And they yap and snap and grizzle when they do.

It’s both small and temperemental
It’s design’s experimental
But at least it does the tiniest of poo.

It’s a glutton for attention
Some breeder’s silliest invention
But it loves the company, more the merrier.

It has this snarly little smile,
And it would surely take a while
For me to form attachment to a terrier.

Kay has challenged me with the title of ‘Graduation’, so here’s my poem:

GRADUATION by Donna Williams, Jan 09

I’ve passed,
I’ve past
My present, in my hands
Is mine
for the moment

And mined were the skills which got me here
and hear was what I had to do with meaning
to graduate.

And Kay, you asked for a title challenge, so here’s my challenge for you…’Management Says’  🙂

Marie, in Switzerland has asked for ‘Inner Landscape’.  So here it is:

INNER LANDSCAPE by Donna Williams Jan 09

Am I person, am I label
Am I fragmented or stable
Shall we dissect me on a table,
Like an experimental rat?

Am I a picture of diversity,
Some sociologist’s perversity,
In a room at university,
I played a manic cat.

He postured and he thrusted,
Suggestive language that disgusted,
I never hinted I mistrusted,
I knew men like this before.

He was a rep for one normality,
Took the right to play my sanity,
In the cause of his own vanity,
His hand would close that office door.

My inner landscape he had probed for,
His was written on that closed door,
Arrogance had made him so sure,
He was master of his game.

Familiar strangers he collected,
Suggestively he then erected,
A presentation that protected,
Him from facing up to shame.

And from Spencer, I have ‘Dreams’

DREAMS by Donna Williams Jan 09

Falling, falling, conscious mind,
Disintegrates like sense of place and time
and in it’s place a world of dreams
replace the many patchwork seams
which hold
the fragments of my soul
grounded
with diet, medication, love
a life, well rounded.

Rarely here I hear my words,
for mind can speak in perfect thirds
a world in which my screams
are but the music played in dreams.

And fly, I soar, tumble and land,
Trajectories intuitive, unplanned,
As life each moment here unfurled
Is just the stuff of a dream world.

And death, the dead, I see,
In dreams, they keep me company.
Their journies, here they share,
Into their open souls I stare.

And at the end of every ride,
I wake
The seller of the tickets
Leaves no receipts that one can take
Just back, to eat and work and walk
And find a waking voice with which to talk.

And here’s MINE, copyright Donna Williams Jan 09

MINE

I love you, love you, love you, mine

Can’t stop just now, I don’t have time,
To fit another misfit in
In my busy busy world of spin.

Immortal, sure, we truly are
and hide the plastic surgeon’s scar
turn up the CD in the car
Oh love of fellow man.

Surprise, surprise, we never see,
the destruction of the nobody,
Blinkered by scarceness of time
And fixation with what’s mine, mine, mine.

And here’s ONLINE, copyright Donna Williams Jan 09

 ONLINE

The crowd, so loud
as keyboard taps
the navigator leads the novice
without maps
into a realm more real than now or here
a world in which the forum grooms
the one it later jeers.

Where trolls, like pushers drive,
emotions to remind the dead
they’re still alive,
and spiders spin and knit and darn the net
and trojans wait for fools who might forget.

And here’s PLASTIC BAG, copyright Donna Williams Jan 09

PLASTIC BAG

Once upon a plastic bag,
a teen had slept,
a can
beside him on the stone
and stoned he was
a moment gone
to worlds far better than his own.

And time, it passed like dust,
upon a mirrored glass,
that one last time, was just
the stuff of minds lost in the vast urinal of his life

and strangers stranger then became
as patchwork stitched, unravelled
and he slowly went insane.

and I, had stood out on the fringe,
an audience to each cliffhanging binge
and watched addiction steal his soul
’til he was hardly… there at all.

And here’s RA DEE RA, copyright Donna Williams Jan 09

RA-DEE-RA

On a brighter note,
he pulled a tenner from a pocket deep
and gave it to a creep
for wasted time
and said
the voices in his head
had made it so
and he perhaps should know
given that they wore the same blue jeans.

And so they went on to party,
to the shallows near
where all the beautifuls do dance
and G strings signal new romance
for straight or queer.

And ra-dee-ra, their blah effused
recycled and reused from every mouth
from here to way down south,
in pure stored lines.

And none gave it a thought,
For all the minds were bought
by corporate gluttons and their shareholder declines.

And here’s OUR WORLD, copyright Donna Williams Jan 09

OUR WORLD

Pass the Twisties,
watch the show
the tickets free
the exits doors
lead out into a barefoot snow
and find you smile with glee
and pain
and the burning of an acid rain
is but a kiss
in this our world
beneath the lid
unseen
and in a vaccum
no-one hears a scream
But here just board this cheery train
A one way ticket for the true insane.

And here’s PROOF, copyright Donna Williams Jan 09

PROOF

Our trees we farm, then with an arm
we wipe our backsides clean
Fragrant, soft, and bleached
Down shiny porcelain, you spun to ocean dreams,

Greetings from chemical city, was the note we had attached
A thousand toxic products were the army we despatched.

We breathed you in upon a mountain,  wind,
and in the cities choked you dead,
tears fell like acid rain,
upon the trees your breath once fed.

And cried we did the day our narcissism came to our door,
We ate the cardboard in the cupboard
Our money useless, our morals poor.

We’d reconciled a thousand rifts, but couldn’t shift, the awful truth,
That we’d created our own destruction
Whilst we were waiting for the proof.