Donna Williams' April 2008, 48 hr, Poetry Challenge

Donna Williams’ April 2008, 48 hr, Poetry Challenge

April1

Each month I send out a challenge for those on my mailing list to send me a 1-2 word topic they’d like me to write a poem to and I must write all the poems in the challenge within 48 hours. People CAN’T send names (yes, everyone wants one named after their child 😉 but they can send other 1-2 word titles. Each sender only gets me writing one poem per poetry challenge and the more surreal the challenge, the better.

This month I’ve decided to give everyone out there in blog land the chance to join in. So feel free to send me a 1-2 word title in the comments below.

And, because some of you are budding poets yourselves, this is now where you can also ask other commenters 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

OK, so here’s the poems to the poem titles sent so far:

ANGELIC SOUL

As I was passing by a hole

I heard a strange angelic soul

Into the dark it called me down

And sang in such angelic sounds.

Hypnotised I felt so numb

I felt no fear, no need to run.

I put a hand into the hole

Then it wrenched me in, body and soul.

I plummetted to depth so great

I lost all thought of love, of hate

I lost all sense of body and mind

I lost all memory of human kind.

Then hit the sides as down I fell

and landed in a place called hell.

The song I’d heard now seared my ears

And back to haunt me crashed my fears

And there was no angel to be found

On this dank and stagnant depressive ground.

I clawed my way back up the wall.

I heard now only demons call.

There’s nothing up there, I heard them lie

But I determined that I still would try.

T’was years since I fell down that hole

Since I found within a place of light,

My own angelic soul.

OK, so my next challenge was ‘Moonlight Doorway’, here goes.

MOONLIGHT DOORWAY

Space, that’s all it was,

All.

And everything.

The moon had kissed the earth

Where walls could not hold it back.

I stepped into the space

Bathed in moonlight

Standing in a moonlight doorway.

And my next challenge was APRIL FOOLS

APRIL FOOLS

We met upon page

Armed, adorned, with our words

Waltzing with phrase

On a blog to be heard.

Word smithing our trade

And words as our tools

The poets in April

Were no April Fools.

And here’s FLUTTER TWIST

FLUTTER TWIST

The hands held tight upon my wrist

My heart a flutter, dare I twist,

Out of this wrangle, we both know,

Is the place where only maddies go.

What fool sees love in killer’s eyes,

Yet sees through Barbie’s thin disguise?

What insight managed to out run,

The death wish I have overcome?

And next up is SILENT VOICE

SILENT VOICE

She’d echoed words, once upon time

When faces smiled

And photographs sat proud

On walls.

Then walls were everywhere

As silence became louder

And others became her voice.

Then freedom through a keyboard voice,

Such blasphemy,

How would she ever speak?

Her silence seared them

In their impotence.

In ignorance, they had presumed

disturbance, even choice.

They couldn’t see the language of behaviour,

They wouldn’t trust the typed out self,

The wouldn’t see the person,

In the person with the silent voice.

Copyright Donna Williams, April 2008

Next was KABOOM

KABOOM

Beware the autie with gas stove

Attention span may tend to rove

And hope at least they lit it gas

For if they didn’t best run fast

Because the autie may come back

On the same or on some other track

A match in hand into the room

And gone in one shocking KABOOM

Then was NEVER ENOUGH

NEVER ENOUGH

Only a life time to seed,

to sprout,

to grow,

to bloom

and die

Life, playing hard to get

leaves the lucky wanting more.

And here’s POETIC CAT

POETIC CAT

As I went to put upon my hat,

I met a most poetic cat,

Curled up inside, it now sprang out

And in cat-in-ness I heard it shout,

In poetry of lands afar,

Liasons with a movie star,

A dodgy deal on a moonlit night,

A wound hard earned in a cat fight.

Then just as I stood gaping there

It made it’s exit up the stairs.