Each month I send out a challenge for people 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.

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

AND THE NOMINEES ARE…..

From Kathleen, I was challenged with “Quick Silver”

QUICK SILVER by Donna Williams, copyright Nov 2008

 Shifting, changing, rearranging
illusive as the wind,
one day lost, one day found
leaving chaos all around.
He gazed upon the pedestal,
then tore it down to rubble.
The face he wore reflected all,
but he lived inside a bubble
He ventured into lands afar,
internal landscapes were fair game.
Mercurial he was indeed,
that quicksilver had become his name.

From Bernie, I was challenged with “Heart Failure”

HEART FAILURE by Donna Williams, copyright Nov 2008

He waved his medals all about
and snarled his way upon the stage.
She paraded fundamentalism
a public rose to racist rage.
A nation showed it’s ugliness
worldwide on television screens.
Awash with such insanity
A nation dreaming different dreams.
Home of the free, land of the brave
The freedom of a corporate press,
As little people lost their jobs
A hairdo bought designer dress.
And I watched the game of politics
from an island called Australia
looking far across the ocean
at a nation with heart failure.

From Shirley, I was challenged with “EI versus IQ”

EI VERSUS IQ by Donna Williams, copyright Nov 2008

One and one and one are four.
Stupid forgot to close the door,
Again.
But then
Who would expect
She could perfect
a thing
when thing
is all she is,
and all she’d do,
with an under seventy I.Q.

Those eyes,
They haunt
somehow.
They look beyond the taunts.
Somehow,
they pierce your soul.
You sure
there’s no-one home at all?

E.I,
I see,
you’re perplexed why,
God or nature
might bestow,
a world beyond the world you know,
on she,
with shoulders bent,
from weight,
of your intelligence,
your I.Q score
of one-hundred-and-forty-four,
with which,
you pranced like some supremist bitch,
upon her name,
hoping there underneath your smirk,
she’d quietly

go insane.

From Kay, I was challenged with “Human’s Solstice”

HUMAN’S SOLSTICE by Donna Williams, copyright Nov 2008

Blissed I was.
The smile that ate my face
was broad as barren plains
and free as fallen apples
on a windy day.

I kissed the earth
and, ooo,
it even kissed me back,
so pleased with being
and life,
a gift,
that human’s solstice,
shortest day
in my long life.

Harsh, the next,
was filled
with piercing spears
and silent barbs
of hate and harm,
of power and of smarm,
and I, awash,
beneath a tidal wave,
the shipwreck
waiting for the dawn,
a bain,
that human’s solstice,
longest day
in my long life.

Amidst,
extremes, I noticed not
the days which simply were
consumed
in passing trivial tasks
and nine gazillion have to do’s,
where time
was lost without a blink
and days lost down the sink
of life so finite, set in stone,
was time…
yet time was not my own.

And Kay would like a challenge, so Kay… here’s your challenge… a poem to the title “Monolith”.

From Pina, I was challenged with “Inclusion”

NON-INCLUSION 60s STYLE by Donna Williams, copyright Nov 2008

The Emperor, he has new clothes
and so, as the 60s story goes
I was sent in
as children are
to primary school when it begins.

The 60s class began of course
with rules
which fell upon deaf ears
to sit, to watch, to look,
to hear.
And I,
a culture made of one,
a feral child
in this class just couldn’t be.

The call,
of course was made in haste,
disturbance of the peace
and precious time this teacher couldn’t waste
on special needs,
when her kids were
of better breeds.
This waste
of time would have no place
in her
fine 60s style sculpting
of the human race.

My mother,
fuelled by courage from a bottle
arrived,
the teacher here to throttle.
It was with such vulgar intrusion,
this lowly woman
insisted on
her feral child’s inclusion.

And warned, the teacher was,
to call again
for such a thing as to complain…
my mother warned, be sure,
your petty cries will be in vain.
This fist, you see now in it’s place
will surely
next be in your face.

And so, it was with purely burden
this feral, ‘damaged’, ‘little heathen’
was kept as welcome as a fart
included in that 60s class
a world apart.

From Alex, I was challenged with “Democratic Landslide”

DEMOCRATIC LANDSLIDE by Donna Williams, copyright Nov 2008

November fifth, in 2008
the world had held its breath
to wait
to take to hell the express train
all the way to hell’s front gate.

Economies around the world
were on their knees
as it unfurled
upon the screens, through radio waves
the news we may just yet be  saved.

An end to torture, wholesale slaughter,
illegal wars made by design,
an end to wholesale wastage by a culture bent on ‘mine’
an end to strong-arm tactics in the trade amidst the poor
an end to social cancer in an era bent on more,
an end to white supremacy, separatism and the status quo,
an end to jobs all shipped away along with Plumber Joe,
an end to slaughter of the polar bears on Alaska’s melting ice
and a start to an America that had a chance to pass for ‘nice’.

Obama held the hope that day, not only of his nation,
he delivered in a landslide, a global feeling of salvation.