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Printed from https://web1.writing.com/main/books/item_id/2299350-Promptly-4-and-5
Rated: 13+ · Book · Cultural · #2299350

Poems for years 4 and 5 of the Promptly Poetry Challenge.

A year's worth of poems, every week for 52 weeks, spanning 2023 and 2024, plus the year following, from August 2024 to August 2025 (provided I live that long, of course).
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June 5, 2025 at 12:03pm
June 5, 2025 at 12:03pm
#1090787


Point of View

Sand castles in the air
and dust storms on the way
dreams make weather fair
but life will make us pay.

Happy endings abound
sometimes they really do
too often they rebound
when all is told and through.

Some will hope for colour
try always for the best
pessimist world’s duller
but outlasts all the rest.



Line count: 12
Rhymed abab
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 43
Prompt: As per illustration.
June 4, 2025 at 11:48am
June 4, 2025 at 11:48am
#1090688
Sound

What is that whistling sound that I hear?
Like an electrical hum of machinery;
I’m unable to say if it’s distant or near,
it might even be part of the scenery.

Not a hum or a buzz, a hiss or a tune,
it is white noise with no corners or reason -
constant and yet shy, it inhabits the room,
without crescendo, it wants no completion.

The other sounds bleached and cast from my ear
while this monotonous sound becomes rife;
not conditioning air nor inspiring fear,
I know it at last - it’s the rhythm of life.



Line count: 12
Rhymed abab
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 42
Prompt: Listen. What’s the most prominent sound you hear? Write about it.
June 2, 2025 at 10:45am
June 2, 2025 at 10:45am
#1090503
Silence

Silence waits in the grave.

On the mountain peaks the wind
whispers of eternity
in the deepest abyss the darkness
echoes with liquid dreams
in the stillness of starless night
blood pounds in the ear
in the sun-speckled spaces in the wood
the cricket saws and sings

birds punctuate the drowsy air
insects buzz and creak
distant highways hum and thrum
cities converse in traffic tones
microwaves beep
and teevees chatter
children yell
and dogs bark.

Silence waits in the grave.



Line count: 18
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 41
Prompt: Write a poem about silence.
May 31, 2025 at 4:15pm
May 31, 2025 at 4:15pm
#1090369
Wayfarer

Bird of endless summer, I’ve heard the word,
word of wisdom but never winter’s bird;
fall creeps in and she hears the season’s call,
call unto the flock when the leaves do fall -
so the gathering leaves before the snow
(snow may freeze the land and hunger bite so).

Goal of bird’s united aim, the opposite pole,
pole of north to southern waste their sole goal,
far the journey in pursuit of a star,
star recedes at night and day lures afar,
turn the world of summer-bent Arctic Tern,
tern travels on and back again in turn.



Line count: 12
Form: Mirror Sestat
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 40
Prompt: Write a Mirror Sestat.
May 30, 2025 at 1:41pm
May 30, 2025 at 1:41pm
#1090289


May

Emptied box upon the bed,
clutter on the blanket spread -
an open book long half read,
notepad, specs, and roses (dead),
bottle with some green perfume,
forgotten scent fills the room,
morning coffee gone stone cold
calendar speaks of times now old,
a note I thought thrown away,
long lost greeting, “Hello, May.”

I remember well that day -
you smiled before you went away;
gone for years and once returned,
wrote that note before I learned
you were back but left again.
Memories I counted slain,
ceased for me to dwell upon,
stir, and rising with the sun,
awoken just to spoil my day,
remember me, my name is May.


Line count: 20
Rhymed aabb
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 39
Prompt: As per illustration.
May 30, 2025 at 12:23pm
May 30, 2025 at 12:23pm
#1090283
Obsession

I wanted a slot car set
I was given a train set
it was amusing enough
but far from favourite
slot cars came much later
in that no-man’s land
between child and adult
but so fierce my desire
it stayed with me always
through combined sets
with friends afire the same
and self made cars
correct in smallest detail.

Still I watch the races
and dream.



Line count: 15
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 38
Prompt: Write a poem about your favorite childhood toy.
May 29, 2025 at 4:12pm
May 29, 2025 at 4:12pm
#1090218
Egg cup and bulldogs


A Clipped Conversation 2

The bulldog clip and tiny child
on shoulder carried, meek and mild,
approached Sir Egg Cup and enquired
“Can you help, sir? We’re lost and tired.”

Answer Egg Cup gave them none,
the spoon inside his head had done
such damage when it stirred his brain,
and sent his knowledge down the drain.

You may have seen these things before
I wrote of them in days of yore
now much has changed and sad to say
Sir Egg Cup’s spoon has gone away.



Line count: 12
Rhymed couplets in (mainly) trochaic tetrameter
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 37
Prompt: Pick any object in your room. Now write a poem describing this object.
May 28, 2025 at 12:08pm
May 28, 2025 at 12:08pm
#1090156
Enough Already

Old age is content
to only sit and dream
far from in the stream,
without a new intent,
old age is still content

The young may build and scheme
of deeds afire that gleam,
but far beyond repent,
old age remains content

These things were once the cream,
perhaps more than they seem,
but sometimes called misspent,
and old age is content.



Line count: 13
Form: Dansa
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 36
Prompt: Write a poem in Dansa form.
April 13, 2025 at 10:37am
April 13, 2025 at 10:37am
#1087159


Darkness at Noon

“La Dolce Vita” proclaims the sign
a voice in protest against the lowering sky
the gathering clouds of ill intent
and the steps leading downward
ever downward into gloom and deep despair
far indeed from any sweetness of life
the narrow alley squeezed between
buildings grown too tall for their ambitions
and painted in colours once bright
but now dark with age and wear
so rarely sunlit in these latter days
as though life itself drains slowly
fitfully down the grate in the foreground.

The sign creaks in the breeze.



Line count: 14
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 35
Prompt: As per illustration.

April 3, 2025 at 10:53am
April 3, 2025 at 10:53am
#1086505
The Seasons

The seasons being the template of so many things in life,
the daily round eternal bringing echoes of the the dawn
till brightest noonday sun, to be followed by the evening shade
with darkest midnight promised,

so winter speaks of that misty, dreamlike place, our home,
mysterious land of formative, forgotten phantoms from which emerge
the first beginnings of the person we are meant to be,
growing into the one we know as me.

And spring is like those years we find when awareness blooms in full,
our arms embracing all that comes enticing within our reach
and clear eyes lead plans and schemes of all that can be grasped
in reaching what we choose to call maturity.

The summer comes with certainty, in greatest confidence,
completed child and basking in the heat of summer’s bounty,
with life burgeoning with positive assurance, no thought of year’s end,
the longest days deceiving.

Then the fall in so many ways, as autumn spreads its cloak
of golden times as rewards for work, now slower pace invading,
the dying leaves reminders all that nothing lasts forever
and celebrations muted now in shortened days.

Return to winter and those colder times, the bones are aching,
breath frosted with the waiting knowledge that life grows thin,
the wasted body struggling now, indecision ruling thought,
and so, at last, it’s over.



Line count: 24
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, week 34
Prompt: Use the following words in your poem: Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn.

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