Napowrimo 2025/15

APRIL FIFTEEN

THE GENIUS

Blowing hot and cold but never sky blue

she was the genius that we all knew

Dreams confuse me sometimes send me loopy

unwanted dreams wake me in the dark night

Why I really haven't got a Scooby

who needs that kind of nonsensical fight

Sweating I awake unable to sleep

not knowing where I am or what is what

They tell me that everything is so deep

this and that yeah but the rest is old hat

Writing for England she was always mint

now people use her titles for their stuff

She would have loved to see her work in print

of course she did sometimes but life is tough

She was the genius that we all knew

blowing hot and cold but never sky blue

15042025

Blah blah blah

QWERTY OLD TOWN

She’s sitting on the rooftops  

Staring at the slates

Looking at the acrobats

Smoking like tall chimney stacks 

In Qwerty old town

Banging on the keyboard

She tries to take it down

Looking at the night skies

She knows that they’re watching

Her out in eternity

Star men blinking message rats

That sent the ugly dinosaurs

To fight their wars in time

But they’ve not got what she’s got

Beyond the Milky Way

Dash Mars Morse code dot splash

Dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit

100816

Day Ten

NaPoWriMo 2016

Day Ten

The prompt at NaPoWriMo today was
to write a book spine poem. I chose five
books from my bookcase and wrote the following:

UP ON THE BOOKCASE

Up on the bookcase she’s still writing plays

Adventures melt titles leap off the shelf

Ben Okri – An African Elegy

Books with a bit of wear and tear like Skin

Ten Short Plays – Nicola Batty & co

Memories of places we used to go

Guide to the Musée d’Orsay - in Paris

Modigliani on the hotel wall

The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen – Garner

The very last book that she ever bought

Debut On Two – a BBC Books book

Up on the bookcase with her play inside

100416 

NaPoWriMo 2014 Day Eleven

Day Eleven
NaPoWriMo 2014

PAINTED YELLOW

It was like she was walking in the park

Not walking floating just hovering there

In her favourite place smelling the flowers

What colour are daises she asked again

White I told her before she remembered

Yes I can smell the dandelions too

She said and something else painted yellow

That’ll be the daffodils I told her

Wonderful she said looking for mushrooms

Her bottom lip twitching oh so slightly

An air of expectancy on her face

I think I've found a marigold she said

I walked towards the haunted house with her

When I woke up and turned round she was gone

110414

My Day Eleven from 2013 
Please click the back links on each post back to 2009 you won't be disappointed.

NaPoWriMo 2013 DayTwenty-Seven

NaPoWriMo 2013
Day Twenty-Seven

WHO CAN TELL

She sits there waiting to hear what he wrote

Her hair still wet the blanket pulled up tight

It’s night time now and she dreads the morning

Tomorrow who can tell how she will feel.

She doesn't want it to end like last time

Her memory comes flooding back now fast 

It’s easy to take the first step but then

Tomorrow who can tell how she will feel.

She can see clearly in her own minds eye

Her blindness is no handicap to him

It’s time for him to read the words he wrote

Tomorrow who can tell how she will feel.

India

Lima Oscar Victor Echo

Yankee Oscar Uniform he says.

270413

Day Twenty-Seven last year.

Like Modigliani

THE WAY SHE WAS

I must be patient now the way she was

for all those years sitting there in that chair

waiting for me to fix something for her

wanting to dictate a chapter to me

Sitting there imprisoned in that mad place

I knew she wanted me to take her home

waiting for me to read about Gauguin

wanting to paint like Modigliani

I’m the patient now sitting on the ward

waiting for the nurse to extract some blood

wanting the doctor to say that I'm fixed

I must be patient now the way she was

29012013

Posted to dVerse poets for Open Link Night

Day Ten

NaPoWriMo 2012

SHE'S THE GENIUS
Sometimes she looks so young
like that girl in the photograph
in the bottom of the drawer
that she can't see.
Then there's those days when
she looks like a pre-war Victorian
eighty-odd in ninteen thirty-nine.
She trusts us to do everything for her
and she tells us exactly what to do
she writes the menus we cook the meals.
She's the genius like it or not
and she always knows best.
When she shouts we run
if we walk it could be too late...
10042012

Here's my Day Ten from 2011

Song # 701 REVEALED

UNDER THE WALLPAPER (REVEALED)
Wednesday morning out on the town if only...
Only it won't be the same without Natasha
Natasha, makes the difference and I don't
Don't don't think things will change that much ever
Every time I think of her she returns
Returns to the mental picture fuzzy
Fuzzy so fuzzy she's fading under
Under the wallpaper where do I look
Lookalikes will never match yesterday

Yes she is my wonderful my only
Only one in this world that understands
Under the wallpaper where do I look
02122011

NaPoWriMo 2011 Day Twenty Eight

UNDERSTANDING ALICE
Understanding is the beginning of confusion
the more I think I understand
the more confused I become.

Love is like that sometimes, it befuddles you
just when you think it's safe to say boo
a gooseberry hits you on the head.

Who was it that said:
Never say ...
oh never mind!

Of course confusion could be
the beginning of understanding
take the chaos theory for instance.

Or scalextrics, subuteo and Alice?
I never could fathom them out either.
28042011

Posted to Writer's Island

My Day 28 2010
My Day 28 2009

NaPoWriMo 2011 Day Twenty Six

Posted to Writer's Island

YO BRAVO
Nic spells it out and shouts in frustration
frustrating me too, tarred with the same brush
brush strokes for beginners, alphabet blues
blue words for fingertip spelling with Nic.

Repeat after me, and do it like this
this is the best way to do it for her,
her sight has gone, and she can hardly hear,
hearing is so difficult, I repeat.

Alpha beat a gammer with a stick, no
no, no, that's the wrong alphabet, geek!
Geek: it's all Greek to me, he starts to shriek!
Shriek and you shall find, what's after alpha?

Bravo, Charlie said, and dealt her echo
echo of new fangled things, yo bravo!
26042011

Day 26 2010
Day 26 2009

NaPoWriMo 2011 Day Twenty Five

Original post Day 25 2009

I got the inspiration for this twin poem from two sources
Firstly from a prompt I saw on readwritepoem:
‘A woman left a poem for the milkman instead of a note.’
And secondly from the Saturday Scribes prompt:
Write a twin poem. With the theme; ‘What we need.’

My Mad Method: I wrote two poems, 1, a note for the milkman,
2, a little love poem. Then I cut out each line with a pair of
Scissors and randomly reconstructed the poems, the result is below.

WRONG NOTE
I wrote a note For the milkman
Two pints of sterra For the acrobat
A bokkle of orange To take to work
A pint of Jersey milk For her cornflakes
And a dirty big carton Packed with cream
Not the whatsit fingy Not that thin stuff
But the proper job Deep Devon clotted
A lump of sugar A slice of saffron cake
To suck in the rain The Hog’s pudding’s rising
This is a wish list
But somehow you know He got this poem instead
What we need is this I love you when I wake
I love you when I ache I love you in the morning
You’re my favourite Cup cake, butter fingers
If the truth be known
250409

Day 25 2010

Day 25 2011
PURGATORY PERHAPS?
Paradise for those that can see beyond this place
for those that can hear and respond to what's being said
purgatory perhaps, if you can't glean the words
shady as hades on a day that's hot as hell
shadow dancin' fairies, their wings catching the light
but she can't see them now, or maybe only she
can see them in her minds eye, as she switches off
and tunes in to a much greater reality
than this hear paradise that we think we can see.
25042011

NaPoWriMo 2011 Day Twenty Two

Posted to Writer's Island

FOR NICOLA
Oscar sierra Charlie alpha Romeo
Whisky India Lima delta echo
Tango Oscar Lima delta Mike echo
Tango Oscar Whisky Romeo India tango echo
India tango Lima India kilo echo
Tango hotel India sierra
22042011

Day 22 2010
Day 22 2009

NaPoWriMo 2011 Day Ten

The prompt at Sunday Scribblings today is Befuddled.

SHE CAN LAUGH
In the cobwebs of her mind
she can see to tell the time
if she could walk like you and me
she'd ride a bike and learn to ski
she writes the words that others read.

She builds castles in the sky
she knows the flowers by their smell
then today she said to me:
You know the grass is really green
and I can smell a yellow flower
is it growing on the ground
or is it hanging off a tree?

I told her that I saw it too
It's beautiful, a dandelion
there's more than one there's two or three
they're all growing on the ground
and there's blossom on this tree.

She said she's going to Africa
to feel a Water Buffalo
on a touching safari.
Mystified and befuddled
I asked her if she likes Giraffes?
That's how I know that she can laugh.
10042011

Posted to Writer's Island

Read my Sewina Sestina
JOIN ME ON FACEBOOK
Posted to Writer's Island
I Hate Poets Proper Joe's

Day Ten 2010

Day Ten 2009

NaPoWriMo 2010 Day 22

NAPOWRIMO 2010 DAY 22
THANKS TO OSCAR WILDE
I didn't do the prompt at Read Write Poem today as I was driving and couldn't concentrate on all those words in the wordle. I had to write this on the move, so I set myself the task of taking an Oscar Wilde quote, from his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Of course I can't find the actual quote right now, but it's the one about the mediocre poet who published a book of second rate sonnets, you know the one I mean don't you?
ANYWAY HERE'S MINE:

WORLDS APART
She drinks mint tea and lemon verbena
outside in the herb garden, sitting there
the sun blazing, oblivious to him.
He's the one out on the street, selling stuff.

The thickness of a wall but worlds apart.
She sits in her secret garden, writing.
He stands with his back to the wall, barking.
'They're franked and stamped, they're wrapped and packed,' he bawls.

'They're fully gauranteed,' she scribbles down.
"Your Gen-U-ine swiss watches," they both say.
'Made in Hong Kong! Who'll give me a Big Ben?'
He lives the life that she can only pen.
22042+10

Day 22 2009

MY PROPER JOE'S BLOG

NaPoWriMo 2010 Day 20

NAPOWRIMO 2010 DAY 20
THE HERO POEM
As a child, Jessica GC says she had two heroes: Wonder Woman and her mother. “To me, they were one and the same,” says Jessica. “Both had long dark hair. Both were strikingly beautiful, and both had incredible strength.”
Write a poem in which you to pay tribute to your hero, past or present.
Here are few possibilities for inspiration:

• What made your childhood hero so special? What traits did you envy? Are super powers involved?
• Do you have more than one hero? Consider drawing a comparison between them.
• Honor the everyday heroes among us — the policemen, the fire fighters, the troops — risking their lives everyday.
• Did your hero ever fall from the pedestal you put him or her on?
• Maybe you’re the hero you want to write about! Have you ever had a moment when someone has made you feel like a hero? Did you ever save a cat from a burning building? Or maybe it was something as simple as staying up all night with a friend who needed you.

In any case, share with us in your poem what made or makes your hero so deserving of admiration.
HERE'S MINE:
I've presented this as a NanoAmerico^ which is an Allen Ginsberg style American Sentence sandwiched between two shorter sentences or statements. You can find other Sandwich poems and micro flash fiction at the American Sandwich game..

MY HEROINE

As her baby sleeps.
Batty as a fruitcake she writes her novels silently in the dark.
Slowly the penny drops.
20042+10

Day 20 2009

OTHER STUFF

NaPoWriMo 2010 Day 5

NAPOWRIMO 2010 DAY 5
We’ve been in the trenches for a few days, and so Mark Stratton says it’s time to get personal! Here’s Mark’s prompt for Day #5:
Make your poetry personal. I mean, it already is, right? It’s thoughts, observations, deep, dark, personal feelings and stories dressed up in pretty words and oblique descriptions. You get it, and some others get it.
Still others see it as something else entirely, which is great, honestly. We have our own set of filters our lives go through, and this influences how we interpret things. It is part of what makes reading poetry fun and interesting for me.
Today, let’s make poetry really personal. Give poetry, as you write it, a name. Possibly a gender. And a personality. A poet I know has written (and continues to write) a series of poems based on this principle, and I shamelessly ripped it off (with permission, of course) and made a poem I called “Sasha.” Sasha is many things, all at the same time, yet all are Sasha/poetry to me.
So it’s your turn. Give poetry — how you view poetry, what poetry means to you, your poetry — a name. Now write a poem (that) suits your view or vision.

NATASHA
I wrote mine about Natasha, I've mentioned her before in Whatever happened to the corner shop and in Surveillance. Today I asked her what she thought about poets, and she said 'they talk to themselves all day long.' So I wrote down what she said and everytime she said themselves I changed the word to Natasha. It's a bit experimental, so I hope you like it.
HERE GOES:

I HATE POETS

I hate poets she said, they talk to Natasha all day

and when they're not talking to Natasha
they're talking about Natasha

I wish I could get a job like that.

Poets are boring Natasha stiff
they're too self indulgent

they spend all their time looking at Natasha

their poetry's not creative, it's just reflective

like the image of Natasha they see in the mirror.

NATASHA

AH SATAN!

05042+10

Day 5 2009

HOME PAGE
hAPPYbIRTHDAY

NaPoWriMo (16) Totally Optional Prompts

Written for Totally Optional Prompts
and NaPoWriMo day sixteen

Haunted House Picture
My son Jack and his bandmates Daniel and Branko
are in the pictures. You can click on the first photo
to see the next one etc. There are eleven pictures.

THE
HAUNTED
HOUSE
You wouldn't want
to stay there
for the night

You wouldn't want
to stay there
for too long

The Haunted
House Hotel -
I don't think so

The windows
are bricked up
just like the doors

And nothing's
changed for twenty
years or more

Nic asked if we
could buy it
once but no

The powers
that be said:
it's listed you see

and ordinary
folks can't live
with ghosts

you'll have to
stay back there
across the road
160409

DON'T YOU KNOW! It's never too late to take The NaiSaiKu Challenge?

Saturday Scribes - for a no quibble weekend scribble - have you tried it yet? CLINK~DA~LINK!

RWP #46

GODDESS OF LOVE
She is my meditation and my muse,
without her I cannot live.
Every day she steers my ship at dawn,
to new horizons and beyond.

She is my communication,
my voice, without her I am silent.
As if by magic-carpet,
galaxies appear at the speed of thought.

She is my constant companion,
without her I am lonely and lost.
At the market-place she is with me,
when I re-wick and oil the lamps.

She is my imagination, my strength,
when I rub her lamp she comes.
She is more than a genie to me though,
she is my goddess of love.

She is the spirit that fuels my soul,
on towards immortality.
Already we have built a million mansions,
in the eternal realm.
021008

Back in The Blogisphere!

MAGGIES FARM Salford 1992
SURVEILLANCE
I live on the twenty second floor.
Harry has the flat downstairs.
When I first moved here Harry said:
When two ants are doing it, in the crack
on the concrete car park, down there man.
It sounds like Madonna in the back of
a stretch limo making out on Avenue B
with a Puerto Rican kid called Jose.

Harry wasn't wrong, even the passing traffic
sounds sexy from the twenty second floor.

I invited Natasha up for the weekend last month,
Harry fell off the step ladder when she came
and broke his leg. He won't be doing Callanetics,
naked for a while, in front of that six foot mirror
with his head phones on, tuned into the Bob Dylan
tapes I've been playing to the bug he stuck in my
bedroom lightswitch last year when I went to Butlins.

I know what Harry gets up to because I've got a
fibre optic lens, poking through the hole I drilled
in his ceiling rose when the gas man was due and
he had to turn the meter over in a hurry.

Everybody says that fifty per cent of Harry's head
went walkabout in Katmandu about five years
before anybody met him. Nobody knows what
happened to the other half of his brain.

Last time I saw Harry, he had his left leg in
plaster, a skateboard superglued to his bare right
foot and a crutch under one arm. In his free hand
he carried a walking stick for locating ants to
colonise the concrete crack. He'd just totalled his
Giro on two little pills that he hoped would make
him think that he could fly.

I said: What are you going to do with that bargain
bucket of Kentucky you've got gripped between
your teeth?
Harry said: I'm going to take it home and dissect it man.
It's got to last me all week, so I'm going to stirfry it up with
those bean shoots I grow with my Herb in the window box.
I said: That sounds good.
And do you know what Harry said?
He said: I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more!
SALFORD 1992

HARRY'S EPIGRAM
D.O.A. Special K said the Doc.
in his bedside/telephone way.
Some said that he fell.
Others that he was pushed + punched.
I thought that he could float.
There again, I knew the man that sold
him the stuff that made him high.
All twenty two floors of it.
Two hundred foot, freefall,
'til the pavement came up and met him.
Leaving the Coroner to write the final
epigram for the 'Local Rag'.
SALFORD 1992

Everything would be a Wow!...

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!
(JUST TELL ME HOW!)
Welcome to Nicola's situation!
Tune-in to her radio station
when she broadcasts to the
nation she's talking to you!
If we could re-live our memories,
we would all be climbing trees!
And nobody would graze their knees!
If only life was like that now...
Everything would be a Wow!
So, Nicola! Please, please, please!
Tell me how? Go on Nicola!
Please, please, please!
Just tell me how?
AS4507