poet

365 Day Writing Challenge 53: Tear-Jerker

365 Day Writing Challenge

53. Tear-Jerker: Watch a movie that makes you cry. Write a poem about that scene in the movie.

Inspired by (and some lines taken from) the last scene of The Truman Show

I could never do this beautiful, many-layered film justice but I tried to write about what Truman might be thinking, or what I would think if I was him.

***

Now I have touched the sky

where do I go?

 

Now that I know that the world is but a painting,

that someone was paid one day to sit and paint my sky –

(and went home and had his dinner like any other day)

He had created a world with his fingertips

not thinking that I would look upon his creation

every day of my life

sunrise to sunset

(God nestling among the clouds)

 

And the water too,

my fear, my enemy,

that woke me up at night,

choking,

with the taste of salt in my throat

is now passive,

weak,

while I walk

(I am walking on water)

upon it,

how can this be what took my father from me?

 

my father…

was he even –

and my mother?

Are they sad now?

Do they miss me?

Or are they already thinking about their next job?

Their redundancy pay?

 

My mind hurts

 

Maybe I’ll wake up in hospital

and this will all be the dream of a sick mind…

***

You can’t leave, Truman.

You belong here.

With me.

***

A voice came to me from the clouds

and it wanted me to stay with it.

I said no.

***

 

 

 

365 Day Writing Challenge 52: Memory Lane

365 Day Writing Challenge

52. Memory Lane: What’s it look like? How do you get there?

White light through clear windows

Green leaves glowing in the sun.

Large and austere, but not cold –

full of little details, little nuances

that make it perfect for me.

 

It always hurts my head to think

That a house can be a home to so many people

Be special to so many people

Belong to so many people.

Having someone else paint your home a different colour

And it call it theirs feels so

Violating

jarring, driving past and knowing that it is no longer yours but theirs,

(they,them)

it’s… hard.

 

 

 

365 Day Writing Challenge 50: Just Say No

365 Day Writing Challenge

50. Just Say No: Write about the power you felt when you told someone no.

We say no for a reason.

We say no to tell the other person that

our minds are our own,

that we don’t want to share ourselves with another.

More than just a refusal,

it is a statement.

an act of war,

but mostly an assertion of ourselves

separate from the other.

 

 

365 Day Writing Challenge 46: Dirty

365 Day Writing Challenge

46. Dirty: Write a poem about getting covered in mud.

I loved

jumping in

and feeling the squelch under my wellies

I would find the muddiest, dirtiest part

and dig my feet in, over and over, and feel the earth move beneath me

every step was a joy

just to feel

 

365 Day Writing Challenge 41: What You Don’t Know

365 Day Writing Challenge

41. What You Don’t Know: Write about a secret you’ve kept from someone else or how you feel when you know someone is keeping a secret from you.

It’s like a black shadow
sat in your stomach,
long creepers
pulling you down
from your core
making you heavy
churning your stomach,
rolling you between its long long
fingers,
reaching into your throat,
stoppering your mouth,
finding your teeth and making them grind, grind against each other,
your stomach is a knot now,
you try to regain your body in this battle,
but you feel yourself sinking,
sinking
your heart is fluttering
like a bird trapped in its cage
only too aware of the cat outside,
sharpening its claws.

365 Day Writing Challenge 38: Fire-starters

365 Day Writing Challenge

38. Fire-starters: Write about building a fire.

I honestly can’t decide if this one is good or shit, let me know what you think!

He had decided to build something with words.

He propped his words together in a pyramid, and walked around them, frowning, examining them, moving them slightly –

One fell, and the rest tumbled with it.

He too fell to the ground, head in his hands, a silent scream of frustration.

After a while he got up again, and slowly, slowly began placing them back together, more carefully this time, placing them over so gently in the pyramid –

This time when they fell he did not move for a very long time.

But, a hair, a leg twitched, and he was up again, walking away from his words in a tumble on the floor.

He returned with an axe, its blade glinting with hunger.

He chopped at the words, he chopped and there was no sound except the axe’s swish through the air.

He let all of his anger and fear and despair fall through his axe and into the words.

He lay in the grass, exhausted.

Time passed.

He awoke to a strange sound, a crackling, spitting sound.

He turned and saw a strange light flickering amongst the trees.

His words, broken and messy and hurt as they were, had become a fire, and it’s red flame soared higher and higher into the night.

 

365 Day Writing Challenge 32: Rewrite a Poem

365 Day Writing Challenge

32. Rewrite a Poem: Take any poem or short story you find anywhere. Rewrite it in your own words.

The poem I’ve rewritten is She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

He lives in gold, like the sun –

In Eden days of blue and white,

And all that’s freedom,

All that’s light,

Meet in his aspect and his eyes,

A beauty never matched by even

The brightest star of the night.

 

One ray the more, one shade the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which lives in every chestnut strand,

Or softly brightens on his face;

Where thoughts so happily express

Themselves in such a loved resting place.

 

And on that cheek, and in his eyes,

So soft, so warm, so joyous,

The smiles that win, the eyes that see

 

All the good in everyone,

A mind at peace with all he sees,

A heart whose love is strong yet innocent.

Of all the challenges this was by far the hardest. Byron rhymes (and mine in this poem have been patchy at best) and uses meter, both of which I never use in any of my poems. All I can say is thank God for my English degree because a lot of things I learnt there became useful when I was writing this – deciphering what Byron is actually saying line per line especially.

 

 

365 Day Writing Challenge 10: Friendship

365 Day Writing Challenge

10. Friendship: Write about being friends with someone.

It’s weird looking back on the poem I wrote for you. It’s weird to think about who I thought I was. I don’t like her. In fact I hate her. She tried so hard to be the person she thought you wanted. But then you tried too. We created little moulds for ourselves, defined ourselves through our friendship, a friendship which fell apart as soon as we weren’t there to remind each other who we were supposed to be.

I was going to post the poem, but I just can’t. It’s too cringey, like seeing an old photo of yourself trying to be fashionable.

I don’t think I really do hate the version of myself that was friends with you. And the friendship wasn’t completely false. It was based on something true at the start, we just fucked it up. We were both so young. And I think that’s how I felt at the time too – when I was at uni it was genuinely the youngest I have ever felt. I always felt so much older than everyone around me. So, yes. You were good for the time. Good for being young. It actually says that in the poem. I don’t regret the friendship starting, but I don’t regret it ending either. I regret nothing. If you’re reading, I hope you remember this.

http://haileyowl.tumblr.com/post/45893523999/nothing

© Kate Warren and Rebuild Expand, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Warren and Rebuild Expand with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

365 Day Writing Challenge 7: The Rocketship

365 Day Writing Challenge

7. The Rocket-Ship: Write about a rocket-ship on it’s way to the moon or a distant galaxy far, far, away.

What no one ever tells you about space,

what no one expects,

is the silence.

The silence of a vacuum.

It could easily swallow you whole.

 

The rocket floats.

We are moving fast, hundreds of miles an hour, and yet…

It just seems like we are floating, aimlessly. Endlessly.

We are not here. We are not there.

We are not anywhere.

There is just the silence,

and the stars.

And us.

© Kate Warren and Rebuild Expand, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Warren and Rebuild Expand with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.