Summer with you

~ hiraethphoenix

Winter stayed and wept
wearing an oversized jersey,
frayed, unkept.
It mourned for all I lost,
the innocence of youth,
all it cost.
It nearly kept spring at bay,
I had to threaten:
“go now, you cannot stay.”
Spring arrived dressed in blue,
all smiles and jokes
and then I knew:
Summer could be coaxed to stay,
it just needed a reason,
a way.
And before I knew,
there was one:
You.

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD Challenge 2015 Day 11:
For today’s prompt, write a seasonal poem. This should be a snap for haiku poets; after all, inserting seasonal words is a rule for the form. However, you don’t have to write haiku to write a poem that references or happens in one of the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Pick a season or include them all.

Day 10

~ hiraethphoenix

I don’t know how
to write today,
with little feeling,
nothing to say.
Words not growing in intent,
I am empty, poured out,
spent;
and my soul, quiet
and at peace.
Ten days of writing,
absolute, pure
release.

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD Challenge 2015 Day 10:
For today’s prompt, take the phrase “How (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles include: “How to Write a Poem,” “How Mechanical Pencils Work,” and “Howling at the Moon After Midnight in the Middle of a Thunderstorm.”

Two worlds collide

~ hiraethphoenix

The other world in which I live:
exact, precise, defined, structured
with the most breathtaking shape
and form only a few ever dare to see,
there is no room for emotion;
creativity and thought collide to produce reason,
beauty, in its purest form.
When I was young I cursed the two worlds,
convinced I could never integrate both,
sometimes longing
just
for the artistic one;
but now I see
without either my soul
could not breathe, survive
be.

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD Challenge 2015 Day 9:
For today’s prompt, write a work poem. For some folks, writing is work (great, huh?). For others, work is teaching, engineering, or delivering pizzas. Still others, dream of having work to help them pay the bills or go to all ages shows. Some don’t want work, don’t need work, and are glad to be free of the rat race. There are people who work out, work on problems, and well, I’ll let you work out how to handle your poem today.

Applause

~ hiraethphoenix

I dare you to make sense of this,
I will lay it on the ground,
Piece by piece until we both
Believe we have found
The secrets, lies we do not know,
We pretend, we make-believe,
Put on a fabulous show.
And when it is over,
The audience has left,
The applause died, you
You stand accused of theft.
The poisoned apple left as proof,
We made the wrong choices,
At the expense of our youth.

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD Challenge 2014 Day 8:
For today’s prompt, write a dare poem. This poem could be written as a dare to someone. It could make a daring proclamation. It could involve a dare that someone has accepted…or refused. In a way, each day of this challenge is a dare to write a poem. Are you ready for the challenge?

Nowhere

~ hiraethphoenix

I always think there was a moment,
The one that changed our fate,
And it passed without us noticing,
Left us deserted
Somewhere
Between love and hate.
Had we seen it, caught it in our hands,
We may have
Stopped
There, re-aligned our plans.
But here we are and I don’t see,
How we continue,
Day
By
Day
Just letting life be
(if I could, I would retrace,
every
single
moment
that led us to this
god-forsaken place.)

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD Challenge 2015 Day 7:
Write a love poem. Yeah, I said a love poem, or, if you don’t like that option…
Write an anti-love poem. I know there are some haters out there; go ahead and hate on love and/or love poems if that’s your thing.
So if this is your first rodeo, here’s how the “Two for Tuesday” prompt works. You can choose one of the two options; choose both options; and/or blend the two together in some way. Just be sure to write a poem.

Perfect

~ hiraethphoenix

Here is our home
With our white iron gate,
The symbol of perfection,
Every painting, couch, plate.
We never argue, disagree,
Just stay long enough
And you will see.
That this reality, portrait of us
Should have lasted
Been enough
(and maybe it was,
but
I
was
not).

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD Challenge 2015 Day 6:
For today’s prompt, write a things-not-as-they-appear poem. Poetry is filled with metaphors, similes, symbols, and layered meanings, so this should be a softball prompt.

That tomato

~ hiraethphoenix

It was lunch time,
Family chatter inbetween the
Sounds of dishing food.
You were talking animatedly,
I was wondering who you are.
And the more you spoke,
The more I focussed on a fly
Sitting on the tomato on your plate.
A determined nuisance;
You would shoo it and it would
Fly back and sit
on the very same tomato.
And I wondered,
Why that one? Why your plate?
And to this day, when I think of
The end of us,
I think of that fly,
On that tomato,
On that day.

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD Challenge 2015 Day 5:
For today’s prompt, write a vegetable poem. I once wrote a poem titled “Tomatoes,” and that would count. If you want to write a poem about a specific vegetable, go for it. If you want to write a poem that just has a vegetable mixed in somewhere, go for it. If you want to praise or curse vegetables, go for it. If you want to play with the idea of vegetables, including a vegetable mental state, couch “potato,” and so on–well, you know, go for it.

How it ended

~ hiraethphoenix

Boxes, packed and labeled
one by one,
(marked “fragile”, destination: none).
Cutlery, sorted and divided
two by two,
(how many meals I cooked for you).
Coffee mugs, bold and blue
none for him, three for you
(this, this is what you do).
Photos, start to end
Year by year
(captured, I held you dear)
Apartment, sold and empty
day by day
(at least at profit
you would say).
Our foolproof plans,
exposed as a lie
and you, you claim
all you did was try.
Bags, packed and loaded
one by one,
two by two,
go now,
maybe he
is the one
for you.

PAD Challenge 2015 day 4:
For today’s prompt, write a departure poem. Many people depart to school and/or work every day, and they depart on a plane, train, or automobile–some even walk or ride a bike. Of course, that’s keeping things rather physical; there are also emotional and psychological departures. You may even decide to make a departure from your normal writing style in tone or structure today.

Marvelous machine

~ hiraethphoenix

Here is the heart
a marvelous machine,
it feeds on love and fairytale dream,
it always has childlike trust
things will be as they must.
It is reckless in embrace
always possibility in every face,
it breaks and comes to a halt,
but regenerates without fault.
Yes, here is the heart
a truly marvelous machine
(and your darkness unforeseen
broke every cog, wheel, circuit,
dream).

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD challenge 2015 Day 3:
For today’s prompt, write a machine poem. A machine could be a car or a robot, obviously, but simple machines include levers, pulleys, and screws. There’s also “machine learning” and “deus ex machina.” But there are many other ways to come at this prompt as well.

Calm in his embrace

~ hiraethphoenix

There is this place we use to go
and for a long time I believed,
ached for only you would know,
the cobbled pathway there to find,
stairways, secrets, cobwebs
of a busy mind.
But time has passed and
now I know
that life begins anew,
each day,
it screams “grow”
(And he?
He loves me in that place,
for him a foreign destination, new
but he calms me in embrace.)

Copyright Hiraeth 2015
PAD Challenge Day 2:
For today’s prompt, write a secret poem. The poem itself could be a secret, or it could be about keeping secrets or, I suppose, not keeping them. Or maybe it’s about a top secret project, or the poem is a riddle with some sort of secret meaning. Or, well, I’ll let you figure out how best to poem secretively.