Day Three. Special January Ekphrastic Challenge Jan 7th to February 6th. Please join writers Merril D Smith, Jim The Poet, Leela Soma, Holly York, Ailsa Crawley, Michael Dickel, Joy Fleming, Leela Soma, Hilary Otto, Godefroy Dronsart, Alan Gary Smith, Redcat, and myself as we respond to the remarkable art of Chris O’Connor, Marcel Herms and Kerfe Roig and others to arrive in the coming weeks. Wednesday.

February 3rd

what grows here KRFeb3

-Kerfe Roig “What Grows Here”

CO3Feb

-Christine O’Connor

winter forest KRFeb4

-Kerfe Roig “Winter Forest”

We-are-little-children-of-the-sea-kleurets-30-x-20-cm-1999 MHFeb3

-Marcel Herms “We Are Little Children Of The Sea Kleurets”

Frost and Ice Moons

Under the frost and ice moons don’t despair
The maidens quickening is soon near
The winds turning warm and fair
Singing budding spring for all to hear

In the grove of skeletal birch don’t feel sorrow
Let the cold silver moonlight shadows spear
Beneath the snow hides the seeds of tomorrow
Let purple blue moonlight guide souls vision here

When the world is frozen, ice, snow, white
Listen to what intuition hears
Teeming life comes back with the light
Spring’s awakening is soon near

-©RedCat

Inside the snow globe (KRFeb3)

The light escapes, invisible colours bounce
off the trees. This wood is a trick, its layers
repeat into the distance in a tangled blur.
Each tree is a prism that splits into many trees.
This is the forest of silence, no tracks or trails.
Keep your coat close, breathe to make clouds
of warmth and stride deep into this new dimension.

-Hilary Otto

Response to KRFeb 3 “Winter Forest,” KRFeb3, “What grows here,” MH, “We are little children of the sea”

Wishes in the Snow

We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow,
into the birch forest, there by the trees,
where blood bloomed like flowers, red in the snow—
and I wondered if we’d be caught first–or freeze.

We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow–
Manya whispered stories of when women were fish,
and as the cold wind continued to blow,
she told of sea-blue wonders and a come-true wish

of times and people long ago—
before the snow.

We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow,
and I wished for roses, sunshine, birds, sheep,
but we were here, and where would we go?
Where would we find food, a warm place to sleep?

We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow,
and I dreamed of butterflies, apples, the song
of thrush and soft owl hoots, the way a river flows
in spring, and fish swim in it all along

the way to the sea,
where maybe we could be—

but we’ve run so far, out into the snow,
now Manya says, “Look, there’s a house ahead,”
inside, no people, only gifts bestowed–
a sea-scene painted, a rose, and a loaf of bread.

-Merril D Smith

what grows here

Yes, a snake, a bat, a roach
but also a chrysalis
and butterflies. If a bear
stands in the woods and no one
sees him he is still there. To
show off his thousand points
of flowers the buck stops here.

-Holly York

Winter Forest. – KR3F

A Winter Forest,
leafless, barren, trees with snow.
Which way shall I go ?

2,Feb,2021 for the third of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kerfe Roig.

What Goes Here. – KR3F

What goes here I ask.
Deer, bear, rabbit, beetle, bat,
butterfly, flowers.

2,Feb,2021 for the third of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kerfe Roig.

Bios And Links

-Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/

-Christine O’Connor

is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.

-Marcel Herms

is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life.
There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.

He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.

www.marcelherms.nl

www.uitgeverijpetrichor.nl

=Redcat

RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.

Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.

Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.

Read more at redcat.wordpress.com

-Merril D Smith

is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.

-Godefroy Dronsart

is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.

-Joy Fleming

Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.   

-Holly York

lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.

-Alan Gary Smith

A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.

-Hilary Otto

is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto

-Jim young

 is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque

Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at
St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree  in English Literature and  History (
Ancient Indo-Pak  Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge
UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,

 articles and stories since 1980.A published  poet Anjum was awarded  Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in  2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .

She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for  Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers  

Educational Consultant by Profession. 

Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) Fiction..

For Mr Paul Brookes January Ekphrastic Challenge ~ 2nd February 2021 ~ Day Two ~ In Response to Marcel Herms,Christine O Conner,Kerfe Roig.

anjum wasim dar's avatarPOETIC OCEANS

In Response to Marcel Herms

Toenaderingspoging, mixed media on cardboard, 14,5 x 17,1 cm, 2020 MHFeb2

They came to see the girl , they had to choose, and then she was chosen
all the time the boy and the boys mother,sat looking at her,she was frozen

wonder what they had in mind, what they expected, what they saw in reality,
her fair color, smoothness of skin, length of hair and body, style of femininity

the tea trolley had felt heavy as she pushed it in the living room, steps heavy
on the carpeted floor, eyelids dropping with sleep, she glimpsed a fat belly

wondered whose was it in the family chosen for her, for future life and living
‘tea has a good taste, did you make it ? a croaky voice sounded tight n chilling

she dared not raise her eyes, she was not supposed to typical Eastern attitude
of shyness, maturity, submissiveness, obedience, acceptance,service n servitude

she was relieved when…

View original post 226 more words

Every Winter, but Especially This One: Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2

merrildsmith's avatarYesterday and today: Merril's historical musings

For Paul Brookes’ Special Ekphrastic Challenge (Jan. 7-Feb.6), I’ve responded to the three works below.

Every Winter, but Especially This One

In a blanket fuzzy-soft with woven dreams
muted in the winter days of daze and grey-fog haze—

cozy-wrapped to window-watch the whipping winds
kiss the rocks and lick sand-blasted cheeks and chins.

But muted blues and greys, turn brighter as clouds part,
and dawn streaks the sky, and we try to reconcile–this art

of rapprochement, the unfurled fury with the sight
of so much beauty, so much light

hidden, so much forbidden, in history resurrected,
the monsters walk among us—sometimes undetected–

but see the sunshine, through the clouds,
and glowing now, vivid summer-loud.

Winter tears evaporate to fall as spring rain,
the patterns repeat—again

the woven patterns form straight lines of vibrant hue
to circle, cuddled in brumous blue–

to…

View original post 42 more words

Erasure poetry challenge. Ever wanted to do an erasure poem? Copy the page from James Joyce’s “Ulysses” below. Next go through the page marking the words that leap out at you. Either strikethrough the words not used or pick out the words you wish to use and DM me the poem. ONLY USE THE WORDS ON THE PAGE FROM ULYSSES. DO NOT USE WORDS THAT ARE NOT ON THIS PAGE.

 

Page from Ulysses for Erasure PoetryPage from Ulysses by James Joyce

On the brink by Tracey Dawson

-Tracy Dawson

 

No fear, courting death
Hovering shadows and shades
Silver threads stretched about
Hovering here with honeycombed ground
Oblong cells, flowers of sleep
New life quick in the damp earth
A kind of tallowy swirling
De mortuis nil nisi prius
The mourners split, stepping on the brink

-Doug Chinnery

Ballsbridge threads.
Stretched shadows yawn
Descendant might love
Starving.
Kneeling might produce
The Botanic Gardens.
A bargain! Fat
Treacle cells cracking,
Dead laugh hard,
Wind barrow split.
Gravediggers nose round.

-Elizabeth Moura

Abridgements (a black out poem with help from James Joyce)

All want to be on good terms with
Habeas corpus
I took to cover when she disturbed me
And temper getting cross
He had the gumption to
Dangle that before her. It might thrill her at first
Shadows of the tombs
A big giant in the dark
Gas of graves

The clock was on
A young widow
Men
Love
In the midst of death
Vitals desire
The window.

A fair share go under in
Time
Come up some day above ground in a landslip
To be flowers
With
New life
With thanks.

The soil
Bones
Nails
Green and pink
Go on living
To feed
Themselves

A devil
Must be
Swirling with them.
Your head
Gives him a sense of power
He looks at
The cockles of his heart

This morning
The dead
Would like to hear
The women
Laugh
Better
The human heart
Daren’t joke
At
His funeral.

They say you live longer
For tomorrow
The papers
Ceased to
Care
-st

An Old Actor’s Lament

Bloom, grey spouting beard! Thrill her!

Here, the same women still kiss young Romeo,
pleasure tantalising, gnawing, desire growing.

Over there, every man – well preserved –
would of course live forever.

Those pretty little ladies – hot, strong, and sweet –
laugh; joke about your life.

How many have you asked? Two, ten, eleven?
The papers ceased to care.

-Tim Fellows

Page from Ulysses for Erasure Poetry

Mark Grainger's Erasure poem

-Mark Grainger

Mark Grainger 2

-Mark Grainger’s second erasure from the same page

 

The caretaker’s fear
after the funeral.
Churchyards yawn
and say Romeo –
tantalising, gnawing
desire all honeycombed.

Giant poppies killed
the Christian boy,
cheerful Peter, strong
and sweet. Hard to read
your own obituary.

-Georgia Hilton

Shave
the dead

the tombs yawn and sleep
pitchdark Romeo tantalising the starving

a fair field, honeycombed
and neat

flowers of sleep
gardens blood-fruit

rot black
feed a devil

cheerful, cracking cockles
the men hear
juicy, hot, sweet

put the papers
in the graves

-Sarah Connor

Bios And Links

-Tracy Dawson

is an active member of Read to Write (Balby and Mexborough) and Lippy Women. Her poems have been published in anthologies by Maytree Press and Ripon Poetry Festival.

For Mr.Paul Brookes ~1st February 2021 ~Special Ekphrastic Challenge ~Day Twenty Six ~In Response to Kerfe Roig, Christine O’Conner and Marcel Herms’s Artwork.

anjum wasim dar's avatarPOETIC OCEANS

CO1Feb
Christine O Conner

In Response to Christine O Conner

this door is too small,
but am I too tall or
big or big minded,
what is that? a key? will
it open the door for me?

there is only One
who has a key to every lock
in every door,and a lock
for every key..

like an inner eye there is
an inner door, rising high
when pure it is elegant
when patient,shadow less
Shadowless in the sun?
stranger still in constant revolution…

what great doors are these?
The Door of the Night
Faery and Elf Doors
Forbidden Doors and more
Ali Baba’s Door,

no more no more
how much, how many keys more
I need, of kindness charity forgiveness_
will I be able to clean the dark mess
no ‘eat me’ ‘drink me’ will work but only
no Hercules Nor Ulysses nor Poseidon
No Icarus will carry high …

View original post 344 more words

Day Two. Special January Ekphrastic Challenge Jan 7th to February 6th. Please join writers Merril D Smith, Jim The Poet, Leela Soma, Holly York, Ailsa Crawley, Michael Dickel, Joy Fleming, Leela Soma, Hilary Otto, Godefroy Dronsart, Alan Gary Smith, Redcat, and myself as we respond to the remarkable art of Chris O’Connor, Marcel Herms and Kerfe Roig and others to arrive in the coming weeks. Tuesday.

February 2nd

Toenaderingspoging, mixed media on cardboard, 14,5 x 17,1 cm, 2020 MHFeb2

-Marcel Herms “Toenaderingspoging”

CO2Feb

-Christine O’Connor

wet sunlight KRFeb2

-Kerfe Roig “Wet Sunlight”

Light Sparkle in the Pool of Tears – A Pantoum

Light sparkle in the pool of tears
Rising to the surface lustrous pearls
Crafting paths that through the murk spear
Freed soul fire unseen wonders unfurls

Rising to the surface lustrous pearls
Transforming a life lived in fear
Freed soul fire unseen wonders unfurls
Bright ray of hope trauma shackles shears

Transforming a life lived in fear
A heart that passionately yearns
Bright ray of hope trauma shackles shears
Finding there’s power in these words

A heart that passionately yearns
Crafting paths that through the murk spear
Finding there’s power in these words
Light sparkle in the pool of tears

-©RedCat

The Coast Path (CO2Feb)

The flecked sea seethes
out beyond the headland.
It’s a day of gust and foam
the wiry grass blown to one side
leaning in with the stumps
of gorse clinging to the cliff top.
I’ll sleep tonight
this vision of home
blustering through my mind
howls a tunnel clean through
until, stripped by the West wind
I roll soft and grey-green to the deep horizon.

-Hilary Otto

Responding to CO2Feb, KR “Wet Sunlight,” and MHFeb2

Every Winter, but Especially This One

In a blanket fuzzy-soft with woven dreams
muted in the winter days of daze and grey-fog haze—

cozy-wrapped to window-watch the whipping winds
kiss the rocks and lick sand-blasted cheeks and chins.

But muted blues and greys, turn brighter as clouds part,
and dawn streaks the sky, and we try to reconcile, this art

of rapprochement, the unfurled fury with the sight
of so much beauty, so much light

hidden, so much forbidden, in history resurrected,
the monsters walk among us—sometimes undetected–

but see the sunshine, through the clouds,
and glowing now, vivid summer-loud.

Winter tears evaporate to fall as spring rain,
the patterns repeat—again

the woven patterns form straight lines of vibrant hue
to circle, cuddled in brumous blue–

to wait for what? Who knows
how or why a flower grows

in a crack,
and then comes back

like a beloved voice, a brilliant smile,
the sparkling scintillation soaring across miles–

glowing, flashing—the sight
of color flowing from, rising to the white.

-Merril D Smith

Wet Sunlight – KR2F

Dank, dreary day.
It shouldn’t be like this in Tenerife.
Grey cloud massed above keeps sending sleet.
Hiding under cafe canopy, getting wet feet.

Cloud meets blue sky in razor sharp line.
Five minutes to a flood of beautiful sunshine.
Burst into view, the light of my dream.
Get the pesetas out, I’ll have an icecream.

1,Feb,2021 for the second of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kerfe Roig.

Bios And Links

-Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/

-Christine O’Connor

is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.

-Marcel Herms

is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life.
There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.

He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.

www.marcelherms.nl

www.uitgeverijpetrichor.nl

=Redcat

RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.

Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.

Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.

Read more at redcat.wordpress.com

-Merril D Smith

is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.

-Godefroy Dronsart

is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.

-Joy Fleming

Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.   

-Holly York

lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.

-Alan Gary Smith

A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.

-Hilary Otto

is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto

-Jim young

 is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque

Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at
St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree  in English Literature and  History (
Ancient Indo-Pak  Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge
UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,

 articles and stories since 1980.A published  poet Anjum was awarded  Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in  2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .

She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for  Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers  

Educational Consultant by Profession. 

Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) Fiction..

Ekphrastic Challenge, Day Twenty-Six

merrildsmith's avatarYesterday and today: Merril's historical musings

This is Day Twenty-Six of Paul Brookes’ January going into February Ekphrastic Challenge. All of the artwork is wonderful, but once I saw Kerfe Roig’s “These Hands,” I had to write about them.

Her Hands

Her hands are a kaleidoscope,
holding within all the colors,
shapes, textures she once touched.
Far distant memories telescoped
and brought close—flaking pink polish on her nails
makes her think of flowers that grew in her garden,
her crooked finger,
reminds her of her mother’s hands.

Her hands are a map,
the etched lines a pathway showing where she’s gone
and where she’s heading. That crosshatch marks the years
of the now-demolished city shop
where she touched goods and gestured to customers—
these show the first time

she picked up a paintbrush, or
held a small boy’s hand as he scampered on a beach.
She sees his boy-face in her mind…

View original post 55 more words

Dreams and Nightmares – A Landay Poem, Ekprastic Challenge, February 1

RedCat's avatarThe world according to RedCat

Michael Dickel ~ Unicorn-Dream


Dreams of kisses, rainbows and magic
Snug in sleep when reality is much more tragic

Fantasies of closeness, touch and hugs
Before dawn the comfy blanket of dark away tugs

Visions of varm love, full trust, free lust
Shattered into isolation, cobwebs and mind dust

Nightmares of a frozen empty tomb
Melt as frost when waking in embrace let sweet lust bloom

©RedCat


This poem is written in a Landay form, meaning it’s four couplets with nine syllables in the first line and thirteen in the second.

To read all poems and see all artwork go to The Wombwell Rainbow.

View original post

#LGBTH21 LGBT History Month artworks and writing challenge. This years theme is “Body, Mind, Spirit”. Have you made an artwork celebrating an LGBT historical figure? Have you written unpublished/published writing about LGBT historical figures? Perhaps those that inspire you. Please DM me, or message my WordPress Blog.

LGBT History Month

1.-Lily Parr Fact-Sheet

Maya Angelou Fact-Sheet

Discovery, deeply disturbing — Heather Derr-Smith

I am turning 50 on February 22nd, in a few weeks. Like most everyone in this pandemic, I’ve had trouble sleeping. I try a variety of routines and schedules, diet changes, screen time changes, and an assortment of pills. Last night I had a new experience of being flooded with very vivid memories of my […]

Discovery, deeply disturbing — Heather Derr-Smith