My feet are office carpet itchy,
my eyes are screen stare scritchy –
I think I’ve got an allergy to inside space:
I need to feel the sunshine on my face –
summer lightning fizzing on my skin
I’m just waiting for the weekend to begin.
And – dVerse is back! Seven years of prompts, sharing and poetic community. Today’s prompt is, appropriately, itch. Grace is hosting tonight, and I’m itching to get over there.
Pedal as fast as you can –
you can’t out-cycle death –
she’s right behind you,
thighs pumping, –
hair flying
no helmet.
Hide in the peleton –
she’ll find you out –
make a break for it –
she’ll reel you in –
ride hard, ride fast,
death always wins.
Cycle is the keyword for tonight’s quadrille, courtesy of Kim at dVerse. This is for all those middle aged men in lycra.
Cobbler, make me a fine pair of shoes
So I can go dancing whenever I choose,
Moons on the heels, and stars on the toe,
So I can keep dancing wherever I go,
Cobbler, cobble some slippers, I pray,
Then watch me dancing away
A bit of whimsy for Whimsygizmo over at dVerse, who asks for a cobble quadrille.
She’s wearing faded denim cut-offs
and her hair is sun bleached, salt dried.
Oh, she glows.
She’s drinking cider, bright with
sunset, and there’s dry sand
between her toes
“I love the smell of rain” she says,
looking all around her, smiling
like rainbows
And this is the second one. Another rainy quadrille for Kim at dVerse.
She rules a rainy kingdom
of frogs and slugs and snails
and her silver gleams in buckets
and her diamonds shine in pails
she rides a mighty storm horse
that gallops through the sky
sparking lightning from her hooves
as she goes thundering by
My first rain quadrille for Kim at dVerse. It’s a re-working of an old one. Does that count?
This glorious muddle
we made together –
this silken thread
entangled
round
a vena cava,
that’s
twisted up with a
silver bracelet
that’s semi-plaited
round scraps of velvet
and
glistening neurones
that are
interwoven
with shiny ribbon
from a birthday present
the central knot
impenetrable
De at dVerse gives us “muddle” as our keyword for a quadrille.
Gather your thoughts
they are strewn over the fields,
they have floated away with the clouds –
you should keep your thoughts on a string,
so that they cannot drift off.
Gather them now, bundle them
tightly together, so they cannot escape,
hide them away.
Lillian is tending the bar at dVerse tonight, and it’s a quadrille happy hour or two. Actually, it lasts all week. Forty four words, with “gather” as tonight’s key word.
Life’s a zipwire
and you are
hanging on
hoping
hurtling
and from up here
the view is great
if you could only stop
and look – tree
bird –
what kind? –
blur of white cherry blossom.
You fly past,
falling, held,
between gravity
and the wire
For dVerse, where Zip-a-De-doo-dah De asks us to produce a quadrille – 44 words including the key word “zip”.
How many times have we
Watched as the sun expires,
Gathered beside the sea
To watch the waves catch fire?
Then as the glory fades,
Night shifts across the sky,
Hand in hand turn away
Leaving the darkening tide?
Day drifts away
Starlight remains.
Another fire quadrille for dVerse.
There is a fire
in the heart of everything –
the green wood will
one day burn:
the flame of sunlight
caught in the dark
centre of the tree
will be unleashed,
to flow like water
over the earth,
fire reaching deep
into the soil.
For Victoria at dVerse – a quadrille is exactly 44 words, one of which must be the prompt word. Tonight, it’s “burn”. What a powerful word. There might be more to come…
