Tag Poetry

Murder – dVerse Open Link Night

freyathewriter 33 Comments

Image – author’s own

It descends suddenly, the veil of darkness,
is it not the same for you?
my vitriol rises, my bile erupts, a
conviction of your subhuman, less-than status
that ignites my thirst — 
killing overwhelms me, irresistibly.
under the circumstances, I must be excused (I will not beg),
the nature of the beast wears a
cloak spattered with guts and hatred
of which I have become overly fond — 
war has dehumanised and mechanised me
is it not the same for you?
nothing is beneath me anymore 
but the bones and viscera on which I tread.
an empty shell am I,
act kindly and I will carve a knife-smile in your face,
of course, before I bestow 
murder upon you.

This poem was inspired by the Albert Einstein quote below, each word of which begins each line above.

“It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”

It was written in response to much that I have learned about the world since I watched “The World at War” with my parents when I was growing up. This 26 episode British TV series, narrated by Laurence Olivier, chronicles the Second World War and is widely acclaimed — the series focuses on how life and death throughout the war years affected members of the armed forces, civilians, concentration camp inmates and other victims of the war. Images from this series have never left me, all these year later.

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Tonight is Open Link Night over on dVerse, hosted by the lovely Grace. Tonight there is no theme for us to follow, just write a poem on whatever subject suits our fancy, and submit it for others to read.

There is always something to learn and discover, so why not hop on over to the Open Link Night and read the wonderful poetry that is on offer? Or, if you’re feeling daring, why not take part yourself?

Happy reading!

Haibun Monday – Golden

freyathewriter 23 Comments

Over at dVerse, Frank has asked us to write a haibun (a piece of prose followed by a haiku) on the subject of Thanksgiving, whatever that may mean to us. This was good timing for me as it chimed with something beautiful that caught my eye this morning.

If you are intrigued by the concept of a haibun, why not take a hop, skip and a jump over here to read what the poets who frequent the dVerse Poets Pub have to offer – you are very welcome to take part yourself!

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my offering.

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I am wistful at this time of year, once again mourning the passing of a season whilst my back has been turned. Yet again I have been distracted by matters that seemed, at the time, so much more important than they truly were. 

It is only whilst standing at my favourite upstairs window, with its view of the garden and the valley beyond, that my heart is lifted. 

Glowing in the morning’s misty gloom is the small acer tree, its delicate leaves a burnished yellow. In summer the leaves were a deep burgundy and I have just caught sight of them in their autumn finery before they fall.

Today’s cheerful golden leaves are a precious moment in time, my ray of light before deep winter descends.

I am transient
as autumn mists and sunshine,
My heart sings with joy

Picking up where I left off… ish

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If you’ve ever dug around in my e-home here on Freya Writes, you’ll have noticed that there have been periods where I wrote a lot of poetry and flash fiction and generally took part in a fair few challenges that you can find in various places online.

I enjoyed them a great deal, but they ended up being the route towards what younger people than me like to call ‘burnout’. Dear reader, in some ways I’m a capitalist’s dream. Give me a thing to aim for, and I’ll turn it into an obligation for myself. And I’ll run myself ragged over it. And my inner critic will not hesitate to give me a hard time about ‘failure’. My inner headspace can be a truly unpleasant world to inhabit sometimes.

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that whilst I have been sorely tempted to take up some of these writing challenges again on a regular basis, I’ve resisted. Far, far better to dip in every now and again, have lower views on my blog/website than have my endorphins spiked with higher viewings but create obligations and burdens where there are none. I don’t need that in my life.

What I am doing though is something else that I also used to do, and had some success with. Entering writing competitions. For me, that is fun, gets the brain juices flowing (mmmm, brain juices, yummy!), has a potential reward at the end (publication, maybe even a small financial gift or a free critique, etc) and best of all, my mind perceives this endeavour as not being an obligation, a must do or else the world will end. It’s a win win, even if I don’t win.

I subscribe to Mslexia, the UK quarterly magazine committed to helping women writers progress and succeed. They have their own competitions as well as advertising other competitions or invitations to submit from around the world. I also subscribe to Woven Tale Press, an online literary and fine art magazine. It is also a ‘hub for writing and visual arts, bringing together notable artists and writers seeking to share their work more broadly with communities actively in quest of unique voices and compelling perspectives’. I’ve submitted a poem to Mslexia over the past few days, and I have ideas for a couple of competitions I’d like to enter, as well as some work I’m thinking of submitting to Woven Tale Press to see if they will include it in a future issue.

This is good. For me, this is progress. Perhaps 2020 will have been the year that I not only had time to learn some things about myself, but was also intelligent enough to take action on them.

Take care of yourselves. It’s been a rough old ride.