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Miz Quickly’s Bad Poetry Day
Miz Quickly asked earlier this week, or maybe it was last, that we take a rotten poem and rework it. Improvement is the aim. Well, my eyes are not what they used to be; my aim is off. This is still rotten, but I’ve started dreaming about this sucker, so it’s time to move on.…
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A Ryūka for Miz Qūickly
An Untitled Ryūka There’s something careless in the air as uncertain as childhood. Shallow as the creek that’s bone dry. You left the sea for me. That creek where we used to hunger and dream; it’s a drainage ditch. It’s crags and lost souls when dry, or full as a hurricane. You and I, we’re…
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Miz Quickly’s Golden Shovel
MuuMuu Nights It was my mother’s nature, like a thread’s nature is in the eye of a needle, that a summer night meant a muumuu instead of pyjamas. Hides the heat. Hides a sticky back, that sheen of sweat bubblin’ up against the softness in cotton. It lets the sea breeze into your hollows. My…
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Miz Quickly’s Sunday Read
It’s Miz Quickly’s Reading Sunday prompt. I’m going with Armitage. I am in love with Simon Armitage. I love his view of the world, his dark humour and dry wit. A bio is here. He’s the current Oxford Professor of Poetry (Poet Laureate). He’s a poet, artist, musician (member of The Scaremongers) … not exactly…
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Still Home with Miz Quickly
Mapping the Wind There’s a hot wind out of Africa that teases my sense of home. Makes me want to pack my bags, leave my warning flags behind with damp dawn and wariness. I’ll leave behind my own voice, lose my shoes. Feel displaced. Joy, being your own spectator, and mapping out your own story.…
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Houses for Miz Quickly
The Deconstruction of Four Walls These walls have cracks – it’s all that water. Her rain. Mother Nature loves danger. These walls falling down with our little sins and too thinned skin. Shut the door. Tight. But there’s always a way through, always a song in her river. Miz Quickly Thinks About Houses
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Home with Miz Quickly
Dusty Colour Clouds Dawn, and the neighbour’s cock crows. Restless sleep, seems night never came. I stare at morning’s clouds. Dusty colours. Traffic echoes. Fades. The earth murmurs. Conversation is quiet. Silent. Held in a box for breakfast. And I stare at dusty colour clouds. for Miz Quickly’s Back Home
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Wrecking with Miz Quickly
Wrecking the Song of the Witches (from Macbeth) Double up up, double up, toil for trouble, fire burns a caldron’s bubble. Fillet a fenny, boil a newt a toe, fleece a bat’s tongue. A bewitched hell-broth trouble. Double up up, double up, arms firm and strong. Miz Quickly goes about wrecking poetry
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A Minute for Miz Quickly
A Pluck and Straighten About those eyebrows drawn thick and dark, and shaped liked a gull’s wing. When I was young, we plucked them in a shapely line, gold tip tweezers, and then drew them back in again. We ironed our hair to make it straight, stuck flowers behind our ears … when we were…
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Sleepless with Miz Quickly
Awake I’m counting sheep black as pitch, and stars on midnight blue, and I count my bony fingers and chubby toes, while I ignore my creaking knees. They bitch like angry squirrels whenever I move, whenever I sigh, and whenever I hear you snore, I can’t ignore those sounds that keep me awake as the…
It's Still Life 