Poetry Train Monday - 146 - No Cure

Hard at work on the second draft of my vampire story, this long weekend. It's inspired this assessment of the affliction I suffer.


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No Cure


Story attacks like a virus
No cure except to write
First attempt inside out
Like the transported fly

Years of workshops
Tears of surrender
When it just won't make sense
When it won't leave you in peace

Light bulb moment
Only leads to dissection
Your story's scenes sliced bare
Moments amputated on the floor

Rebuilt version sent out
Fragile as spun sugar
The heart bruises
With every rejection

An offer is made
A contract is signed
Champagne cork popped
Dreams now stock on a shelf

Someone you've never met
Stays up all night
Reading your story in one gulp
As another story attacks you

- Julia Smith, Apr. 4, 2010

Poetry Train Monday - 145 - Make Me / Take This Tune - 1

For today's Poetry Train Monday, I'm taking a prompt from the Take This Tune meme, which posts on Friday's for a Monday meme. Take This Tune is hosted by Jamie from Durward Discussion and Fairweather from Fairweather's Red Mud Inn.









Here are the Take This Tune guidelines:

A video will be posted each Friday as a theme. Write anything you like based upon that video, the lyrics, or just a story that in some way ties in with the idea. You may use a written piece, photography, or poetry. Post your contribution on your blog the following Monday (the official day, but everybody cheats with any day of the following week) and link back here so that others can read what you have created. Have fun.

This week's prompt is Red Staggerwing by Mark Knopfler. Here are the lyrics I'm using for my prompt:

If I was a Fender guitar
A Fender painted red
You could play me, darlin'
Until your fingers bled

If I was one of them Gibsons
Like a '58 or '9
You could plug me in
And play me anytime

- Mark Knopfler


And now, my poem for both memes:














Make Me


No woman ever held me
The way I hold my guitar
No woman's curves fit into mine
The way my Dobro sighs

If only you could hold me
Coax the sighs from me like that
There's a song inside me yearning
For the right fingers
For the right pressure on my neck

Pick me up
Strum me
Coax me
Make me sigh
Make me sing

- Julia Smith, Mar. 28, 2010

Poetry Train Monday - 143 - American sentence 4

I've been working on two stories this weekend, my vampire story and my convict gardener story. Since one of the supporting characters has been on my mind a lot, here is an American sentence from his point of view.

Mr. Bent is a settler on Van Diemen's Land in the mid-1840's. When he hears that Robbie once worked as a gardener at an English country house, he takes Robbie off the road party to work as a convict laborer on his farm.

I always cast my characters, and Bent is based on English actor Ray Winstone.












Neck cloth soaks with sweat, but hides the scar from the iron one I once wore.



















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Poetry Train Monday - 142 - Delighting in Our Tribe

Another meeting of my writers' group this afternoon. Something I look forward to with both arms outstretched.

Thanks for a lovely lunch, thanks for the wisdom of craft, thanks for the example set, thanks for every laugh.

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Delighting in Our Tribe


Delighting in our tribe
We draw our strength from words
A kinship undescribed

Laughter peals, we imbibe
Conversations spun, heard
Delighting in our tribe

Affection slung with jibes
Guffaws at the absurd
A kinship undescribed

Rx so sweet prescribed
Embrace our inner nerd
Delighting in our tribe

Inhale creative vibe
Our dreams, here undeterred
A kinship undescribed

No one to circumscribe
Our muses stroked, chauffeured
Delighting in our tribe
A kinship undescribed

- Julia Smith, Mar. 7, 2010

Poetry Train Monday - 141 - American sentence 3

*insert crazed war whoop*

I composed this latest American sentence mere seconds after Sidney Crosby scored the tie-breaking goal for Olympic gold in the most stressful hockey game ever.

Hats off to uber-amazing US goalie Ryan Miller and the agressive American team who forced me to physically hold a hand over my view of the Canadian net throughout the entire game. Interactive audience participation - what can I say?

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Olympic gold so tough to grasp, making victory all the sweeter.

Poetry Train Monday - 140 - American sentence 2

I waited until the hockey game was over before writing this for the Poetry Train. I was hoping I would have a much different American sentence to craft.

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History always repeats itself, even if it takes fifty years.


Photo by Harry How

Poetry Train Monday - 138 - Falling With Abandon

With Valentine's Day approaching, here's an ode to love, which I wrote this evening after indulging in watching ballet pas de deux on You Tube.



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Falling With Abandon


Love yearns
Yearns like the sea
The shore always slipping through
Fingers of foam

Its absence cr-
-acks
cracks the heart
Cracks like a dry lake bed

Love refuses
Will never give in
Love scrambles like tiny turtles
Scrambling from the sand for their watery refuge

It stalks with lethal prowess
Stalks like the panther gazing
From the shadows

Love competes
Love collides like
Tangled antlers

It shyly flirts
Flirts like the cocked head of a kitten

Love swirls
Swirls in the pit of the stomach
Swirls like dervish snow squalls

It bursts from the breast
Bursts like startled flamingos

Love burns without warning
Love burns like orange flame
Flame wrenched from trees by blue lightening

It falls with abandon
The abandon of a glacier calving
Into the open arms
Of the sea

Love kicks with springy delight
Rambunctious delight
The springing leap of young goats

It protects
Love protects like a bear's
Swiping claw

Love soothes like the tongue
The tongue of a doe nudging her fawn

Its joy spreads
Spreads through the cosmos
Spreads like smiling stars
Stars revolving in the vast night

- Julia Smith, Feb. 7, 2010

Panther photo by Liorah_Lleucu