Sarah Davies NaPoWriMo 2024

 Day 29, Albatross In elocution exam, level 3 She recited the Rime of the Ancient Mariner,  stood in the arc of sunlight in the salon of the old Foundlings school, a sea of polished floorboards, shrinking She saw the words scrolling in her head and at the 'Albatross' the bird itself appeared absurdly grand and white in the airless room, its feathers shedding, aftermath of pillow fight Circled without landing- years and years at sea and raised its neck, opened up its voice to shriek.  The words stuck in her throat, the rite and rote faltered  All this fuss, just to smooth her accent, and her hesitation, the sharp edges of which,  they said would hang around her neck. The albatross still flew

 Day 28 The boy cutting my hair talks of the weather and my fine hair, in the sense of slim.or slender, not wonderful. This weather is the mischief, eh? There's a picture of a model, hair like glass The back of my neck aches, pressed against the sink The mirror reflects gossip, echoes answers With my hair wet on my scalp my skull is the same shape as Nefertiti's My face hangs in its frame, a kind of art

 Day 30 Legend All these Greeks, tired of being painted by pre raphaelites and raphaelites and Botticelli  opt for abstract expressionism Zeus for Jackson Pollock, paint as scattered thought and action Hades as late Goya or Hallmark at its tritest Disney Poseidon Persephone repeated in her seasons like Pop Art Aphrodite, flying into war, a pin up girl Athena as a sword, steel wrapped round itself again again which is not, by any measurement, Art at all.

 Legend  Day 30 Legend  Your Man, like Oisin, son of Fionn McCool, returned from exile from the isle to an age of priests and dying magic to a bleaker shore In the Puffin book of Irish myths and legends, this is the saddest and the last, the bowed man frail as coppiced trees, his youth falling like pale leaves And see him, forgetting himself and his youth, forgetting himself and wonder, the irresistible tide of the dividing sea, the long-stranded swimmer

 American sonnet Day 27 Getting more difficult with each challenge (writing fatigue) American sonnet I.  From prompts Abstract object song Fear prison spirit rider Tiredness banister pale blue eye Peace daughter Wichita linesman Boredom feet would you like to swing on a star Fear of missing out TV it's a sin Displacement hedge in dreams Revolution Blackbird Eurovision winner Avoidance window bela lugosi's dead Quiet thimble eye of the tiger Democracy book saucerful of secrets Homeland cushion the sun ain't gonna shine Repetition candlestick Gymnopedie Optimism floorboard gallows pole Happiness daffodils gullsong Ii Morning show The presenter jokes with the Pet Shop Boys, shows footage from what seems a hundred years ago, everything delivered flat effect. If you rang now, that's how I'd speak to you; but seriously,w hat skill it is to do a show like this- from solemn news to interviewing dogs A scientist shows pictures of a planet where life might be; 'there are ...

 Day 26 What clatters, who? Jackdaws in the bare trees Their nests of tattered leaves  and bracken, high up, scattered thought clouds Matters of love are chattered there, up in the high nests, up in the beady eyes of pines. They are poised to spatter  spies, under the trees and looking up They needle natter, announce News of the day, and fanfare latter echoes of bad angels , blessings curses all that patter. The Sky's seen better  through a milk blue eye

 Day 26 Proust questionnaire The dampness of the butterfly A family A hungry fire Not liking me Not sure My imagination  Anxiety Truthfulness In a blue moon My real look Trump again Humanity Humanity To be fair  A poem In the cold desert with stars Dancing  Lazy An unsung songbird In a ruined Venice  A turquoise and silver bracelet of teeth Dreamer Hatred My great book may be written  Quietly  Circling moths in the puzzle square

 Day 23 Oh Imaginarywoman, I wonder what your powers are-  The sky's the limit I hope your costume's practical For all that leaping fighting  And doesn’t merely flatter Girl. Give yourself whatever powers  You want. Think big, Think supermegaultra I have never been sure of flying myself Of the vertigo of looking down And not wanting to land Perhaps self belief is the best power of all Thought it sounds trite Though it sounds miraculous

 Day 24 Attempt 2 Using, in the middle, a line from Louis MacNeice's London Rain, which I haven't read for years, but something about the mention of horses and London brought to mind a news story today about escaped cavalry horses. And there are horses ebony and white; their flanks bright flagged with blood or dark glistening with blood from many collisions There are cavalry horses  in the good part of London running like slipped time through the streets running like escaped memory not gentle but wild how the rain of London pimples the ebony street with white and the news feed telling us there are horses between the traffic, horses in the fields of people  running wild. There are horses and glass, and tarmac  Where is the cavalry  in the riderless weather, in the forest of the city? Those they have thrown stand stranded, and weep like rain in peacetime war, thundering weather of the horses, the red of sainted roses

 Day 24 The first 'line' (stanza) from a translation of Gawain and the Green Knight After the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy,⁠  the city been destroyed  and burned to brands and ashes... The old is ever new War is now and history And is remorseless In its story When will the assault cease? The city is destroyed, all is ashes, All is burned and branded Troy is besieged

 Day 21 Colour The Internet tries to sell me Dracula by Dulux for our ever changing homes , and it is the exact same shade as freshly taken blood. At the ward, I watch the woman put the needle in, feel her take three vials like volumes, wonder about this job and all strange careers. At the Paint Factory, the sales department try to match book to colour - just one person has ever read Mrs Dalloway, that fussy shade of cloud blue. The sales department , they commune with the ghost of Emily...what shade were the walls at Wuthering Heights?  And is it true Nineteen Eight Four is this communal grey And is there a book whose meaning is unmatchable by colour swathe And is there colour for which there is no story, blank and mute?

 On this day in history, I went shopping and bought eight, white, furled roses and twenty daffodils I thought about the lives of the saints because there's one or more for each day, but couldn't find a good one or one with an instructional or inspiring story. In other news, St Michael the Archangel is the Saint of grocers.  In your book in Stalin, it didn't appear there was a thing he'd done in particular on this date, although he'd slept and woken and trimmed his mustache, or had it trimmed. For someone somewhere this was the first day and the last. Like every day Like every day in history

 Day 20 The history (On this Day website)  On This Day, it's useful to point out that an anniversary is purely arbitrary, the mean point of our journey around the sun, and means nothing  but this chance meeting. The web page collects and aggregates, but tells us nothing but a date; a faint line between Powell and Columbine. The isolation of M and Madame Curie, memory as an isotope, decaying in recollection. Will the Internet ever let us forget the algorithm, holding onto any pattern by its fingernails? In the data ocean, Deepwater- the rig refining histories comes loose from moorings, spills.

 Day 19  The night of the haunter Haunting him seemed easy-  You going yourself through walls, hardly feeling them, horsehair and plasterboard Nothing stuck. If he saw you there, if he could, He’d see that you were young again and almost transparent - Yes death works like that  the joke of being beautiful when you can hardly use it - so that beauty to the self is almost meaningless- Hell is a succession of small failures, a Sunday with rain and all the shops shut. You were always lackadaisical, so he appreciated effort, your hiding there, a serving mechanism metaphor or indeed a phantom? As you melted from floor to floor, You found your ruby ring, dropped through the floorboards; all this transport made you itch Perhaps you could practice being a ghost. You were aware that he might not have  loved you as you did him, but you hope for mistakes, like the misplaced vowel of the lion, its restless ghost haunting deer in the neverending forest, every hair raised, hol...

 Day 18 My life as a yoyo Making a circle of arms and legs is difficult -  My head into my chest, my arms under folded Everything kept neat I am not neat – my bones get in the way, Ribbing out at angles, a thing shedding its skin Or a fracture through the carapace of tarpaulin I’m nothing if not telescopic But this is what you’d make me, Plastic, smooth The vinyl of a creature in a mould, Melted down and reshaped Give me neon green Make me unravel and descend At the flick of the wrist and then Crawl up again, control In descent and ascent All the rage in games – we’re not playing- We’re no longer Yo I  Yo You, Toys

 Day 17 Poem based on a song A newish song..Wild God, by Nick Cave Listening to Wild God- Back to the drawing board about poems about gods, old gods, living in the suburbs half mad with old age and disappointment  I’m trying to remember the time we went  to Glasgow, all in black and predictably thin so we shivered from the cold And he folded like a pencil case compass, shadow of an exercise book god scribbled during a high exam in German, possible beautiful impressions in spilled navy blue ink. And on the coach home I made a kiss with my eyes and mouth like a mask of a god pressed on weather glass Look there, you in the passed fields, did you  ever worship being cold, young wild?

 Day 16 Your hand on the couch's arm, all the diamond patterns on your skin like a snakes's new skin Everything in the world seems to be done with such fine finish, care: Nature makes itself so beautiful And cool, efficient, any skin like snakeskin over delicate bones I worry about the news on in the background - Incendiary

 Day 15 He lost count of days and found he forgot to post the letters to her, or perhaps it was that he couldn't bear  to part with them, the letters the thick, cream paper, scribbled on in light pressed ink - no biro here or even the postage stamps the rarest he could afford- each, though apparently, the effort was no longer needed- blessed with a proxy kiss goodbye He did not want to give He lost count of the letters and found he forgot to post his days to her

 Day 14 Despite ourselves, our shadows matter, how they fall as Despite itself the clock turned hands Despite herself the sun turned with it Despite yourself, how older you were when Despite themelves, the birds flew south and Despite himself, the watcher watched them - Despite ourselves, we cared about a safe return Despite itself, the clock balanced, midnight and midday  Despite herself, the policewoman of time  door knocked,  Despite yourself, you're charged now with its wasting

  Sorry   Sorry this Sorry your Sorry that Sorry for Sorry you Sorry how Sorry if Sorry no Sorry because Sorry not Sorry Sorry Sorry what?  

  The gardener loves the fisherman All glimmer far distant, the trill of the dozy moon at sea, the silky table, the book of wonder The nil flood asunder the look of the shimmer, milky and cosy plunder and blood The shrill of tall trees the roots of the cable under the muck and the hood, the brimmer of silky posies, the boon of cosy looks the sable of grimmer deeds a new kind of blunder, meet the mill of the mud

 Day 12 A tall tale Rather than require he stood taller, the people of the island built their city smaller- a third off scale  It is thought he imagined the sky felt heavier in his shoulders and the birds wings moving were like blinking and he was alone up there. Villagers crouched a little as he walked by and stunted the young trees in the orchard so they spread rather than soared When the people from the Guinness book travelled to the isle,  They took precautions- shovelled scree from the mountains to shave their height, tethered clouds like balloons Gave him the nickname Tiny to make it more ironic - The Creation of the Giant of Sandsea

 Day 11 30 one liners I Today the rain forgets to go to work Ii Today, Today forgets to go into work Iii The Sun apologised for false advertising  Iv The Moon is in the pub on the corner V All the rain to be lives in a reservoir near Capel Curig Vi Dylan Thomas's favourite film was not Now ,Voyager Vii On every day apart from full moon, the weather on TV is presented by a werewolf Viii I put my house up for sale just to appear in homes under the hammer Ix Local woman does sponsored breathing for unknown charity X The bacon on his sandwich appeared in the shape of an ear Xi She preferred the unvarnished truth, but it had been painted a matte blue Xii Mickey's logo appears like faulty venn diagrams  Xiii A Wimpy is an indicator of something about a town, he says Xiv Look at the way the Avanti train door hisses open, a man bowing Xv She wears a skirt in an a line, the colour of undercooked lamb Xvi The dog walker has three leads- on the first, the past, reluctant, on the sec...

 Day 10 You  Don't Know  How  To  Look At Me My  Alien Self My  Beauty My  Magnificence You Translate This Into Solitude I Don't Ask  For- My Scary Isolation- Maybe I'd  Like Friendship How  About Ice cream  How About I  Eat  Eight Flavours At Once How About Climbing Branches In A  Park How  About My Many  Eyes See  You And  You See Me- How About Neither Of  Us  Is lonely?

 Ode to the Cold tap Your cap is blue  your mouth more limescaled, your handle has more patina - used more I suppose, than your all mid cons sister, hot. You are the one who won't quite turn off that drip drip drop all night, mimicking the action  of water on rock that over millennia would carve rivers from mountains So far you have just managed to cloud the white of porcelain , but can keep us awake- the anticipation every time of a teardrop fattening and falling and a certain music. One day, one day, a silence  and a drip undropped - they'll fix you

 The Cassiopeian Queen meets the last Bee Will she descend on a cloud of ray dust, how will she descend ? On a swell of orchestral music,  sixties stereophonic choirs. How will she descend then will a stairway summon itself like vips from Hollywood's golden age even if this is a B movie? She has come as early as she could to meet the ruler of this planet, sleeping for millennia, Britney Spears-like, in a snow-white cryo chamber, dons her atmosphere suit, force field up against the dry sand wind in what was Washington, her ship hovering just like a cheap trick flying saucer She waits by the yellow dune flooded over the White house, a dune with one white flower, and on that flower the last Earth Bee vibrating with songs of all that it has lost, though the Cassiopeian Queen does not understand- she learned all she knows of us repeated on ancient late night science fiction tv.

 Wish you were here I haven't been back in years- the department store boarded, the central hotel broke windowed, yet bright pink blossom branches in the chain fenced waste ground and brand new signs to nowhere The shops are like this- betting, charity, pound, cafe, and the wind is itself but wilder, shrieking through the precinct,  all the gulls and pigeons weighing the sky down- Why would you come here? I had a return to somewhere else but stopped at this grey station in the past. Told the ticket woman I was breaking my journey which was the truth of it, but not all Hoped to get a glimpse of you,  to see if time turned back

 Weird wisdoms Day 6 Weird wisdom The paradoxes The maid of all work, heating the great queen's bathwater would close her eyes, remembering that water cannot boil when watched, a rule of household physics. A mask of black linen over her eyes helped shield both her and the self conscious bathwater from the trespass of looking. Yet, because the cauldron was out of sight, it was also out of mind, and so, boiled over again and again until the thing drained dry and the metal burned dry air and the condensation breathed on walls and skin. Meanwhile, in the kitchens,  unobserved, the scientist's cat was ambiguously fluxing between purrs, in and back into reality. It was a sadness: nothing was believed in the queendom where seeing was a prerequisite, unfulfilled by the people, shuteyed and blindfolded. And we must accept by this logic, the fact that the one eyed woman was the Queen; in a land where others did not care to look.

 Day 5 Poem 3 The sardine can, the giraffe and the map consider the British Empire Sleeping top to toe like Victorians, no room to wiggle or wave - turn key, pull metal, strip bed. We are convenient. What oversight from the giraffe who kicks against injustice, though the kick will overbalance?  On the plains and in the zoos, as lamppost. The map is the empire and the draught is its founding. Before the map was hungry, this island was this island.

 Poem 2 Three objects and peace The gun waits to be fired, nurses its bullets with patience. We hope when the soldier pulls the trigger, oh the relief of firing words. The bomb is perhaps a flower bomb, or it has always considered itself to be. The pulled pin will explode out to discover  nonfire or incendiary of blossom. The drone is a bird or the drone  is a butterfly or the drone is a bee. If there is war above the meadow, let it be this- the humming of colour, the precision of song

 Day 5  The Yellow Roses and the Glass Vase Yellow roses bred thornless and a smeared glass vase third full of water, all of them serving this anniversary or birthday The roses say 'it is our job to unfurl as we dry and dying.' The water says 'I will keep you bright as I long as I can be thirsty.' On the table life coalesces and clatters around them- meals eaten the homework done fabric sewn, days of slow decay The vase thinks it is more obstacle than ornament, the yellow flowers  are memories of paper. Somewhere out there there are valleys full of roses and a clear spring.

 Day 4 take 2 The strangest things in the world The elephant shrew  from the desert, can't close its eyes - useful nowadays Does it dream lidless as we dare to do sometimes, a visionary? Do its eyes water, does it seem to weep gold, but it's only dust? Try it, looking and sleeping, sleeping staring, each blink a darkness

The Shark of the Soil   When you were born I was seen And then five and ten And then under the soil I was and don’t know if I existed   Numbers are important   I eat them up I am a paradox Backwards and forwards both And if I am solitary It’s because I choose it   The protoplasmic we   Or because I all am one Here’s another me We surround I surround you My name our name Though nameless is chaos chaos   All of Linnaeus is a terrible etymology   I am we are chaos crawling We are ache sowed we ache so We eat though if eating is now being Whole. Am I chaos chaos Are you chaos chaos yet like me?      

A world famous actress once didn’t bathe for 7 days so that bees would descend on her and decline to sting. Apparently this is true- bees won’t sting in the presence of strong smells. On the cover of national geographic she was photographed with a scarf and decolletage of amber and dun, the bees gathered on her collarbone. Her gown, classic and pale colour was also embellished with a thousand bees, each moving and vibrating at exactly the same decibel level as a tiny quiet herd of cats or a very distant lovely earthquake She hadn’t thought of the implications of this, that everywhere she went, would be the swarm; at each philanthropic event at each red carpet on each film set. The little legs of the bees connected with the cilia on her arms, the surface of her skin, secreted tiny secret messages. She became more bee. She thought in bee, hated in bee, loved in bee. Soon, it seemed easier to open her Hollywood mouth and invite the bees in, invite them to herself. So her v...

 Platonic love song #day 2  Platonic love...kind of The librarian's platonic anti love song Dear Silence, how I wished for you  when you were just ideal, if I woke with a sore head  or the traffic was loud, and everything in the world shouted. The real of you, my dear I find too much. In you the unspoken hovers flylike, buzzing silently. My own thoughts fall like heavy volumes to the floor. You shush me. We both work here but I want you to leave, with your cold shoulders and mute breath , your tacit quiet. When you give instructions nothing echoes. I love noise now and music again,  I love Noise and Music, I love the chatter of birds, people. And sometimes I sing to open books just to make a sound.

  Just a whisper at the end of class, and I was told go down the halls through the yellow dust in sunlight-constant in my memory, I find the past in dust Someone waited by the head mistress’s office like she always did -everything she tried to be here in the quiet, though no one had figured that out yet-action and reaction, physics  This morning she'd made a rabbit fist and punched another kid in the kidney hard enough to hurt; the teachers said they couldn't believe she kept on being like this like a storm, but I'd been in her brother’s boat beyond the banks and felt the sea lurch, punch us in the face and how wild the sea was and how little it cared  I wondered if we were still friends,had we transposed to strangers?Anyway this is my story, how after the first blood, I knocked on the nurse's door, explained the lapse And she gave me a great big parcel, unwrapped to see a wad of cotton bandage and a safety pin from a time when bleeding was medical And how it ...