Cheekily shared with dVerse – Tuesday Poetics. Always considering a different angle on a prompt, my mind took me to a place that I’ve only heard about (honest, guv!), guided by the Cambridge Dictionary entry for ‘paddle’, which gave me ‘We provide a variety of toys, such as floggers, paddles, cuffs, and ropes.’ I didn’t really get a ‘song’ into the poem but the sounds are clear and obvious.
We provide a variety of toys, for adventurous girls and boys;
Whack! Whack!
A sharp crack lands across a welcoming back.
With floggers and paddles, over the sub the mistress straddles;
Zzip! Zzip!
A consenting courtship at the whims of her loving whip.
A kink of ropes, clips and cuffs, or a silken bondage tied with trust;
Squeal! Squeal!
The trussed and bound reveal the boundaries of this fetishistic deal.
Blindfolded and restrained, the traditional roles clearly reframed;
Swish! Swish!
A safe word so devilish, “No sex, please, we’re English!”
Make a reckless deal with rivals and so pierce the heavy crown. A twirl of the ragged moustache and a murky drink to wash down.
A puzzling weave, the heavy trunk; A lesson from the firefly sweep. An ornate starfish? A rowdy deer? The sting of an onion when asleep.
An Arctic award for this inferno, relishing the blast button blunder. Vacant eyes, a skeletal flensing, shredded skin all rent asunder.
Inspired by the gentle nudge of Sunra Rainz and her post about participating in this year’s Inktober challenge, with the prompt list below. Not having the inclination to paint with a brush, here is a painting with words, that somehow ended up being about playing video games, which was not in my mind when I started!
A tanka, shared with Reena’s Xploration #400 – inspired by the attached picture from The Marginalian’s An Almanac of Birds. These elusive birds are known as ‘jewels of the swamp’ and their song is a ‘sweet-sweet-sweet’ sound. Their name is derived from their colour, an almost fluorescent golden-yellow, like the robes of a papal prothonotary (a high-ranking cleric in the Catholic Church. I learned all this today, too.
trusting no fixed star but the compass in my chest to chart my own path
plastic handles bite my palms head spins, as heartbeat ba-bumps
welcome days in – ever winding the humdrum must be done wound down – until day’s out
at my cluttered desk I stitch poems line by line lest gray cells ooze out
the words remain concrete a scripture my own
fountain pen twirling needle of unwritten words seeking sacred course
A two-person rengay, written with David at The Skeptic’s Kaddish. David’s lines are italicised. I think this is the first time I have written a poem with someone else and it was an interesting exercise. I started off with the first stanza and deliberately left out any motivations about the words to see where David went with it. Each time after that, though, we did explain our reasoning for the words. I think the final result became quite a balanced poem and a balanced reflection on life too. I’ll let you make your own mind up on that though. 17th Jan 2026 – shared with Poets and Storytellers United #210 – collaboration
I was working on this poem when the W3 prompt arrived to write about silence and I have somewhat jammed my poem into it, so it doesn’t quite fully meet the criteria but here it is anyway. Above, formatted as desired and below is what WordPress decides to display it like.
Some days are made for speaking, others for silence; a stride into the spotlight, a tiptoe back into the shadows.
Some moments call for stepping forward, others for stillness; a bull entering the ring, the matador focused.
…….and
Some moments call for stillness, others for stepping forward; the river doesn’t share any secrets until it finds the waterfall.
Some days are made for silence, others for speaking; the words are lost in wonder until the whisper becomes a roar.
All of the noise rushed through the open window, as I willingly wound my way through the Purbecks; from the Cove to Old Harry, a chalky knife on the map. Is this the life?
The dilapidated rust bucket rumbles along as it takes me to the outside; toking to this song, a mind expand A fiery gun hand, my troubles all left behind.
Where there’s all creations, their buds and spawn; here I am! without a care, ensconced within a bed of air, joining in celebrating the wind ruffling my hair.
As a tone deaf chorus leaves my lip, sung from my very own big ship; happiness and joy fills my face with a beaming smile a mile wide, a dirty boy with no bright side, so often lost to his dreaming.
All around the world ships and irons are heard clanging; a banging of our headbones, waiting to go off and things.
On land and in the sea, so far from tidy suburbia; all the poor soldiers know, despite their charms, that’s the way we all go…
Written for the GloPoWriMo Day 18 prompt: Craft your own poem that recounts an experience of driving/riding and singing, incorporating a song lyric.
It surely was a joyous time, somewhere around 1989, I’d guess, driving my old shitty Morris Marina around the Purbeck Hills, checking out Lulworth Cove and Old Harry’s Rocks, smoking a joint and blasting Cardiacs songs with the windows down and me crooning along as best as I could, for no one in particular, perhaps a tern or two.
The bolded words are some of my favourite Cardiacs lyrics taken from the song ‘Big Ship’ – a joyous anthem that I shared often with The Pond during the late 80s shows. There are many other references to Cardiacs’ songs contained within, along with some band folklore. The title is an obvious nod to the master musician Dr Tim Smith, whom I miss dearly (despite never speaking to him), as do so many others who are ‘in it’.
All this ties in nicely to the recent release of Cardiacs’ LSD album, which is currently giving me earworms.
1994ever 