OctPoWriMo - Days 30 and 31

DAY 30 - SIMPLICITY

Simplicity finds us
In the sheets
Of the wind
That hastens our sails
As we steer from the stern
That speeds us
To freedom
Over waters of life.

If you'll always be my
Captain, then
I will be
The lodestar of your ship
Upon our voyage to the
Stars, as we
Feel all and
Nothing but the current
Thrusting from the earthly
Pulse below.

DAY 31 - ETERNAL

You have marked me,,
Soul-deep,
Like a fingerprint in metal cast.

Holding fast
And cleaving to me,
You suspend me in amber,
Fusing us for lifetimes to come.

Holding some
Of you inside me
Vastly triumphs none;
We're fossilised and crystallised
In foreverness
Regardless.

OctPoWriMo - Days 28 and 29

DAY 28 - SEA SHELLS

The sea shells out
our sacred secrets,
spilling us onto
the shore;
the waves take you from me
and then bring you back,
letting us settle
for more.

The current then contours us
into sea glass, with the finest
of all swells;
shining wetly in sand we triumph
the finest of sea shells.

DAY 29 - UPSIDE DOWN

Concertinaed is my world
by my meetings with you.

Soul origamied,
I am folded, inverted,
as our worlds are reversed.

Flying through our common sky
we're rollercoasted to the heavens.

I feel my feet above my chest
and feel my heart above my head.

OctPoWriMo - Days 26 and 27

DAY 26 - ABANDONMENT

Abandonment is not a word I'll use
For that would be the greatest of all ruse.

And that as well is not a word I'll choose.

It's my own silent weakness I abused,
Upheld the name of nature's ancient cues.

Inside our mornings' rarest drops of dews
It's love's true nature that we both confused.

Because you took me to new wondrous views
And painted my skies with most radiant hues,
I finally have nothing true to rue.

Abandonment is not the word to use.

DAY 27 - FAVOURITE SCENT

I hope I am and always will be
Your most favourite scent.
Not just the jasmine, but just me
And everything I meant.

The days we breathed each other in
Are now both owned and lent.
Respire the rose, remembering
When on us both we leant.

I feel your scent upon my skin.
I touch the papers that you sent.
Remember when we let love in?
Remember where we went?

OctPoWriMo - Days 24 and 25

DAY 24 - FANTASTICAL

We were not just fantastical;
We were quite formidable.

Our nights took flight
In streaks of light
That left the world behind,
So we could be fantastic.

Perhaps we were fantastical,
But we were not impossible.

Our minds made us a possibility;
Fantastically close to love's reality.

DAY 25 - RED

I have never suited red
The way you suited me;
You blushed me once at seventeen
And that was my heart red.

Far less stark was the silver and rose
That you made me when we went ahead;
A scarlet woman who went where love goes
And to her dreams, instead.

Scarletly swimming in the wine of my mind
I floated in visions of you;
You've reddened me slightly forever, you'll find,
Made purpler by your true blue.

OctPoWriMo - Days 22 and 23

DAY 22 - DANGEROUS

The game we play is dangerous;

It threatens to shake worlds

Even beyond those already shaken.

Quaking my earth

You rumble right through me

As we play games of life and love

That make us an exclusive club

Of two.

You've never bought me diamonds

But already have my heart.

My ground never stops shaking.

I hope we won't need spades.

DAY 23 - UNDOUBTEDLY

Undoubtedly

You do give me

What nobody
Else can.

Our fantasy

Of what could be

Society

Impedes.

Realities

Of what we see

Are not the keys

To life.

Yet though

You can't love me,

My heart does lead

Undoubtedly.

OctPoWriMo - Days 20 and 21

DAY 20 - WHITE

We had just the one white night
Where bare a blink of sleep was entertained;
Your bright eyes helped us both take flight
Through pearly words that we've both since retained.

So why no white night since?

Remember my skin of ivory cream
Evinced by hours of moonlight's tints.

Highlight every nuance of my dreams!

I'd like to think the choice is ours
But really it is yours;
I summon up your ghostly powers
To conjure night-time on my mind's white lores.

DAY 21 - NATURE'S CALLING

Nature's calling us with its eternal force,
Propelling us in its insistent wind
Along the path of our love's ordained course.

Around our magic circle is its ring,
Of every element you imagine.

We're fired and melted into our new shape
To keep the sparks of our bright story in;
Crackling, furling in our flower of red crepe.

With our embers brand new earth we make
To in this golden earth forever stay,
While silver eyes make mirrors in these lakes.

Our nature calls; the world is kept at bay.

OctPoWriMo - Days 18 and 19

DAY 18 - SENSELESS

We both became senseless
from the sense of each other;
this senseless act
has never made more sense.

With my eyes mirroring yours
and pheromones mingling
as our bodies merge,
we hear each other's breathlessness
and make mouths make
a multitude of tastes.

Our senses sing
to make a single sense;
making us senseless,
if you will.

DAY 19 - TREES

The trees kept our secret
and shared it with us
as we kissed,
their leaves casting
lace-like light
over our surging bodies,
wanting, wishing,
never wavering.

They gave us shade
and rustled as we whispered
in papery harmony.

We unified further
thanks to their care.

Count their rings,
and find us there.

OctPoWriMo - Day 17

DAY 17 - SAVOURY

I savour each second I get of your company,
Letting the salt of your earth settle on me
As I settle in your arms and mind
And let my tongue feel your flavour.

Your minerals nourish me as I awake
Inside your flowery bed,
Your silt and seed making snowdrops grow
Inside the fields of my flowery head.

OctPoWriMo - Days 14, 15 and 16

DAY 14 - SHAMEFUL

The shameful sight that others see
Has nought to do with us,
For loving wipes away the years
So we are all that matters.

DAY 15 - BLUE

My dreams of you are speckled blue;
It's become my life's colour,
In spite of myself.

My grey and navy eyes meet your turquoise
In a darker version,
As we advance from your teal front room
To your cornflower bed.

We rise to meet midnight,
In cerulean hues;
Please say you'll forget me not.

DAY 16 - IN DEPTH

You know me in depth,
Recalling nearly every version of myself.

I make new versions for you,
Building up the layers of colour;
An oil painter, trying hard to avoid creating cracks
As they glaze.

You turn my oils to watercolour
As we create new depths together;
A shining sea, imprimatura,
Letting light reflect through layers of us both.

OctPoWriMo - Days 12 and 13

DAY 12 - STRONG

Strong as the bridges that keep me from you,
Strong as the pain that threatens to crush me,
And strong as the clocks that take time with you from me.

Strong as the heartbeat that sounds out for you,
Strong as the arms that draw me to you,
And strong as the bridge that brings me to you.

DAY 13 - FLOWING

I step into your shimmering stream
Knowing the same water won't wash me twice.

Your droplets sparkle in the spray
And spangle my gaze with glitter.

Settling on my face, you crystallise as the sun dries me,
Marked in permanence as a sugared snowflake on my skin,
That wills me to lie down in the current
To be sweetened by you further.

Your words flood my ears as the water rushes,
Echoing the flow of blood, and love,
As we swim.

OctPoWriMo - Days 10 and 11

DAY 10 - UNFOLDED

It was in your arms that I unfolded,
Like a fortune teller finally
Giving up its childish secrets.
Papery and delicate, I lay there fragile
Susceptible to your every breath,
But also strong from every fold,
Creating a new structure
To withstand all.
Soon you'd set me down again
And ply me into a paper boat,
Wrapping me for the wind
So as to sail me on the sea,
Knowing that I'd sail soon back to you
Blown there by your breeze.

DAY 11 - LIVELY

Our lively laughter prompts the sun to rise
And casts a golden ray across our backs;
These glints of glitter glimmer in your eyes
As smiles make up for everything I lack.
The morning breaks, and yet our worlds are fused
By grass that's gleaming joyful in the dew;
It shimmers soft, hydrogenated muse,
Illumined by the breathlessness of you.
By night our laughter drops to whispers bright
That shine inside the moonlight's silver shards;
Your light words give my spirit endless height
And scatter skies with endless patient stars
That fill my world with lively sparks of you,
That all my days with lightness do imbue.

OctPoWriMo - Day 9

NAUTILUS

OctPoWriMo - Days 7 and 8

DAY 7 - TASTY

I taste your words between my lips
And roll their sweetness on my tongue;
Smooth, not cloying, gently melting
From the warmth of both of us.

You enter my bloodstream thereafter,
And nourish me with all I need.
Your taste upon my lips does linger
As inside my body you dissipate.

DAY 8 - POROUS

I glisten like granite in your hands,
Helping you write the words that come next;
Like sandstone, I hold you as you drip through me,
Filtering out all that skims the surface;
And like dolomite, I crystallise pink and white,
Refusing quite to effervesce.

OctPoWriMo - Days 5 and 6

DAY 5 - SHARP

Senses sharp,
I pick up your signals,
Interest piqued.

The briefest touch
of your meandering hand;
The brightest spark
in your sharp eyes;
The heart that's hidden
in your voice;
The vetiver of your
scent of choice,
And the taste of the coffee
you hand me
help me sense
a sense of us.

DAY 6 - TANTALISING

I am the one who must bear much,
Doomed to never have his touch -
At least not always mine alone,
Just momentary, brief and lone.

You may well wonder what I've done
To be deserving of this fate.

I, too, wonder just as much.

His riches are not mine to keep,
And this we must return to earth,
The secrets of the gods forever unrevealed.

Whenever I reach for him, he is raised from my grasp;
Whenever he could quench my thirst, he recedes from me.

I am the one who must bear much.

OctPoWriMo - days 3 & 4

DAY 3 - SPARKLING

Reflecting and refracting light
You sparkle in my mind,
Propelling me glitteringly
Through moments without you.

Split me open and you'll see yourself there,
Glimmering like gemstones mined
From deep in God knows where,
Built up over years of you.

Give yourself to me as a gift
So that you'll always be mine;
Be the sparkler in my sky,
The eternal shimmer of you.

DAY 4 - PURPLE

You light with lavender
my mulberry mind,
and make mauve
our otherwise
purple world.

Lilac eyes
find periwinkle plains
as our irises look
into our heather hearts;
together we create
a violet sky.

OctPoWriMo - Days 1 & 2

DAY 1 - TIME

My time for you is limitless in heart;
A macrocosm, maybe, of your time for me.
And time is all that keeps us both apart
And crystallises all that we both see.
It shapes us like the sea upon a stone
And yet can vanish at our will;
Your time is just what ripples through my bones,
And it's your time that makes my heart beat still.

DAY 2 - THE VOID

The void exists no more for me
For it is filled by you.

You matter to me.

Particles of you are left all 
                      over 
the 
                   space, 
Even when you're gone,
For you are a     tom     ic
Andtraveltomeatthespeedoflight,
Avoiding the void
To take place in my space.

#OctPoWriMo

In the spirit of NaNoWriMo, which I have participated in twice, Bianca's Book Blog will this October be logging my progress in its sister event, OctPoWriMo - which, as you may have guessed, stands for October Poetry Writing Month. I may well participate in its bigger sibling event, NaPoWriMo, too!

I used to blog my poetry on a blog whose address I can't even remember, while I was at university. However, I stopped doing that upon the realisation that the university poetry journal would refuse to publish my poetry as they deemed my work as having already been published elsewhere as a result. I also stopped due to worries of plagiarism (while simultaneously acknowledging that my poetry may well not be good enough to plagiarise!).

However, in the spirit of a) keeping up the good habit of writing regularly and b) attempting to revive my flagging book blog, I will be participating in #OctPoWriMo with gusto. I know I have the discipline. Time and energy are at times other matters. But I wrote a poem every day for nearly the whole of 2010, so at least theoretically a month should be a cinch.

You can follow my - and other WriMos' - progress via the hashtag #OctPoWriMo, but even if nobody else reads our scribblings, we ultimately write for ourselves, and hope to encourage others to do so too.

Here I Stand: Stories that Speak for Freedom (ed. Amnesty International)

--The blurb--
"Did you know that ... government spies can turn on your phone and use the microphone to listen to your conversations? ... that lesbian and gay relationships are illegal in 78 countries and can be punished by death? ... that Amnesty recently recorded the highest number of executions globally for more than 25 years? 

Through short stories and poetry, twenty-five leading authors and illustrators explore the top human rights issues facing young people today. 

Now is the time to take a stand and make a difference. 

Full list of contributors: Tony Birch, John Boyne, Sita Brahmachari, Kevin Brooks, Kate Charlesworth, Sarah Crossan, Neil Gaiman, Jack Gantos, Ryan Gattis, Matt Haig, Frances Hardinge, Jackie Kay, AL Kennedy, Liz Kessler, Elizabeth Laird, Amy Leon, Sabrina Mahfouz, Chelsea Manning, Chibundu Onuzo, Bali Rai, Chris Riddell, Mary and Bryan Talbot, Christie Watson and Tim Wynne-Jones."

--The review--

We are brought face to face daily in the national and international press with global problems that shock the world: female genital mutilation, terrorism, and grooming to name but a few. And thanks to the internet, today's teenagers are more aware than ever, and such issues are not restricted to the pages of newspapers and the eyes of adults. However, it's never enough, and Amnesty International's latest collection of short stories, poetry and comic strips, entitled Here I Stand, do much to amplify these issues for the youth in particular.

While the quality and clarity of the texts included in the anthology do vary, the majority are illuminating and decidedly non-schmaltzy. They address the ideas concerned directly, yet subtly, and make clear that they are not to be brushed aside as problems that only occur on one side of the world, as they can bubble under the surface of many communities in even highly developed countries. 

The variety of texts involved is also a plus, as even reluctant readers will latch on to the artwork and contemporary poetry included, bringing new focus to a wide range of human rights violations. Authorial notes are frequently appended, which again can frequently shed new light on the issues and inspirations from which the texts sprang.

Young people often serve as the protagonists of these texts, serving to further reach out to the youth who are likely to be reading about their plights. Equally, the backgrounds of these narrators and writers span the whole world, leaving something with which all readers can identify - and the sense that it could happen to them, or within their community, is vital in terms of triggering empathy and a will to act. The stories draw deeply upon current affairs that teens will be aware of, even if only through social media or playground gossip rather than their own experiences. And what is literature for if not to take us outside ourselves and the worlds in which we have been raised? This collection, by and large, achieves this successfully, with only one or two notable exceptions, which very occasionally lack depth or accessibility in terms of the writing styles deployed.

Nonetheless, this should not stop parents, teachers or adolescents from picking up this groundbreaking compendium. It combines beauty with reality and hope with despair in a way that provokes discussion about human rights, in a highly readable format that will engage even the most reluctant or least academic. It forms multiple bridges with the world around us and urges us to do something, no matter how small, to improve the situations of others. Furthermore, income from sales of the book supports Amnesty's investigations into human rights abuses - so even if you buy the book and barely touch it, you'll already be making a difference. But exploring these pages is even more highly recommended, as awareness is the most powerful weapon.

To see Amnesty International's full catalogue of books for sale, please visit http://amnestyshop.org.uk/books.html