Day 20 - Excited Sun.

Here I spin in a minor outer arm
protected by my court of planets
who dance eternally.

I make fresh atoms daily
that the universe buys off me
at a good rate.

Mainly Helium with some Carbon,
Nitrogen, Oxygen and Beryllium.

It does interesting things with the Carbon.

I won't get to make the really exciting stuff until the end. The heavy atoms like Iron and Gold and Vanadium. Ooh Vanadium. I see the bits of them floating around that the older ones have already made. They got there faster. Not long for me now - just a few billion years.

They heavy atoms make it more interesting and some have settled on my dancers.

I let off  a solar flare
----


There's this thing going on at one of the planets. It's moving too quickly for me to see.

But then.
I know something is happening.
I can see the colours
on the surface
shifting.

Such beautiful patterns it makes. Its green and blue now, but there used to be more red.

And ooh.
It's getting faster,
I can't make it out.
It looks like little things are buzzing around just around the planet,
they weren't there a second ago.
Oh wow that's amazing, one has just got to the moon.
How's it doing that? That planet is brilliant.
Its sending off the little bits way out now.
They are their own dancers and one's got out beyond all the other dancers.
They're so tiny and cute.
Send one my way. Go on.

I ask the other stars but none of them have heard of anything like this before.
They're very excited too. They'll ask further out. We'll get a reply back eventually.

Awesome! That's made the dance even better.

But what's happening now?
It's changing again.
I .... 

Day 19 - Off road

I am standing in a road
and I'm wondering how I got here.
All my clothes are drenched in sweat
and my heart is thumping quickly.

Is this beating due to fear
from some terror that I've met.
Has my mind blanked out some sickly
gruesome scene from off this road.

I resolve that I won't let
this strange fear take me completely.
But the cause is still untold.
Does the danger still lurk near?

On my feet the mud is thickly
splattered. How does this unfold?
For no answers are there near
and my mind's in panic set.


I pause
         and look around.
dry fields
         lie left and right.
Nothing
         else except
a hill
         above the road.

My breath
         returns to me,
heartbeat
         is steady now.
But where
         on earth am I?
And what
         has just occurred?


I resolve to climb the hill
though the going is quite rough.
My limbs feel slightly ill
and I've fairly had enough.
But I persevere to reach
the hill crest whence I look down.
And I just make out a beach
and beside it a small town.
And towards this town I drift
treading lightly as I go.
And the mist begins to lift
and the past I start to know.

I remember  there were people chanting .
Who wore painted masks to hide their faces.
And they made me drink a potent potion.
And they took me to some unknown places.

I approach the scene  in muted silence.
This small town somehow seems to know me.
There's a wedding on in the main square
and the dressed up people turn towards me.

Then suddenly I see what happened.
The reason for my loss of space and time.
For last night was my send-off party
And all those ringing wedding bells are mine.

Day 18 Paeon of People

I remember I was smaller and the corn from me was taller  

I would wander through the yellow of those fields of endless dreams.

Then, the land bought forth its plenty so the people never wanted.

And my childhood I remember was as easy as could be.

For our tribe it was the strongest and our elders were they wisest.

And the women and the menfolk lived as equals by the sea.

Taking turns to make decisions, taking turns to plough the land,

herding animals of burden, helping people by the hand.

I grew older, it grew colder and the winters lasted longer.

No more wandering through the cornfields, no more summers full of clover.

Until one year crops were failing and our lives were turned to hunger.

and we fed upon the beasties who had helped us sow the land.

So that next year none were standing and the hunger grew much stronger.

Out to gather food we wandered, out beyond the cliffs and rivers.

And we lived on nuts and berries and we lived on fish and critters.

Thus our life became the harder as we struggled to provide.

And the young men and the children grew in stages full of anger,

and they fought amongst each other and they fought with other tribes.

And they said that all the women had to stay home with the children

for they could not fight as strongly and they could not work the mines.

And we old ones knew no longer how to show them to live softly

For they only knew the hunger and the struggle to survive.

And they turned to us their elders who had lived a hundred seasons

and they said we were a burden and to keep us had no reason.

By Apollo by Athena I will give them plenty reason.

They'll regret their bad decision I will leave them high and dry.

I will gather all the children I will gather all the women

I will take a few who'll listen and  will lead them to new lives.

There's a boat out on the harbour, there's another four beside it,

I will take all five together I will leave them none behind.

I will plan all this in secret, it'll give them a surprise.

And will make them think quite strongly of the error of their minds.

And that time arrived quite quickly and the boats were well supplied

and we set off in the darkness and we sailed into the night.

And they never saw it coming when they woke to find us gone

and they tore out at their hair when they knew that they were wrong.

For five days we sailed the ocean till we saw a floating tree,

so we knew that there was land nearby. The shore was spotted soon.

This new island we discovered would be perfect for our needs.

There was forest, there was livestock, there was flatness for the fields.

I admit I had considered leaving those we'd left behind,

to their fates and to their fighting, and to wondering where we'd gone.
But i think they'd learnt their lesson and the tribe needed uniting.

So I took the ship the largest, and returned to bring them on.

But of course on precondition that all folk be treated equal
and its not on the condition this just happens when life's good.
For in hardship and in hunger there's more cause to work together
World will throw us joy and sorrow and we needs treat them the same.

Day 17 - Music Alarm

Throw a spanner,
watch it fly,
in the blinking
of an eye,
to the middle of what's being, currently by people spoken.

Let good music,
woes destroy.
If heard live
it's bottled joy.
And the floating sounds they're singing, they're from life a gift, a token.

So you sit there
raptly spun.
Your mind basking
in their sun.
When a fire alarm starts ringing and with that the magic's broken.

People bustle.
Things they gather,
as they reach for
their umbrella.
Make their way out from the singing and there's nare an ill word spoken.

Now you're outside
in the rain.
Still it lingers,
the refrain,
that the band were playing singing, sung before the spell was broken.

So when spanners
in the gear,
throw you off
from what you'll hear,
dont feel down by spanners flinging, if you're of a sudden soaken.

For the mem'ry
of that song'll,
linger on
the whole year long.
And you'll still recall the singing, for it was from life a token.
 



Thanks to LH for the phrase 'bottled joy' and DKO for 'watch it [a spanner] fly' and to my building for having a fire alarm test today.

Day 16 - The Phantom Pantoum

Deep inside a dreadful forest,
 where the angels hid their breathing.
There once stood a house immodest.
 They who made it left it screaming.

Where the angels hide their breathing,
 there's a creature made in error.
Those who made it left it screaming
 and their lives are full of terror.

There's a creature made in error,
 who regrets that they existed,
and their life was full of terror,
 for of spirit they consisted.

Who regrets that they existed,
 like that phantom crafted whole?
For of spirit they consisted.
 They were once somebody's soul.

And that phantom crafted whole,
 still remembers its old body.
They were once somebody's soul,
 and they talked to everybody.    

It remembers its old body,
 and the fragrant summer mornings
and will 'talk' to everybody
 who now fails to heed the warnings.

So one fateful summer morning.
 came a traveller through the clearing.
And they failed to heed the warning
 of no angel breaths in hearing.

Comes the traveller through the clearing.
 They should stop before the gate.
For no angel breaths they're hearing
 and the creature lies in wait.

They should stop before the gate,
 where once stood the house immodest.
For the creature lies in wait,
 deep inside that dreadful forest.

Day 15 - Summer days on ice

A subtle twist of sunshine floats in off a south westerly breeze,
 while ruffled mists of space time invoke another mouth fluttering freeze.
The twists spins round in front of you face,
 and the mist wins ground for want of a race.
You put down your sub zero glasses,
 look back on capoeira classes.
You gaze into the future with all its different paths,
 the days engaged in mutual pirouettes of disparate halves ,
from thirty seven polar bears
 to lights in heaven solar flares.
The ice has captured sunlight and it isn't letting go.

Day 14 - The cunning plan

They said  if she spoke of this it d'be treason.
But she could not stand by with all the horror that she'd learnt.
And now they'd given her another reason.
By stealing all her papers and then having them all burnt.

This weapon she had worked on without knowing.
It was the greatest terror that the world had ever known.
Ten scientists on different parts were sowing
the seeds of great injustice from a concept not their own.

You might be wise to ask how they were harnessed.
How minds intelligent could be misguided and misled?
The parts when looked at separately were harmless.
Behind them all though, lurked a plan the world would come to dread.

The portion she developed was genetic.
For seven years she worked on how our genes controlled the mind.
Ostensibly to make us less frenetic.
But her funding had provisos not to publish what she'd find.

The funding was the key to how this happened.
As long as those who worked on it were kept from each apart.
So none were free to say what they deciphered.
While the nanotechs, the neuros and the bios played their part.

See, you don't have to kill your foe to beat them.
If you can make them like you they will not stand in your way.
And with your voters, it would help you lead them,
if they did not keep questioning each every word you say.

So find a way to calm the population.
And spread this out to everyone as quickly as you can.
And you would have a very happy nation.
As long as you don't tell them of your foolproof cunning plan.

But you can't keep them in the dark forever.
She'd glimpsed the work of colleagues, nanobots to alter genes.
And she began to piece it all together.
The nanobots distributed by health promoting teams.

Unwisely the first thing she did was tell them.
They threatened her career, her home, her finances, her life.
They offered her a fortune great to join 'em.
So she pretended wisely that against them she won't strive.

But now the time had come to blow the whistle.
The consequence to her no longer held her in constraint.
The world needed to know with all the gristle,
the plan to spike its chocolate so it lived without complaint.

Day 13 - Its limerick time

Its Friday and that means one thing. Limericks.
A woman went into a shop,
and asked the cashier for a mop.
Said the seller "it looks,
clear we only sell books.
Every day the same question please stop."

A Washington boy on a bus ,
saw the driver from chest pains collapse.
He jumped up and steered,
turned the keys off and veered.
Saving several lives without fuss.

A hadron collider called Cern,
was constructed to help us all learn.
It looked like things might,
travel faster than light.
But the reason lay elsewhere it turned.

More to follow

Day 12 - A Mondegreen and a homophone

The NaPoWriMo prompt for day 12 was homophonics and I took this one up. A homphonic translated poem is one that sounds the same as another verse in another language but with its own meaning (or little meaning) . A Mondegreen is a deliberate mishearing of a phrase or passage.


---------------------------------------------------
First a Mondegreen of a rather famous English poem. I'll leave you to work it out. Answer at the bottom.

I wanted only a sack loud
That flow sun higher, avails and ills.
We gnarl at one's eye sore wrack road.
Ach oh stuff goal tender for deals.
Bees hide they'll ache, bean eat that reads
Flat earing undone singing thy breathes

-------------------------------------------------
And this is a homophone from an old popular Greek song

Annex a stone keep. A moon peak at thee.
Nepotism taboulah.
Narcissism essay pro incur rather.
Sand my creed, rose hostel yah .

Earthen smooth rather. Met on a year ah.
Understand necks sicker thee are.
Super mellow Tara call its pairer.
Game o'er pest acre jarl.

Millets Emyl. Millets Emyl.
Then syphilis a poor tamer.
Millets Emyl. Millets Emyl.
Pose Nasa sick cat so bare myrrh

Millets Emyl. Millets Emyl.
Then syphilis a poor tamer.
Millets Emyl. Millets Emyl.
Moon on store near a moose. I feel low.


(You can hear it online if you search by its name 'milise mou' . And you could also try listening while reading.)

(The poem was from Wordsworth's 'I wandered lonely as a cloud')

(Apologies to Wordsworth, Nana Mouskouri and Grigoris Mpithikotsis)

Day 11 - The Sonnet of The Conversation

Now Ashley Judd this week had had enough,
of petty puffy things the press were saying.
The time had come with words to hit them tough
and show them what a shallow game they're playing.
'An actor and a woman who at times'
heard oft how half the planet ought to look,
with judgements made upon those fragile lines,
but value and esteem from self she took.
She wrote a piece both eloquent and clear
on how accomplishment and voice were lost
to chit chat based on just how we appear.
And in it you can read the human cost.
So next time someone slates your look and boils your blood,
just think of those words written by the feisty Ashley Judd.

Inspired by this article http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/09/ashley-judd-slaps-media-in-the-face-for-speculation-over-her-puffy-appearance.html


With these 30 poems I'm writing for NaPoWriMo I'm also hoping to raise a little money for charity. 4 different ones in fact. Today it's apt to showcase womankind which help women acheive rights around the world. If you want to help you can donate at this site   http://www.justgiving.com/AthosPoetryWomanKind

Athos