#random dictionary prompt

[versesforthedew]

The Anti-Snow White

RANDOM DICTIONARY 3 WORDS PROMPT

Figure skating: skating in an attractive pattern, usually with spins and jumps included.

Sapphire: a precious stone which is blue in colour

Two-way: two ways means moving or working in two opposite direction 

Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

I have wished many times

That my skin were porcelain,

My eyes sapphires,

My hair perfect ringlets of ebony,

As if I were the fruit of a life-pact

Sealed with snow and blood

And a wooden window sill.

But everything in life

Is a two-way street:

 If my skin had been porcelain

It would have broken so easily,

If my eyes where sapphires

Someone would have stolen them,

Ebony ringlets

Have no warmth and no softness,

And the price of a snow white beauty

Are a poisoned comb,

A crushing belt,

A chocke-full of apple

And eternity slept away 

In a crystal coffin.

Instead

My skin is darker and blotchy and wounded,

Yet its scars know that it healed.

My hair fights every comb,

Poisonous or not,

But it dances in the wind

And gathers enough leaves

To be a living forest.

My eyes are no gems,

But they are not afraid to look up

And even in sorrow

There is laughter figure skating in their depths.

I’ll shatter every mirror

Before I lock myself in a bargain

For beauty that is not my own:

Keep your porcelain and precious ornaments,

I want wilderness and resilience and warmth,

And if that makes me ugly, fine;

I’ll be the anti-Snow White,

Renounce crystal and princes

And keep living wide awake.

[versesforthedew]

A WILLING DAPHNE

RANDOM DICTIONARY 3 WORDS PROMPT

Definitiveness: the state or quality of being definitive (settled on a final way, authoritative)

Navelworts: Any of various Eurasian plants of the genus “Omphalodes, having cymes of usually blue flowers and nutlets with a navel like depression on the side.

Arabinoses: A pemntose sugar obtained from plant polusaccharides such as gums and hemicelluloses.

There is a certain definitiveness

In late spring afternoons:

The earth has aggressively 

Decided it’s living, flourishing,

overflowing with its own abundance

Of petals and green leaves and juicy fruit.

In the abandoned field at the edge of the street,

Acacia plants taunt my despair with their white flowers,

Pierce the sky bluer with their thorns,

Ooze arabinoses in the air

Making bees drunk.

On the far crumbling wall,

Navelworts grow in the crack between the stones,

Each leaf as perfect as Venus’s belly-button

And what must be the exact shade of her eyes.

The grass whispers and chuckles,

And I want to run into that green until I am part of it,

Until there’s no more indecision

In my determination to live,

Until I am as well defined

As the navelworth and the acacia and the sky,

And as I run, drunk as the bees on the smell

Of trodden wild mint,

I see dark laurels in the distance,

And I know with certainty for Nature I would be 

A willing Daphne without Apollo to chase me.

F.P.

[versesforthedew]

FAIRY TALES

RANDOM DICTIONARY 3 WORDS PROMPT

Stew meat: beef which is suitable for cooking slowly in a stew.

Centre:The centre of something is the middle of it

Mind: You refer to someone’s mind when talking about their thoughts.

For my friends @snovolovac​ and Giulia.

FAIRY TALES

Let your mind wander

To the dawn of your life,

To the dawn of your culture,

To the dawn of humankind.

Listen as a grandmother’s voice

(yours, and everyone’s)

Lulls you to a sleep of fevered dreams,

And remember.

Remember the mothers

Who made their sons into stew meat

And buried their bones under bushes

From where they resurrected 

As songbirds.

Remember wicked witches

Who whipped children with nettles,

Who combed the hair of girls to steal their memories,

Who asked for princesses’ hearts in boxes,

Who turned eleven princes into swans.

Remember demons

Who tricked boys into abandoning their family,

Then learned to be almost good

Before being destroyed.

Remember cats and horses and wolves

Who helped heroes with their journey

Only to ask for death in return

And change back into men.

Remember mountains and caves

That hid paradise and horrors

In the heart of the earth.

And at the centre of it all,

The voice: your grandma’s one second,

Scheherazade’s the next,

And then, and then,

A melodious drumming of guttural syllables

From a throat that is not yet fully human,

Chanting in the cold before Prometheus

Had flown down with his deadly, life saving 

Gift of flame.

You understand them all, don’t you?

There’s a wisdom beyond language

In this eternal sharing of marvels:

The constant metamorphosis

Of everything existing,

The horror and the hope

And the mystery and knowledge,

The constant wonder, the constant asking “Why?”

That are the core of who we’ve always been.

Maybe you are not sleeping.

Maybe the voices lulled you awake instead.

Don’t run:

Stay here, keep learning, keep transforming,

Keep living

In the change that never changes.

F.

Writing practice: I’ll randomly pick three words from my dictionary and write a poem with them. No cheating allowed!

[versesforthedew]

Random Dictionary 3 words prompt.

Knuckle: your knucles are the rounded pieces of bone that form lumps on your hands where your fingers join your hands, and where your fingers bend.

Eye teeth: canine teeth. phrase:if you say that you would give your eye teeth for something, you mean you want it very much and you would do anything to get it.

Deviation: deviation means doing something differen tfrom what people consider normal or acceptable.

(Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

COME SEE THE FREAK!

They chain me with their words,

Crucify me with their stares,

Pick me apart like a pinned down mayfly,

Tearing my wings away with their whispers

Until I am but a worm under their feet,

Until I am a curiosity made harmless behind glass.

“Come look, come look at the deviation,

Look at the freak,

Toss rotten fruit

At the monster”.

There was a time I would have given

My eye teeth to be normal,

But now I’ve decided I’ll keep them:

If I can’t bloody my knuckles on their cheeckbones,

I’ll bite into their soul’s jugular with my eyes.

I am done seeking

Acceptance and forgiveness

For sins that are not sins

From spiteful children who hate things that fly.

Come see the deviation,

Come spit on the monster,

Come close to the freak,

And be devoured.

F.

Writing practice: I’ll randomly pick three words from my dictionary and write a poem with them. No cheating allowed!

[versesforthedew]

THIS STAGE OF FOOLS

RANDOM DICTIONARY 3 WORDS PROMPT

Psychodrama: a psychoterapeutic tecnique in which people are assigned roles to be plaayed spontaneously within a dramatic context devised by a therapist in order to understand the behaviour of people with whom they have difficult interactions

Secern:to discern as separate, discriminate

Rakishness.:stilishness as evidenced by a smart appearance

 THIS STAGE OF FOOLS

Life is a psychodrama

Whose director is unknown:

Are they studying our mind

Or assessing

Our dramatic abilities?

There is no time to wonder,

Quick, quick, change the mask.

Quick, quick, add more blush,

Make those lips redder

That complexion paler

Those veins bluer

And don’t forget to laugh.

Good luck secerning truth from lies

On the dashing, nightmarish stage

Where rakishness is queen of nothing

And honesty is never allowed,

Perish the thought,

If not under the garish guise of wit.

Even death loses its meaning 

Under the histrionics of monoulogues,

The spurts of fake blood,

The dramatic cries.

Mask after mask after mask

I have forgotten who I am.

Who are we playing for, again?

Is this all for amusement?

All the pain and the anger and the grief?

I cannot accept it. I scream,

I curse the director

And the indifferent spectators,

I threaten to jump among the seats I cannot see

And leave gashes on their face,

And everyone laughs.

It seems I deserve applause

For my performance.

Isn’t it all

Part of the play, after all?

F.P.

[versesforthedew]

THE BEGINNING IS NIGH

RANDOM DICTIONARY 3 WORDS PROMPT

Fast track: the fast track to a particular goal is the quickest route to achieving it.

Unaware: if you are unaware of something, you do not know about it.

Nigh: if an event is nigh, it will happen very soon.

THE BEGINNING IS NIGH

I thought I was

On the fast track to my own perdition.

I thought life was full

Of centres that could not hold.

I thought my Jerusalem was collapsing into hell,

My dark forest had no end in sight.

I thought the angry comets were

Tears of the gods,

That the universe was cracking down the middle.

I expected obsidian skies to rupture

And kill me with their weight,

I expected chalcedony seas

To drown me with their waves,

I expected onyx earth

To swallow me whole in its void.

Then in this mineral word

I found a withered tree

And unaware of the meaning of my gestures

I watered it with tears,

I sang it to new life,

I caressed emerald leaves

That had all the softness

Lacking from stone,

And the tree grew and grew

Until it met obsidian

And cracked it, showing

The soft sapphire underneath,

It sank its roots deep into onyx

Filling it with life,

It coaxed water from chalcedony

To quench the comets' fire.

Hope-coloured leaves are holding

My gemstone world together

And I hear them whisper in the new wind:

"Beware: The beginning

Is nigh."

F.

I dedicate this to @mirandasinclairs, because I feel that your poetry might have had an influence on this experiment 😉

[versesforthedew]

HOPE’S TEMPLE

RANDOM DICTIONARY 3 WORDS PROMPT

mock-up: a mock up of something such as a machine or building is a model of it which  is used in tests or to show people what it will look like.

taste bud: your taste buds are the little point on the surface of your tongue which enable you to recognize the flavour of a food or drink.

bread and butter:something that is the bread and butter of a person or organization is the activity or work that provides the main part of their income.

Collins COBUILD  Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

HOPE’S TEMPLE

I tried to build mock-ups of Hope

While pain and smoky wisps of words 

Were my bread and butter:

They always collapsed,

Whether I used caked earth

Or the finest spunned glass,

Sturdy bricks cooked in the sun

Or moonlit spider’s silk.

Now I am trying with blood and bone,

Making myself into Her temple,

Straightening my bent spine into a column,

Making a roof of my mouth,

Hymns of my words,

Doors of my teeth and shutters of my nails.

I feel Her come,

Like sunshine on my skin,

Like quasar’s whistles in my ears

While my tympani drum a welcome,

Like lightining on my tastebuds.

I open my eyes,

And suddenly

My winter world is sprouting flowers.

No awakening

Has ever hurt

Like this painful benediction.

F.P.

[versesforthedew]

THE PRACTICE

RANDOM DICTIONARY 3 WORDS PROMPT

Curd (curds): The thick white substance that is formed when milk turns sour can be referred to as curds.

General practice: When a doctor is in general practice, he or she treats sick people at a surgery or office, or visits them at home, and does not specialize in a particular type of medicine. General practice is also a noun.

Hogmaney: New year’s eve in sScotland and the celebrations that take place there at that time.

THE PRACTICE

If I were the person I’d like to be

I would start a general practice

Open from the first dawn of the year

To the evening of Hogmaney,

And every sad soul that crossed the threshold

Would be treated like the First Guest.

I would cure their maladies,

Make sweet cream of  forgiveness

Out of the sour curds of guilt,

Turn the rotting grapes of depression

Into red wine with notes of melancholy,

Take the mouldy wheat of old betrayals

And bake fragrant loaves of trust.

I would suck the poison of regret

Out of their marrow with my own mouth

And spit it three times on the ground

Cursing it to the deepest pit of hell.

I would toss salt behind my shoulder

To banish their bad luck,

Wash the gangrene of lonliness

With my ernest tears,

Bandage the wounds left by cruel words

With gauze woven with my hair

And apply the balm of prescious silence

Crystalline with rare attention.

I would give them my bones to exchange for those

Made brittle by too much time spent in darkness,

I would replenish with my blood

The veins of those who have given and given

and never received.

But I am only myself,

Small and powerless and selfish,

More curds than cream,

Poisoned, mouldy and rotten,

Weakened by the darkness,

Hemorrhaging hope.

So I open the doors of my heart insted,

Cautiously, just to a few,

(It already feels too reckless)

And I’ll fashion stitches out of shared laughter,

Surgical thread out of shared tears,

Ointments out of seconds, minutes, hours

Spent listening and being listened too.

I have plasters and disinfectant,

Not a surgical table,

And I can’t save your life,

But I will care for your scraped knees

Until you walk again with a smile on your face

And blood and bones strong enough

To open a practice of your own.

F.