#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day14 #GLITCHED #PoetryAndTech

                ✧ Dude, where’s my thesaurus? (GLITCHED)

                     Dude, where’s my—

[fatal error: dude.dll missing]
system attempting recovery…

Mind if I drop the d—du—d_
dud
du
—
unbecoming in my verse.vrs.v e r s e
which is all about my scribb|lings
scrbblngs
s c r i b —
[buffer underrun]

My girlhood = filled()
composition.books
kittens_on_covers/corrupt file

Rhyming couplets →
composed to Tess—Te$$a—T3ssa
a pudgy Dalmatian cross
pudgy → pudg→ p_dgy →
{CHUBBYCHUNKYDUMPYFATFLESHYPLUMP}
rotund.tubby.tubby.tub—
[loop detected]

Pencil‑mark smudges
trying to draw round my own thumb
→ annotate() failed
→ handwriting driver obsolete

Writing: beguiling innocent past_time
past.time
past—
because I didn’t yet have the language
to depict horrors
only puppies & ponies & soft‑focus childhood.exe

Christmas 1984
my stocking held THE COLLINS
paperback thesaurus
A‑to‑Z index: fragmented
synonym_universe: expanding…expanding…

I realised pudgy could be:
chubby chunky dumpy fat fleshy plump rolypoly rotund tubby
vocabulary expansion pack installed
permissions: unrestricted

A gift of words
like a gun & ammunition
(ammunition flagged: unsafe metaphor)

My teens: darker verses surfaced
canonical / cannonical / can(n)on‑ical
Songs of Innocence
Songs of Experi—Exper—
[application crashed]

Thank you Blake
for the split‑screen worldview
that dogs my heels
divides my universe
teaches me to nod
“…that’s Experience speaking”
[voiceprint mismatch]

Lady Lazarus enters
creativity + madness =
frequent bedfellows
(bedfellows.dll unstable)

The trick: reign in the mania
keep the cauldron bubbling
but not overflowing
not drowning significant others
in sticky cerebral porridge
[warning: metaphor viscosity high]

Ted Hughes somewhere saying
she “relied on Thesaurus
to push her through poem after poem”
Oh Sylvia—
better faith in a book of words
than in a man
relationship_module: corrupted

“One day I’ll have my death of him”
prophecy.log archived
checksum: intact

So 6 years, 16 years, where am I now
my verse, my art
21st‑century gal
still with my Collins
spine broken / user broken / both operational

Pencil + fountain pen packed away
verse no longer scribbled
I text on an iPhone
in stolen downtime
modern_technology.wonders
no one guessing
I’m pouring out my soul
in free verse over latte

Thesaurus now online
infinite scroll
invisible index
to the untrained eye
I’m merely sending a text
not pushing poem after poem
and Hughes can’t point and say
“Dude, where’s her Thesaurus”
→ because it’s everywhere
→ because it’s nowhere
→ because it’s inside the glitch now

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day13 #TheManor #CherishedLandscape

 

The Manor 

Chatting with Dad,

I learn the world was named twice over:

Mud Hill in his tales, 

Elephant Hill in our own;

 Round Pond, Roman Pond. 

Yet through every naming shift 

the White Lady walked with us.
Strange, isn't it

How the land keeps its shape

But the names wander
As children stake their claim 

on the landscape of their adventures.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day12 #UncleDanny #RelativeMemory

 

Uncle Danny

In the white panel van you ferried me through summers,
the back filled with tools and the scents of nature. 
Head gardener at the hospital, carrying seasons in your pocket,
soil ground into your nails, flowers whispered their secrets.
You were the last to keep the family home
until it asked more than you could give.
We didn’t understand why you moved so far away.
Then you stopped answering the phone.
Police broke the silence: how your mobility had declined,
how you’d overstated the support you had.
Mum’s baby brother laid to rest without a service,
her anger circling, despite her own wish
for a simple, direct to crem goodbye.

If only you, too, had been tended like a garden.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day11 #TheNextStage #ErasurePoem

The Next Stage

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day10 #ForThemButNotForMe #GriefPoem

 

For them, but not for me

I watched them run the length of the rec,
they streak ahead like hares in spring.
My body, slower now, keeps its own company
a gentler wind, a narrowing compass.

What is this grief?
A gate I didn’t notice until it closed,
a map redrawn without consulting me.
The ache of falling behind
a soft-spoken tutor in letting go.

I learn to walk the edges instead,
to see them off, then greet them at the end.
Legacy is a kind of quiet cartography,
tracing routes for them, but not for me.

And when they sprint beyond my sight,
I feel the tug of something tender:
they carry skills like pocket talismans,
small and steady as a stone warmed by the sun.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day9 #FishOutOfWater #AnimalPoem

 

                                                                     Fish Out of Water

 

I.

 

Cut from chalk

a hollow made by men whose names

were entered twice:

first as workers,

then as losses. The pond holds

their subtraction

ledger-water,

its surface calm as if calm

were ever earned.

 

II.

 

Into this receptacle 

this accidental reliquary drops

a goldfish: bright

detritus,

a domestic ember misplaced by

a reckless hand.

Its restless mouth

unthreads the silt, undoing nests

with innocent force.

 

III.

 

The reeds lean back

startled by the orange insistence

of this uninvited guest,

this glimmer

that does not know it wreaks havoc

by simply being.

Beauty, here,

is a kind of vandalism:

a flare in the wrong dark.

 

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day8 #RepeatedPhraseThatContradicts #ButI'mNoConservationist

But I’m no conservationist.

I say it like a disclaimer,

that it’s not my training,

like I’m a stick of rock

that in my middle says “Yoof Worker”.

But I’m no conservationist.

The choughs circling the cliffs

seem to have missed the memo.

Dovorian’s young and old name me:

pom-pom maker,

shield matron, with a key to colours and beasts

Chough Lady.

But I’m no conservationist.

Even as I’m out there again,

tramping the world's blue seams,

knowing rivers that giggle,

lakes placidly hush,

oceans dream slowly,

ponds hold the moon like a secret.

Anything wet, really,

anything bigger than a puddle,

and suddenly I’m ankle-deep in devotion.

But I’m no conservationist.

I keep tasting the world,

believing every day’s a school day:

the salt on my lips,

the moss-green hush of a bank,

watching the sky for familiar feathers

chough wings brushing

the edges of my noticing.

I’m cataloguing textures with my fingertips,

listening to the soft grammar of leaves,

letting the wind rewrite me.

But I’m no conservationist.

I insist, while organising communities

like someone gathering fallen twigs

to build a fire worth standing around.

My knowledge bank grows feral,

sprouting facts and stories

like seedlings that refuse to stay in their pots.

People keep handing me questions

if I don’t know the answers,

I help plant them in other fertile soil.

But I’m no conservationist.

I repeat, as if repetition could make it true

as if the choughs weren’t circling overhead,

as if my boots weren’t already muddy,

as if my heart weren’t quietly

rewilding itself, every time I step outside.