#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day30 #Sirens #Myths

Sirens

Sirens along coasts
issue tidal notices.
Activists enter,
holding signs, waterlogged hands.
Records adjust sea levels.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day29 #JamJarPotions #ComparePastToPresent

Jam Jar Potions

Jam‑jar potions from roses and rain water made

their secrets spill, as colours mute and fade.

Today green rice and incense, breathe slow,

gold coins murmur things I half‑remember, half‑know.

I stir abundance, or memory, or some unnamed blend,

a ritual begun in childhood I'll never wanted to end.

The red bowl glows faintly with what I cannot quite trace,

a spell, a wish, a girlhood echo taking up its place.

#NaPoWriMo #Day28 #NoSlouching #SixLines

 

No slouching

She bumps along the edge of the bed

as if the mattress were a familiar shoreline.

What name fits this fierce contest?

She’s inching toward recovery,

gym-bunny rehearsal

for the transfers her body is relearning.

#NaPoWriMo #Day27 #CareIsAChord #Tercet

 

Care is a chord 

First, take a breath as you enter,

survey the scene, scan for signs of progress.

Speak slowly; let her smile make you beam.

When she tells you she is a Christmas Carol,

nod, though she’s not quite sure of the year.

Raise an eyebrow as she tells the speech therapist she’s 20.

Reassure her it’s okay she removes her ears

to rest from the world; recovery is tiring work.

Stay until Dad arrives - care is a chord not a single note 

#NaPoWriMo #Day26 #PondsTwelve #NarrativePoem

 

Pond's Twelve: A Melodrama

The stroke team promised me a plan today,

after Mum’s MRI, and I braced for something clinical,

instead, a slick and cinematic diamond heist surfaced,

but the universe, trickster that she is,

sent ducks instead.

 

Twelve of them.

Masked.

Organised.

Unionised.

Pond level professionals with a taste for chaos

and a getaway route through the reeds.

 

Meanwhile, the witches were stirring the cauldron,

the druids were faffing in stone circles,

and a gladiatrix, soft-spoken museum educator by day,

wielder of the gladius Fulminata by night,

leaned on her sword like a woman waiting

for the plot to catch up.

 

My house, as ever, anchors as the gathering place.

Not for mermaid balls (though there is a tail in my drawer

when I take off my koala skin),

but for brunches on good china,

where check-ins are a sacrament

and someone always brings potato salad

as an offering to the household gods.

 

There is a love story:

my parents, modelling devotion like it is a craft

you can apprentice in.

Lu and I, no longer star-crossed,

just mildly sleep-deprived,

telling our origin myths over espresso martinis

that taste like truth serum.

 

As for the twins

not evil, just damp,

I refuse to elaborate.

Every melodrama needs a shameful subplot

and that one is mine.

 

And listen,

I swear on every feather in Pond Twelve

that no tigers were harmed

in the making of this pantomime.

They simply wandered through the scene,

confused but majestic,

as tigers do.

 

Besides,

plot twist:

I am doing Day 18 on Day 26,

and time, like the ducks,

refuses to behave.

#NaPoWriMo #Day25 #ChesnutInBloom #ThreeMetaphors

 

Chestnut in bloom, hope blossoms
at Kent and Canterbury

Chestnut in bloom,
a lantern for the goldfinch,
a quiet roof for its small bright body,
a place where late spring gathers itself.

Visitors from the hospital rest
in its shade, and
oh, the relief of that pause,
shade meaning more than darkness,
a sheltered space where shoulders release.

Then the toddler,
legs full of certainty,
running toward the road,
until I caught her, and her wave rose
like the first word for stay.

Chestnut in bloom, hope blossoms.

#NaPoWriMo #Day24 #HoldingPattern #OffPrompt

Holding Pattern

I’m eating a Jamaican vegetable patty.  

It tastes normal,  

and that feels wrong,  

because my world is upside down.

I’ve left her bedside.  

I know it’s sensible  

to rest, to eat, to bathe.  

But how can I eat a patty  

when the world is upside down?

I want to be at her bedside.  

I’m afraid to leave.  

Every crow I see  

caws definitively 

is it a battle omen,  

a harbinger,  

or just a crow being a crow?

Friends ask what I need.  

I ask for scraps of poems,  

to cobble together a road map  

through this place  

where nothing points north.

I keep thinking of cats,  

meowing to come in or go out,  

never satisfied,  

always torn between doors.  

That’s me.  

Inside. Outside.  

Wrong either way.

I listen to podcasts about recovery.  

I scroll Facebook and a Timehop reminds me  

I posted about what happens  

to the brain when we die —  

that it floods with a million  

happy memories.  

Please let that be true.  

Please let her be warm with them.

I text cousins and aunts.  

I busy my hands  

while the crucial 48 hours  

count themselves down.  

We’re 24 hours in.

I’m torn between sitting at her bedside  

and not wanting to get in the way  

of the people trying to keep her here.  

My traitor eyes won’t stay stoic.  

I know it hurts her to see me cry.

I’ve come home  

to collect photo albums,  

and things to read aloud,  

because they say you can still hear.  

So I will speak.  

I will tell her she is loved.  

I will keep vigil,  

even when I step away.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day23 #Pendulum #OffPrompt

Pendulum

Tonight, 

off‑prompt, 

I fluctuate

fugue-swing
 Weigh gratitude in one hand, 

fear in the other. 

Hope flickers. 

Grief breathes. 

I’m too tired to choose a feeling, 

so I let them all sit beside me 

until sleep's mallet seduction.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day22 #ManagementTrack #ConversationsWithYourself

Management Track
The boar snorts, says leadership is a path you scent,
not a rota you laminate.
Management counts acorns; leadership knows
which forest needs re‑growing.
I tell him I’m tired of holding clipboards.
He tells me clipboards don’t stop a charge.
“Walk first,” he says, “then others follow.”
“Root deep,” I answer, “so the ground remembers.”

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day21 #FifaByAnyOtherName #Nicknames

A Fifa by any other name...

1. Fifa

child‑tongue stumbles, named

by a cousin testing sounds

a nickname takes root

2. Baldric

hatching cunning plans

while scrubbing vases in that

fancy flower shop

3. Troglodytes

wren‑shaped heart, hopping

small but loud as any storm,

tiny yet mighty

4. Queenie

circle gathers close;

I hold court with open hands,

straighten others’ crowns

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day20 #DYouKen #AnimalMyth

 

D’you ken —

Log-toothed builder,
Flame-lipped crow,
Dusty eco-engineer.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day19 #SiansYellowRoses #Florilegium

Sian's Yellow Roses

I. Energetics

Yellow rose, sun-aligned, a rising flare,
petals like a lion’s amber gaze.
Warming the solar plexus, seat of will.
Rosa foetida, born in the Caucasus foothills,
Persian Yellow, foremother of every golden bloom.
Named foetid by European botanists
who loved her colour,
but not her sharp, wild scent.

II. Language of flowers

In Victorian parlours,
bouquets spoke in code:
yellow for jealousy, for love grown thin, for warning.
Now the meaning softens:
it speaks of friendship, of joy,
of unfettered feeling
between those who choose each other freely.
Language sheds its skin; petals remain.

III. Rose as remedy

Rosehip and yellow petals cool heat-tired skin,
a gentle astringent for summer’s excess.
Solar herbs steady the heart,
lifting the soft fog Saturn leaves behind.
In the garden’s small apothecary,
the yellow rose stands, warm-handed,
a tincture of brightness,
a quiet gold that calls the spirit home.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day18 #GlimmersAgainsTheEnding #WhyYouWrite

 

Glimmers Against the Ending

I write because the light keeps calling.

Each workday I leave the house,

connect, perform modest miracles,

and daily haikus pin that to memory.

I write because the dark sits waiting,

madwomen in attics, old lace.

On the page I can gently question it,

let my inner sage speak.

I write because the world keeps ending;

some days I don’t want to fight that.

Still, I gather small glimmers

like, bread crumbs of hope.

I write because I refuse to vanish,

rewilding myself as much as a species,

sunlit, shadow-stitched, a glorious contradiction

moving toward whatever comes.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day17 #AscendingTheWater #ResponseToAFavouritePoem

 

Ascending the Water*

Heart blooms in the dark, 

black water cannot keep you -

Rise, fire-feathers.

*Haiku based on Sylvia Plath 

Crossing The Water - Sylvia Plath

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day16 #BlueMentorTanka #SomethingThatCannotSpeak

Blue Mentor Tanka

Ocean without speech,  

yet you teach me to listen:  

Blue spaces whisper  

wonders, compassion, kinship 

the ways we are connected.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day15 #LoveThatKeepsAdapting #NonTradLovePoem

 

Love That Keeps Adapting

Today he finishes her lemon drizzle cake,

not because she can’t,

but because love has always been

the quiet clearing‑up after puddings.

Her wheelchair waits by the table,

a new geography

they learned to navigate together.

In the tearoom,

Dad and Lu lift the baby‑changing table,

making a path where none was offered.

Love becomes a small act of arrangement:

making space in a world otherwise inaccessible.

Later, Mum is wheeled back,

assisted to a comfortable place

to rest after a small, sugary adventure.

Tomorrow is their anniversary.

They are on a journey without a map,

but with many milestones

and a promise…

We will make space for each other, again and again,

however the world rearranges itself.

#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.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day7 #SkippingRyhme #WeAreOnALittlePlanet

We are on a little planet,

cracking at the seams.

You were chasing profits,

we are chasing dreams.

Storms are getting wilder now,

rivers start to flood

how many grown‑ups will step up

before we’re done for good?

One, two, three…