A poem - Stand Up To Fear

 My photo of a statue in The Abbey Gardens at Malmesbury taken on a recent holiday. Do you know this garden was featured on TV as the home of "the naked gardener". Everyone wore clothes on thte day we were there however.



I seem to have come to another halt with new poetry at the moment, however this is one which I did not post on this blog when it was first written, this seems to be an oversight since I am quite proud of this one.

very much darker than  my usual output but all the better for that; "a change is as good as a rest", they say. Read below how it came about.

STAND UP TO FEAR

Fear assails me

Analysing my body

with frigid hands

Fear disrupts my thoughts

My brain refusing to comprehend,

should I run?

should I hide?

should I fight?

Fear, like an improbable

thief in the night

plundering my thoughts

stealing away my abilities

for decisive action

I must think

I must exploit

my remaining choices

Fear seeks to freeze

my understanding

of the real world

Fear builds upon the unknown

the unbidden becomes tangible

feeling powerless.

wait awhile

be positive

Fear may be defeated

(Fear is not all-powerful)

assert the truth

demand the right

Now an explanation of how it came about.

One Idea is sometimes called mechanical poetry. There are a number of on-line poetry generators for what they are worth. I always thought of them as a bit of fun. I have in the past actually written programs in basic to generate poems from a list of lines either in memory or from inputted data. So I have an idea how they work. But in the spirit of a little fun, I was trying one or two of these. I did find one that I thought gave passable results, and one of the offerings actually caught my attention.

I took the half a dozen lines and turned them into three stanzas of similar length. I am not sure how this really works, maybe I should have sat on it for a few weeks but I am so glad to have actually completed something other than my other relief valve, a haiku. I have to admit that I actually used a thesaurus for the first time for this poem, it almost seems like cheating but it did help to provide a couple of words which I preferred to my originals.

I think the ending is OK, but may look at it again and attempt to edit one or two lingering doubts. So here it is for now:-

A New Poem: Breaking Dawn

This is my third poem from what I am calling a mechanical poetry route.


I have used a simple poetry generator to create a poem, I seeded the app with a few words and took the result as a "starter for ten"; from this particular generator, the resulting poem was about ten short lines but as previously I decided that I wanted more. I like to tell a story in my poems not just leave the reader wanting more.

So taking a phrase at a time, and sometimes repositioning them I used a thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary to extend and enhance the poem. All poets edit their work several times as a matter of course, what I don't know is how many use help from dictionaries and thesauri during this process. I do believe that these poems are my own work. I simply get a little help in that first step which gives me a little kick and helps me to get over a little writers' block.

So here is the latest:-

Breaking Dawn.

I awake afraid to face the dawn.

Turning in my bed, toward the light

Leaking from a curtained widow,

I feel a dreadful, haunting fright.

A golden sun precedes the day,

But with what terrors shall I compete?

Will my nightmares yet come to pass.

I hide my head beneath the sheet.

My fantasies return each night,

In conspicuous, lucid clarity,

I relive them all within my sleep

In unwelcome perpetuity

I disavow their appearances

But shivering with trepidation

I know that I will only fail

It’s cold, so cold, it’s devastation

My lifeline is your happy face

It brings me warmth and calms my fears

you are so much my opposite

Yet your presence hides unwelcome cares

I thought I had finished but seeing it written down again here, I think that last verse should have been extended into at least two stanzas. It seems that things are coming out too quickly. I will leave it here however as a work-in-progress and make another post when I have edited/added more to complete it.

Mechanical Poetry to overcome writer's block

Yes I am still suffering from this infliction.

I have found another web-site which offers help for poets suffering in this way. OK, so we have all seen many sites which offer prompts galore - does this help? I have even posted prompts and sources in previous posts but I am not sure it has been helping me that much. As I said, I am getting ideas to work on but it's carrying them through to more than fragments -to a complete poem.

Now that is patently silly because even a Haiku is a complete poem, so what do I mean? I am not expanding the ideas to longer poems I guess and this is bothering me. But hold on, before carrying on let me share a few more Haiku.

Wind chill factor high

The Beast from the East arrives

red warning of snow

(note: a red warning from the met office is issued when dangerous levels of snow are forecast)

Ignored totally

morning, get up, go to work

back home, silence reigns

Newspaper healines

full of bad news to annoy

answer, don't buy them

Newspaper headlines

designed to sell more copies

create frustration

Nespaper headlines

can they ever be believed

read between the lines

(what makes you think it was a good day for the newspapers)

Now, back to the main theme of the post. I have found a web-site which describes a creativity game for writing poems. I have been working on something similar for creatiing abstract art and so was attracted to it. The site, "Dial-a-Poem", also describes one or two ideas for writing poetry which it describes as mechanical poetry. I shall be trying out these ideas, hopefully more helpful than working to simple prompts.

watch this space I will let you know how I get on.