Eskimo snows

prompt # 021
Color Scheme
by staff@wwp
Read the full prompt and poem responses by other participants.

What are your favorite colors? What qualities? How might they speak to you? Use at least three different colors (please) and describe your interaction in a poem.
(So paraphrased, the prompt.)

Eskimo snows

More names for colors than Eskimo for snows.

Thing about colors is they’re very democratic,
each one gets to vote, whether you care for any one
or not. Not like taste, where some are off-hand out
of the question without a tip of the tongue.

Colors arrive most equally wave by glistening wave.

Think I feel kindly to them all. Maybe why, who most
will receive their song, so, I say black. Black who
drinks them all, every drop. (Perhaps some selfishly,
as it doesn’t want to give any one color back.)

       Steadfast, Black embraces everything.

Maybe cause I’m an only child, it’s not so first natural
for me to share. Black likes to hold ‘em close, close
to the chest.

Although, handsome brush, only fair to say I appreciate
white, after all first, because it too includes them all.
Nothing shy, only starbursting white.

       Brilliant, White expresses everything.

All joined is all indivisible, a congress to genuine
unanimity, and don’t it figure, just as invisible (like black)
it makes everything else plain spoken as day (admirable).

As a parent might be asked, really tell us please,
but (only answered out-of-sight hushed-of-voice),
do you have a favorite child?

(So shh), to reply whisper embraced, why yes,
it’s red. Keep that in your pocket please!
I wouldn’t even dare to wear it on my back,
too bold to exclaim. But what it is you see,
beneath all the rest – is generous.

Good fortune to all, just as I’d wish.

       Like to be fair you see, but delicious juicy red…

neil reid © september 2010

Wiggles and wiggles of colored light:
So many colors. I confuse easily. So simple personal reality became the theme, the breadcrumbs here, left on the path. Ha! Not taken in the least serious, but born under the Libran sign, and yes, seems I don’t like leaving anything aside. Sometimes including being too verbose! A “talky” poem this time around, with a bow to the nature of light, and just one shy personal acquired taste (shh… ).

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red wolf

A joint prompt poem response.

prompt # 013
Little Red Riding Hood Revisited
by Irene Toh
Read the full prompt and poem responses by other participants.

prompt for August 2
Mix up our writing life
by Deb Scott
Read the full prompt and poem responses by other participants.

red wolf

red wolf
red wolf
darkly we whisper
come   come
out to feast
follow broken
trodden    leaves
we leave for your ears
your eyes your
scent to twirl
between
sun  setting  dark
be
your nature
expressed upon
high trilling voice
i n t e r  l  o  p  e  r
maker of paths
breaker of roots
trespasser
breaking loam
sundered peace
(horrid girl)
fetch we whisper
limbs tell air distilled
follow feast
fallow lust
u n d  o  i  n   g
says our  wish  dishing  wish
darkly boughed
and please
dancing fangs arrow swift
unclutched
but alas
cunning comes
in eddies   unwoven
ways unpredictable
unwritten looks
the victor writes
rocks into
your stomach
dark limbs transpire
by our very
leaves we shout
so  so  far
unfair

neil reid © august 2010

neil reid © august 2010

Joint prompt poem response:
WWP: Revisit the Little Red Riding Hood story. Taken here from “the Woods” point of view to be specific, which in their day humans regarded as a fearsome place. However, what was the wolf’s real place and how did the Woods feel about both wolf and little girl?
BTP: First, review your common poetic stance in their attributes of structure, narrative, phrasing and points of view. Then, take another stance. So here, less formal, shorter lines and for point of view, the forest itself as witness, as dominant interest.
Thank you Irene and Deb.

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Red thread

written for the We Write Poems community

Prompt # 05 by Angie Werren, “found” poetry and erasures

Read the prompt.   Read poems written in response to the prompt.

As defined by this prompt, a pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts; the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions (or many omissions in this case – nr). Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet. (Additional details and linked references can be found with the initial WWP prompt.) Material is taken in the sequence as presented within the original text.

Prompt response # 2, “Found poem” adapted by neil reid, june 2010 from “Bloodlines”, Terry Tempest Williams, “Red, passion and patience in the desert”
with deep thanks   ~neil

Red thread

There is a woman who is a tailor
a few inches here, a few inches there,
a feather stitch

this woman was raped
down face-first on the sand
she lost her voice    unable to cry

The woman returned home and told no one
grabbed a large spool of red thread
pair of scissors    returned

The woman cut pieces of thread
Six inches    Three inches    Twelve inches
a loose stitched seam upon the land

bloodlines remembering

rabbit, lizard, and rattlesnake
deer, mountain lion and raven

recalled watching a black bear
she left a line of red thread three feet long

one-inch threads for frogs
inside potholes    wriggle in the rain

It is fall.

along the banks of the Colorado River
She takes her spool of red thread
begins walking with the river
each bend    each curve    for miles
stitching    what she has lost

It is spring.

The woman is standing in the deep heat
a large boulder    “the birthing rock”
Ten toes of hope point to figures of women
the heads of children

The woman picks up an obsidian chip
she holds it between her fingers like a pencil

traces her own lifeline from beginning to end

The crescent moon    her thumb    turns red
She places her palm on the boulder and screams

“Found poem” adapted by neil reid, june 2010

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Goldy Bear (napowrimo #06)

read write poem   napowrimo #06

prompt by Rhiannon converse with images

Select an image, photograph, painting, or anything. Engage in conversation. Who are you? What are you doing here? (or something like that) Stir, and see what comes. (steeply paraphrased)

(So what is this silly response? Thought I might be profound, if just a little bit. But the fairy tale keeps wagging its tail, and here’s what left, not crumpled on the floor. Unredeemed I am. So be it, like the good book says!)

little red, by Jenny Bitner (with permission)

Goldy Bear

(in praise of things with teeth, including little girls)

I love to wear my pretty red jacket in the rain

I’m cloaked in my best fur when all these faces rain on me

My galoshes too, ten toes counting you

Ten times ten wishes I have seeing you, toes in flight!

And leap!

Golden hair, secret locks, stairs to my lips

Oh, you said lips! And they say I’m the one big and bad!

I’m just seduced by loveliness!

May I pet you sweet bear? My fingertips!

Well, I’m not, but inside my dear, yes I am

See the ribbon of my tongue, the emeralds of my teeth?

It’s not cold, but I’m shivering

I hear bells inside

Here, the door is open for you, yummy lovely you!

Oh, it’s dark and warm inside and

I’ve always wanted to be a wolf. My secret revealed

And I’ve always wanted to be innocent, and now

Brave new world      Brave new world!

We never would have guessed

Yes, love raw just like this!

Neil Reid © April 2010

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mariquitas gusta comer

read write prompt #114,
all over the map
by Deb Scott

A Wordle Word Bank prompt, choose all or a few (this time, I choose just one). Red.

Read the RWP prompt for full descriptive details.
Read other participants responses to this prompt.

mariquitas gusta comer

Red. The simpler the word, the more the meaning

The surface of an apple sucks in all light except the color red

That’s what means, the nature of a thing is defined by what it isn’t

Artists may paint a sky as red, not because it is, but because

And those who aren’t feel constraint inside a common eye

An ocean, a lake, a duck, an old alley cat, these aren’t red

But they drink it up all within themselves, tomatoes inside

What we’ll do for red. Be blue, be confused, bemused

Better red than butter too. Red howls at the moon

     Round and about seven hundred billionths of a metre is red

     just before we go blind beneath

     Increasing contrast to a silver salted eye,

     side-to-side choosing only one, turns sky black overhead

     good luck, if you’re Chinese!

Things we lost in the fire. Red smokes quietly, likes the taste

Red in tooth and claw, one third the color of a quark, everything

Red sings to the mirror, comes back mottled black

like an ocean can’t see burning fish

So what’s the brightness of an eye?

Land, earth, aboriginal sight? Death, celebration,

summoning, a wedding gown? Sacrifice, sin (aberrant

disguise?) like-wise purity (divine or otherwise),

too much or just right, decidedly Yang

     If you’re a star, red means you’re rather cool

     and red’s when you wave bye-bye away

     Reds include districts of sin and badges of courage, both

     or make a little rust and we’ll call you Mars

     Red sky at night, sailor’s delight!

Apples like to be sweet, bricks relish being steadfast

while barns like animals, and cherries like to be on top

lobsters blush, as hydrants are dog’s best friends

lips entice, ladybugs love to eat, red pens, a teacher’s rule

rubies cluster desire, and red shoes write diaries

while radishes caution and peppers make sweat

Tomatoes are for the brave of heart

And red wagons pull things around

     And five days afore Christmas day, that red flyer delivered

     to grandmother’s house. “Oh is that for me?”, young heart

     fluttered the words. “No”, said she, “for the boy down the street”

     And I believed for five days more!

Red. The more the meaning, the less precise

         But a good idea all the same

Neil Reid © February 2010

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Brother, brother

read write prompt #94  

by Nathan Moore

 

Brother, brother

 

Would I have come, had I known

you’d be here?

 

Brother and brother, embrace.

 

I resist, when you tell me what

to do.

 

All I hear at first is

red and right!

 

Close your eyes, approach.

 

Yet he seems, my self

whom I touch.

 

Ah yes, a perfect sight!

 

We are.  Unmannered, embraced.

 

Just right, just right.

 

 

Neil Reid © September 2009

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More like a sketch

More like a sketch

 

 

More like a sketch in chalk

they pass you by mid-stride,

in the middle of a page, one

immediate thought now smudged.  

Leaning on the back of a bench

taking what shade you shelter within.

 

Red and spidered, casting their net ahead.

Rushing the corner into rounder shape,

then passing a few arms length away.

 

Book folds into my hands.

Sound is the shape, the questing mark.

Someone’s dire need answered instead.

 

Pigeon viewed from a green roof roost,

unmoved, is it something to carry home?

Just big red things thrashing, blurred.

 

Singular unperturbed column drawn straight black,

rises high, says, come this way, come here fast!

 

Not for any of the obvious reasons,

but I want to cry, echo their sirens wail,

as red becomes reason why.

 

 

Neil Reid © 2004

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