A Poem a Day

By Vickie Johnstone

A collection of 446 poems, written between April 2020 and March 2021. In April 2020, I decided to try to write a poem a day on my blog, Vixie’s Stories, following prompts on NaPoWriMo.net. The following month I kept going. And I’m still trying to keep it up.

Hay(na)ku

We
sleep in
pockets of dreams,

wake
between stanzas,
yawn our disjoint

departing
the platform
of fantastic things.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vickie Johnstone
• Release date: Jul 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005173784

Vickie Johnstone

Vickie Johnstone lives in the UK. She has a thing about fluffy cats and also loves reading, writing, films, the sea, art, nature, white chocolate and travelling. Vickie has self-published 23 books since 2011.- Books published in 2011:Kaleidoscope (March) – 119 poems, divided by chapter themes;Travelling Light – a free book of 44 poems;Kiwi in Cat City – the first in a series about a magical cat and her human pals (April);Kiwi and the Missing Magic (June);Kiwi and the Living Nightmare (October).The Kiwi books have illustrations by Nikki McBroom.- Books published in 2012:Day of the Living Pizza – a comedy horror for ages 10 up (May);Life’s Rhythms – 316 haiku (June);3 Heads and a Tail – a romantic comedy with a dog as the hero (June);Kiwi and the Serpent of the Isle (August);Day of the Pesky Shadow (October);Kiwi in the Realm of Ra (November); andKiwi's Christmas Tail (December).- Books published in 2013:The Sea Inside – a fantasy adventure (May); andI Dream of Zombies – a horror set in London in 2013 with a heroine (October).- Books published in 2014:Haven (I Dream of Zombies, 2) (May).- Books published in 2015:Mind-spinning Rainbows – 45 haiku and 109 poems (April).- Books published in 2021:A Poem a Day – 446 poems (July).- Books published in 2023:Tirips Shade – Ghost Detective (April).Ink – poetry (May)Woman – poetry (May)- Books published in 2024:Between the Sky and the Sea – poetry (February)Murals (March)Colouring the Edges (March)Links:Blog: http://vickiejohnstone.blogspot.comTwitter: @vickiejohnstoneWebsite: Kiwiincatcity.comMerchandise: www.zazzle.co.uk/kiwiincatcityFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorVickieJohnstonehttp://www.facebook.com/KiwiinCatCityhttp://www.facebook.com/KaleidoscopePoetryHappy reading and writing :)

Book preview

Introduction

In April 2020, I decided to try to write a poem a day on my blog, Vixie’s Stories, following prompts on NaPoWriMo.net. The following month I kept going. And I’m still trying to keep it up. This collection was written between April 2020 and March 2021.

Thank you for choosing this book.

Chapter 1: April 2020

A numbers game

With a seven

the dice is thrown;

eleven?

It’s cheating me.

Six grins

its lucky spots at me;

nine

tries to take what’s mine.

Three slides

things into the diagonal;

four

comes calling me square.

Eight fights

seeking out infinity;

five

gives me a helping hand.

Two is restless

for its eternal soulmate;

then one,

for this is who I am.

This is the prompt for the April 1 poem on NaPoWriMo (Napowrimo.net):

Write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – one that typically isn’t done all that often, or only in specific circumstances. For example, bowling or shopping for socks or shovelling snow or teaching a child to tie its shoes.

Black wings

Notes flying, morning breaks in cadences,

sweeping, soft, uplifted, carried on breezes.

the red fox bobs his nose up midst long grasses,

content to stay hidden as long as his rouse lasts.

Another hunts the smallest morsel while he sunbathes.

A blackbird winks, orange beak in stark contrast,

adding his voice to the layers of birdsong lifting.

I pull back the net curtain to see the egg-yellow sun,

feel its glance warming my skin, waking my eyes

From a sleep of years. Where we turn, it all turns;

where we stop, everything falters to a standstill.

We are in-waiting, loitering between exit signs.

In corners we spy the ghosts of our distant past,

dark and brooding, seeking to rob us of our gifts,

rendering us incomplete, incapable of free action.

The blackbird reminds us otherwise, the Watcher,

sending us more than his song in the emptiest times.

This is the prompt for the April 2 poem on NaPoWriMo (Napowrimo.net):

Our (optional) prompt for the asks you to write a poem about a specific place – a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances, the types of trees or flowers, the colour of the shirts on the people you remember there. Little details like this can really help the reader imagine not only the place, but its mood and can take your poem to weird and wild places.

Below sound

Fully fed, the red fox fled the yard of the house,

away from the dark man with hands tightly clenched,

where the yellow, sown field withered in the heat,

its crop almost delivered; it differed to him not.

Below, the gizzard of a lizard rippled at the sight

of a swooping buzzard, turned in mid-flight,

plunging from the sky to lunge at a mouse startled,

his plan revealed, wingspan blocking the light of the sun.

The man’s face set to stone, grew old and weary,

and the beat of his feet, without socks, did not balk

from the damp grass, rough soil or sharp rock.

Grounded, roots spread, he sank in towards the dead.

Long buried, they almost whispered back to him.

A bee buzzed its glee to see myriad flowers blown,

grown by the man’s spouse, speared on their stalks.

The man had carried her tight-wrapped in a neat sheet,

clocking it all, walking his mind away from each shock.

Bones in a box. Chalk marked her grave. Now free.

She lay sleeping, almost rocking in her bed six feet down.

This is the prompt for the April 3 poem on NaPoWriMo (Napowrimo.net):

Make a list of 10 words. For each word, use Rhymezone to identify 2-4 similar-sounding or rhyming words. Once you’ve assembled your complete list, work on writing a poem using your new word bank. You don’t have to use every word, but try to play as much with sound as possible, repeating sounds and echoing back to others using your rhyming and similar words.

Paws

Her almond eyes meet mine,

Lighting up the dark,

seeing into me, through me.

Long whiskers twitch,

picking up strange incantations

or movements on the wind.

I swear she smiles.

Do animals smile?

She comes to tell me I am blameless,

her final goodbye was not my fault.

These are the thoughts I read,

whether said or not. She nods.

Our connection is unbroken.

I miss her already, knowing it’s the last,

her only visit. And so she turns,

her message delivered in dreamtime.

And I wake.

This is the prompt for the April 4 poem on NaPoWriMo (Napowrimo.net):

Write a poem based on an image from a dream. We don’t always remember our dreams, but images or ideas from them often stick with us for a very long time.

The stone cow of Surley

The lowing cow’s heart is stone, cutting and cold.

A scold snorting her approval for another’s ruin.

Her glass half-empty, she filled it with black bile,

never to drink, but to watch it darken and bubble.

Three on a heath marvelled at her creations.

Over time, the glass cracked in dislike, piece by

piece, from edge to edge, until it shattered,

pouring its poison in currents to pool around her

feet, and she carried it far, like a dog on a leash,

seeking any excuse to tease, bitch and bewitch.

The stone cow had nothing else to do.

In her castle she gloried in being her own queen,

her friends her subjects, eager not to be cast out.

I’ll call her Louise, but that isn’t her name,

I’ll say she lives in Surley, but therein I lie.

Does the mirror reflect the spite in her eye?

The postman rapped today with a letter overdue,

addressed to a john and smothered in twirls of lilies,

perfume sneaking over the edges, stems curling

out and all around, offering a safe handshake.

But I have wandered off the point on to paper,

where the written word is unclouded by prejudice.

I think it might just be a generational balls-up,

suffering and loss. Flip them. Dump them. Screw them.

We taste red, hear hot and cold touch, and feel a fox cry.

The song dances, curling like a cat in peaceful slumber.

Over the hills, the stone cow lows for an audience.

C’est la vie. Peut-être.

This is the prompt for the April 5 poem on NaPoWriMo (Napowrimo.net):

It’s called the Twenty Little Poetry Projects and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course, if you can’t fit all 20 projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!

-Begin the poem with a metaphor.

-Say something specific but utterly preposterous.

-Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.

-Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).

-Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.

-Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.

-Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.

-Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.

-Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in real life.

-Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.

-Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.

-Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.

-Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.

-Use a phrase from a language other than English.

-Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).

-Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that echoes an image from earlier in the poem.

The hare

Buttoning up my jacket, black as nightshade,

I watch the innocent domino-drop in my stride,

outnumbered in their fight against the horde.

Brown eyes wide, I spy every foolish trip by man,

my fluff of a tail concealed beneath my shroud.

Light long fled this place in a glass, sealed jar,

myriad creatures twisted into eerie phantasms.

My bagpipes play an ode of madness to the fallen,

jagged and crazed, a song for the pursued and lost.

The drummer boy sees me coming, carrying my stick

of spikes, white dice mounted. Will his throw land lucky?

The odds are weighted hard against all of them, yet they

play, and always fail, their flesh skewered forever.

Mermaids with missing tails circle for the entrails.

The sheer arrogance of man never ceases to amuse me.

Their vanity brags they can beat me, the lowly Hare,

walking tall, my furry ears erect, an ode to cuteness.

Playing my pipes, I dare the storybooks to rewrite me.

This is the prompt for the April 6 poem on NaPoWriMo (Napowrimo.net):

Write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famously bizarre triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Whether you take the position of a twelve-legged clam, a narwhal with a cocktail olive speared on its horn, a man using an owl as a pool toy, or a backgammon board being carried through a crowd by a fish wearing a tambourine on its head, I hope that you find the experience deliriously amusing. 

Tree

Branches point, stretching bark upwards

to be tickled by the waiting sun;

dapples of yellow lie in freckles.

The body straightens, this back my rod

stabilising me, keeping me from falling

into an endless slide I do not need.

Feet stand heavy, sinking downwards,

seeking to penetrate the soil beneath

but i am still in perfect synchronicity.

My roots spread out like hair, feeling

their way – tapered fingers gathering dirt,

digging down deeper into this wet earth.

Skulls

Black skull bag glitters

neon-green in the night,

offering dark a light

as you drift off to sleep.

Full moon hangs heavy,

a silver cascade

lifting the ground upward

to meet the sky’s eyes.

Branches swing, creaking,

played on by the wind

in a rhythmic chorus

only audible by the air.

Creeping roots bore down

deep into mother earth,

shifting senses lower and lower,

to the heart of sound.

A panda’s day off (or Ying Ying gets some)

Today, we finally did it!

And on a Monday too –

not everyone’s favourite day,

but it is for me and you!

The day I finally got jiggy

with the enigmatic Le Le.

We were introduced back in 2010.

Yes, that was 10 years ago.

We’re just a little bit slow.

Le Le never showed much interest,

preferring to chew bamboo instead.

Not to say I