Here is a half-poem challenge for January’s Casting Bricks to Attract Jade. Everyone is welcome to stop by the challenge and join us for collaborative poetry!
When the duckweed scums
The edge of the battered pond
He sees eyes that flint, her
Hands peeling two ripe plums,
All traces of holding back, gone.
Brush snow from the garden thyme,
See how green it loiters there
Completing Sarah Connor’s Challenge poem for January’s edition of Casting Bricks. (It went a little dark; perhaps I have been reading too much Ahkmatova of late?) Sarah is such a gifted poet and this was a delight to complete! Everyone is welcome to join in and Cast Bricks to Attract Jade, a collaborative poetry challenge. C’mon and give it a whirl!
Sarah’s words are in bold and mine follow. (Also went out on a limb & created a Sound Cloud, in spite of being sick for a week. I felt Sarah’s words come alive with the audio.)
It seemed like we were always dancing,
though the music was sometimes too fast,
and sometimes a little too slow,
and sometimes we hardly heard it at all
Frantic though the band played long
through black ruptured days of pitch,
and sometimes we heard our arteries thrum,
and sometimes we hardly heard their call
Until caesura broke the chest voice
and I let you leave without your hat and gloves.
qbit has taken up my Renga Challenge – it is bound to be…interesting; stick around! Jilly’s January Challenge of Casting Bricks to Attract Jade is in full swing. Join us; everyone is welcome!
Like sweet peas in water colors
echoes cross the river
Our dung, our beetled life, our turvey sleep,
we fall into carapaces and disjointed limbs
Guttering wings
grid of prophecies emeralding mold
Divined by eyes upon our backs
that see us once, see us twice
Skittering wake caroms,
threatens our sight; our sight
Our slight, slightest, lightest
saucy flight our taste of heaven
Indigo’s bitter blue
crushes, crunches veins of penicillin
Skewered through the helix,
twinned and twined to origins
Euphrates yellows our canvas
diminished chords return unanswered
Tigris Tigris burning bright
our garden silenced by such fire.
Here is my first Renga Challenge for the January Edition of Casting Bricks. Care to take up this challenge? Just drop me a note in the comments section below and I’ll set up a post for us. Renga is normally a total of ten couplets completed by two poets. January is going to be a great month! ~Jilly
“Like sweet peas in water colors
Echoes cross the river…”
Maureen Sudlow has accepted my Renga Challenge! We will complete our ten-couplets here. If you have not stopped by Maureen’s beautiful blog, kiwissoar, I highly recommend it! She shares poetry and photos and her quest with painting. Her New Zealand photographs are a highlight of my days. My opening couplet is inspired by one of her posts.
Like sweet peas in water colors
echoes cross the river
evening cloud
a rainbow bleeds into the sea
tinting the sun in primary hues
drying too quickly to deny the ache
ripples on the water
the emptiness of space
reverberating in time
with the heron’s solitary call
beyond the path of the whale
footprints of seabirds along the sands
breach from my throat in warbled tones
a solo song of love’s unrest
until, like love
the echoes fade, and die
to rupture again, and again
in clouds of ash and iron and mud
Join us at Jilly’s January Challenge of Casting Bricks to Attract Jade for some collaborative poetry; everyone is welcome!
We begin a new year and we begin a fresh month of Collaborative Poetry. Looking back, December was a bit sluggish to start, but then, celebrations and vacations fill up our lives in that most festive month of the year. As we approached Christmastime, the December Challenge gained momentum and we caroled our way into New Year’s Eve.
Again, it my pleasure and honor to be your host for Casting Bricks to Attract Jade. The Chinese tradition and idiom that sparked Jilly’s monthly challenges holds the spirit of collaboration and of working within the realm of the genius of our fellow poets and writers. I ‘cast a brick’ – a challenge poem, hoping that you will come forward with something far more valuable than the brick – that what you write will be as jade. During the past six months we have seen many half-poem challenges presented and completed by poets from all around the world. We also delve into the Renga format; more about that below. I hope you will present a Challenge poem for others to complete and also find a challenge that you would like to turn into purest jade!
Here’s how it works:
Write the 2nd half of their poem and post the entire poem to your blog.
Return here to our Mr. Linky again and post the link to that completed poem.
You may also want to put a comment on the other person’s original Challenge post to let them know you have accepted their challenge. Also, take some time during the month to stop back here and read some of the other completed challenges. You will be amazed at what is built by bricks.
NOTE: In order to keep the links for Challenges (your half poem) different from the links for the Completed Poems, I suggest the following: When posting your Challenge half poem, post the name you would normally use along with the word ‘Challenge’ behind it. ex: Jilly Challenge.
When posting the link for a Completed Challenge, post your user name & the name of the person whose Challenge you completed. Ex: Jilly / Colin (if I am completing a challenge put out there by our good friend Colin Lee.)
There is no expiration on our Mr. Linky, so feel free to post new challenges and complete challenges throughout the month. Complete as many or as few challenges as you feel comfortable with. Most importantly, have fun & flex your poetic muscles!
RENGA Challenges: Renga is a Japanese collaborative poem that involves two or more participants. The idea was suggested last fall by qbit at The Quantumverse and has been great fun! If you choose to kick off a Renga, include the word ‘Renga’ after your name (qbit – Renga Challenge). It will be up to you to assign volunteers to work on a Renga Challenge. I am linking you back to qbit’s explanation from September on this for guidance.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know through the Comments or Contact me directly. Cheers! ~ Jilly
I promised myself to complete Revived Writer’s December Challenge poem during my Christmas Break. Perhaps to convince myself that these days would last forever, I have only just completed her charming magic nine poem on the cusp of Epiphany and of returning to work. Looking back at Christmases gone by, it is the memories that tie them all together. Jenna’s words are in bold.
Family gathers ’round the Christmas tree,
Laden with ornaments and many gifts,
Children lean in close, excitedly,
Wondering what Santa’s workshop brought,
Creating a childhood of normalcy,
Every year, tinsel carefully placed,
Every moment a snapshot in efficacy,
Every smile darts as a chimney swift,
Lasting forever upon sweet snows of memory.
Let the children lamentations sing
For we are by the internet captive taken
Save yourselves, oh virginal generation
For intellectual artifice is your destined heir,
their anodized steel, your veneration;
soft, weak, your flesh shall they bare.
Let the strong youth petitions bring
For our pure reason not be forsaken
Save yourselves, oh mighty youth
For logic will flail in the walls of code,
stand upon the edge of time – see the proof;
chaos will surely be your Spartan abode.
Let grownups extol the joy of books
For it is by writing and reading we live
Save your words, you fading fosters
For it is a pleasure to deny; to burn
lexicons of man the blazing imposter
your poet’s words will die, unlearned.
Let the elders shepherd with staffs and crooks
For it is seeming that to us their wisdom they give
Save your wisdom, oh perishing patriarch
For your children have slain with derision;
lit and celebrated the dying guide’s mark,
cauterized argument flayed with precision.
For Jilly’s December Casting Bricks Collaborative Challenge, this is my completion of Charley’s challenge poem (Life in Portofino). His words are in bold.
What the winds can’t heal
The contrails sever
Flight to Havana, stopover
in Miami – looking for Cuban food
Settled for Vichyssoise
The eyes remind me of you
Your cold fish glance
As you detached from “us”
Missed the boarding call
Took Uber to South Beach
A diet from you – from drama
Low-carb sun worship
Snorting salt – talking to myself
While the crazy people gawk
Took sustenance on the sand
Salad days with little dressing
Sword-swallowing the contrails
Begging the wind to break my ribs
What the land breeze can’t evaporate
a clean cut condenses
“What the winds can’t heal
The contrails sever…”
A Renga Challenge for December Casting Bricks.
A Renga of unstructured couplets for two people comprised of 10 couplets total.
PLEASE SIGN UP IN THE COMMENTS BELOW, and we will work out logistics and kick off the working versions in another post.
Jilly's 