Aargh! It’s November already, which means that this blog has to produce 14 poems over the next 30 days, and apart from exceptional circumstances each poem has to be an Onegin stanza – that it, it has to have 14 lines with a strict rhyme scheme. As with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), quality isn’t at a premium, but I hope the poems make some minimum grade. I originally called this Local Sonnet Rhyming Month – LoSoRhyMo – and I’m keeping that as a tag, even though these poems aren’t strictly sonnets and the joke wore thin pretty fast anyhow. Here goes (click on the links if you need to know what’s being referred to):
November Verse 1: On the 8.37 M30
One scowls at three twits on a river
trip (ignore the dog). One nears
the end of stolen dreams, no shiver
breaks her calm. One boldly peers
into a mirror, lays on shadow.
One head-phones to a mate in Paddo.
Chernobyl monologues are my
companions – one long end-times cry.
Books, screens, mirror, phones connect to
friends imagined / absent / dead.
We laugh, weep, murmur, quake with dread
ignoring bodies that we’re next to.
Then off to work, school, shopping, play,
a hundred live friends missed today.
Me fail? I fly! 