Tag: Pic and a Word Challenge

Poetry by Patrick Jennings
Read More
Outbound, BC Ferries, Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo, Strait of George, British Columbia, Canada

Outbound ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #290

You walk away
With a crushing finality
Ramrod iron spine
Heels strident clacks
Carom across the concrete

Then at the door
The subtlest glance back
Betrays the display
That is your anger

Now I know
The only moment
More remarkable
Than this departure
Will be your return

I know also
The next time
There will be
No backward glance

But
God
Will I be grateful
For one  last chance

Continue reading Outbound ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #290
Poetry by Patrick Jennings
Read More
Burrard Iron Works, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Irony ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #289

I am having
High-order, ill-mannered thoughts
Inconvenient truths
As the saying goes

Understatement that it is

And I have always
Wondered why
Understatement
Doesn’t have a better word

Overstatement has
Hyperbole
Pointed overstatement
An extraordinary word

Understatement
Seems so…
Well
Understated

But I’m lying
Not about understatement
I cannot overstate it
I cannot be hyperbolic

About understatement or lying

But I digress
I dissociate
Because I am lying
About having these

Thoughts

I’m not having them
I mean that emphatically
Which is also a better word
Than understatement

And still I digress
Dissociate
Dis-associate
Because I also most emphatically

Do not want to have them

So I digress
Again
Diverge
Obsess about other thoughts

Any other thoughts
Or no thoughts at all
Even better
Any activity which annihilates

Thought

Television
Computer games
Hours-long arguments
On social media

Irony
Another great word
A device used properly
Only as a hammer on an anvil

I have arguments
About high-order, ill-mannered thoughts
To avoid thinking about
A particular set of high-order, ill-mannered thoughts

But I digress
From my digression
Which speaks to the power
Of dissociation

I dis-associate
From dissociation

But those thoughts
I don’t want to have
They want to be had
They want to be thought

And they’re knocking at the door
Pounding at it really
Against the big metal door
Protecting my consciousness

Like a hammer on an anvil

Even now
I am buttressing the door
Keeping it shut
As it reverberates

I desperately want
To turn on the telly
Play a game
Or open Facebook

Continue reading Irony ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #289
Poetry by Patrick Jennings
Read More
Concentrator, Britannia Mine Museum, Britannia Beach, British Columbia, Canada

Cavern ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #282

In the dream
I entered a cavernous space
Light streamed in through windows
Set in an impossibly high wall

It curved
All around me
The inner workings
The floor boards

I almost expected to see
Dali and a squadron of flying cats
So odd a place this was
Until I realized
It was me

I was inside myself
The walls and ceiling
Were my own skin
Seen from the inside
Pipes and beams my bones

But inside
Where my consciousness
Now found itself
Was a vast cavern
Of  emptiness

A fear gripped me
That all I had ever been
Was a sometimes pretty
But entirely hollow
Vessel

I wept
Cried out
Tried to shake out the dream
And wake up
Until…

I smelled the rain in the air
Heard the droplets
Tapping the leaves
Outside my window
Felt the cool of the night…

On my body
Outside the vessel
Palpating it
To see if there was any truth
To the hollowness

None that I could feel
“But you know you are”
Came a voice
From deep inside
Ringing with echoes

The fear, again
The tears, again
And a sorrow, full
As the cavern
Was hollow

Then another voice spoke
With the sibilant promise
Of a whisper in my ear
“A hollowness waiting
To be filled”

Continue reading Cavern ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #282