Saltatory penetration
from the earth back
to the #wistful sky
Feminine swords of proliferation stir
in heart and hands of warriors
Necessary pull away
from necessary decay
~ LAFogle
#wistful #vss365
Tag: writing prompts
writing prompts: from moon to moon
Spring 2022
documenting the moon has not worked
sight scythe sigh,
the cut reframed,
explained to a t.
a lee from your name
filling my skin.
an exoskeleton
dance of #sign
ature defeat
bows to the wind,
spins and sheds
its memories
I wrote that the morning of May 16, 2022 on the prompt #sign. Big time gap, right? I’ve done many prompts now. Things have gotten so busy for me that I almost have to choose between prompts and other projects during my morning writing time. And I needed space to know what daily prompt writing is accomplishing. Am I learning enough from presenting to this group in lieu of research? And is my writing style being influenced by an exchange of Likes? Or by the short nature of prompts?
I’m working on some new training in addition to adjusting to new work. Will find a balance and pop back in from time to time. I do love many of the people on there–hearts and souls of poetry. I am around many “brand” writers and often wonder what kind of spell people are under that the realm of poetry too has to be reduced to slogans. I like checking back in on Twitter and seeing growth in people’s writing and love that there seem to be deeper themes and bigger words explored. Of course, anyone can write what they please. I am not judging; I am looking for my arena.
My personal site has been filled with spammers who would like me to mark my own emails as spam or buy their product. I have shown myself that I can keep a consistent schedule and will probably move to a new platform while keeping this one as a type of backup to the backup.
3/22/22
The horse and the elephant and the monkey and me, listen to the forest for the trees. To #taboo, meaning sacred, and came to mean unclean. We #mew about while the falcon molts. Our missions, in a widening gyre, receive and emit.
#vssdaily #prompt #vss365
3/21/22
“The Prompt Master this week is @LesleyAnnFogle
This was an honor. I wish it came before I took my hiatus. I’ve done hundreds of these, mostly under vss365, and earned the respect of the community, but they did not respond to my request. I almost wonder if it was a matter of followers, judging by some of the prompt masters. I did get turned off from vss365 by the political right-wing ranting of a prompt master who put their association in their profile name, so that it appeared that the political opinions could have been ties to the group. Or at least been a platform for divisive cocoa puffs. Write a poem about it, faboo flashneck.
“The Prompt Master this week is @LesleyAnnFogle
The #vssdaily#prompt for March 22, 2022 is #mew
noun:
1-a gull
2-meow
3-an enclosure for trained hawks—usually used in plural
4-a place for hiding or retirement
verb:
1-to utter a mew; to meow
2-to shut up; confine (used with up)
I’ve done many prompts now. Things have gotten so busy for me that I almost have to choose between prompts and other projects during my morning writing time. And I needed space to know what daily prompt writing is accomplishing. Am I learning enough from presenting to this group in lieu of research? And is my writing style being influenced by an exchange of Likes? Or by the short nature of prompts?
I’m working on some new training in addition to adjusting to new work. Will find a balance and pop back in from time to time. I do love many of the people on there–hearts and souls of poetry. I am around many “brand” writers and often wonder what kind of spell people are under that the realm of poetry too has to be reduced to slogans.
2/19/22
Jon was starting to feel hangry. “What a stupid word. Do we all just pull up language by the roots and salt the earth? It’s like a destructive child making mud castles while lightening #larrups a tower and all comes crumbling down. The child can’t be bothered to look up.” #vss365
2/14/22
It was a war of attrition. Zno babies were raised as slaves. Sae could feel her child #tremble and awaken at the magic age of 7. In harmonia, she absorbed the tacit vibrations, then #thrust, from her bones and throat, dominant waves of calm resolve back to her child.
2/3/22
Lorn and forlorn are words I can get behind. Forlorn is more common nowadays: to lose, forlost to the point of completion; lost or left behind.
2/2/22
The godforsaken creature reeked of deadly sin or revelation—black sun, blood moon, and starlight stripped from the sky.
Aza, she #breathed. I will find you and set you free.
writing prompts: full to new moon in Capricorn and Aquarius
beacon captive hill mountain balk egg duet rain fall devil
January 18, 2022 to January 30, 2022
from the full to the new moon in Capricorn and Aquarius
The realization struck her like a beacon from the moon; held her captive in its lunacy, in the long trance of night. Flushes of rose and gold reached the earth first, outlining Hemlock Hill in amber glow. There. She’d prolong the scatter of violet light with ashes.
I sang up the mountain,
arpeggiating up
a balkanized cord.
Each step echoed
its linear thread.
Stumbling chromatic
contradictions of blue
and scarlet duets
key the triad
to strike at the top
of the whole
mountain.
She heard the rain sizzle on their skin before finding them huddled together in the thick fog. Old Harry, Azazel, Belial, and Baal. But who was this new fallen devil? He was wearing an attractive meatsuit. “That’s Skroll,” Azazel said. “He’s in charge of the internet.”
writing prompts: new to full moon in Capricorn 2022
prompts: infinity tranquil solar perspicacity pop yawn hugs crisper dollops midnight
January 2, 2022 to January 17, 2022
from the new moon to the full moon in Capricorn
You soar from sky
to infinity in Blake’s
grain, glisten like snowflake
prisms, vapor altered
states: ruby bronze
azure chartreuse
copper violet-rouge;
Ephemeral bloodroot
mulls on leaf mold
and dew—Listen
for the tap
of bones when
the fertile earth
is ready for you.
For each harsh word,
I gained another tranquil
ruffle on the lake, a solar
marvel raring from a grayer day.
I am the end intended, take in
infrared, hug back the rays,
appreciate the symbiotic
interplay. You are the link
that breaks these atoms
into different shapes,
my blood picks up the relics
takes them to the places
where they ionate to give
my heart and marrow all
the strength you could not
spare to spare me. Take.
Your best aim.
“It’s called perspicacity. You explore, learn, reflect, and create with a comparably divergent drive. You’ll starve there. Actualize who you are and step into the light.” Maena crisply pierced the apple’s skin, tearing into its pulp before eyeing me. “Hungry?”
Honesty grabs one hand, loyalty the other. Vertebral seams pop, the serpentine column dances toward a new center, landing in perse moments of exchange: phosphene stories of love and pain ignite the mind.
The next words are butterflies.
She yawned and threw the message into the icebox. Yowls, crackles, and hisses flooded the moment before she slammed the door. The icebox kept words chilled and sentiments on ice. Hugs from the crisper were non-existent. She cupped her hands under the faucet and splashed water over her eyes. From what she’d seen, this one could take some time to cool off.
He felt the dollops of ink release and flow from some great telepathy of the sky; heard the phonological claps of thunder and mortal shock rain fractal words of the weary and fallen onto the page, like tears washing particles from a collective mind’s eye.
At midnight,
the witches gather
and abdicate their veils,
revel by the sconce
of fearless perception
on the winged misdivision
of the adder and the newt;
sing basilisk elegies and play,
then fly away when lore
gives way to darker hours.
writing prompts: from full to new moon in Sagittarius & Capricorn 2022
prompts: barrage charm disguise quiet flashbacks reasonable spotlight passengers becoming renewals
December 18, 2021 to January 1, 2022
from the full moon to the new moon in Sagittarius & Capricorn
The salesman used a barrage of charm to disguise his goal of extracting as much money as he could from her. She stood abruptly and announced she would return after lunch. “Wait!” He cried, “$100 off!” But she’d been advised beforehand: Don’t rush, read the fine print, and always be prepared to walk away.
It’s a quiet connection now.
Some nights, flashbacks blare
and cough, their clamant yawps
muffled by a stuffed shift.
The redress alters me
into a reasonable
block of ice;
thaw will come,
internal, with hope
renewed.
The Ram
A spotlight glances across the land,
like twinkling stars to passengers
headed east; The beast, it flies
and reasons o’er the Black Sea.
Ambassador Spectacular,
hold on tight, don’t handle her;
This chauffeur-alien won’t be fleeced.
Backward, in the nick of sky,
in dark absence of moonlight;
it scans the clusters
searching for its kind.
Words
like tangerine spray glint,
peel back a summer day when
sunlight filtered longer
through the pied air,
becoming rainbows.
But he never wants
what he has,
so he never gets
what he wants;
then you realize
the circle disappears
beyond the undying horizon.
I’m proud of us: Strong
and conscientious,
hard-working;
Our love renewals,
delight for life,
through growth, detach
suspicion as we do from
feeling what is good
about a friend.
We truly are
each other’s people
Agreed to expect
our loyal best;
To cast away
sorrow.
prompts: gravity mantle steeple constellations starved strings floated pause guide enemy risk
from the new moon to the full moon in Sagittarius
gravity mantle
Smoke & mirrors collect us
as royal subjects.
In imbalance of power,
lateral thinkers
bow in gravity
It is not weight,
does not dismantle
It attracts—
defines compromise,
value in effort—
Willing past the win
of resistance
Yet the planets seem lighter than this phone.
steeple
Imagination questions without fear,
for no one is listening with an ear to control:
to scold as parent or toddler,
to ostracize as jailers of faith,
or primitive posturing for rank;
to be revered rather than injured,
to be obeyed rather than swayed.
In our steeple of curiosity,
tolerance for ourselves and
tolerance for others
gains accordance.
constellations starved
She grew up playing in the woods, orienting by sun, trees, water, constellations; but was lost here, starved for organic connection. Many had no use for nature but to consume, & nature had no use for them. They’d gladly choose a virtual life if she could only perfect the forebrain.
strings floated
She sent vibrational
strings of thought
looping out
Tethered balloon animals
floated, reshaped,
and popped.
One transformed
into a dove
and flew away
on a silvery gleam.
She let it go.
paused guide
Trauma paused us.
We go back, reenact
where stuck. Neural arms,
flailing to connect, reflect
near easy lovers: fear,
unfairness,
primitive defenses.
Our scarry attempts
to block off, protect
Disconnect like cell death.
A plan will guide us,
laurel us through
genesis.
enemy risk
The enemy-risk effect of the virus was isolation and inactivity. Productivity and trade slowed as the needs of survival shifted. But to Hunter, they were the real enemy and the prey. Meanwhile, all the predative profiteers laughed—a nervous laugh.
prompts: kind stuck spouse vulnerable worry journal conversations worry crisis worthy ribbon oracle rival
November 19, 2021 to December 4, 2021
from the full moon in Scorpio to the new moon in Sagittarius
Jake choked off his last shred of objectivity with piercing confidence and rode off into some kind of loner sunset, with only the curtains to hold his hand. Our shared wonder dismissed as magical thinking, wheeled away for correction, argued away as naive—just to argue.
stuck
Kill or be killed, child.
180 shots per intended minute.
Unregistered plastic bag.
Probable conclusion without a scratch.
Presumed protection with intent
to mutilate. Murdered property.
Insurrection.
Hip-hop cowboy, good gang, posse.
Annie, Get Your Gun and a permit.
Marissa, the wall has rights.
Stand your ground unless stuck
interpreting the lunatic
interpreting the reason
interpreting the law
The wandering albatross bow,
widen their wings and scream
at the sky; they circle, preen
and snap at their spouse
in a mating dance for life.
Three million miles
of soaring the skies,
ever to return
to the island
of their love
and birth.
Vulnerable, the reliant pilot hides in a pride of clouds/
seen, the sun comes out/ the complex speaks to the complex/
lowers a bridge open to valuation, closed to faulted criticism/
subject and object scatter, hide in the mirroring sky/
light faces the page, not the eyes
Thanks giving:
Let the worry fall away
from your clear eyes,
For the world turns
and we are in it;
Should joy escape your mind,
allow release to recommit
compliments of reprieve
from lifelessness.
I am your cherisher
thankful for each
delicate moment.
Wake and tell us what’s good, love, as the daylight
reaches your mind. Promise to snuggle in deeper,
cross the heart on your chest and hope to die.
Code your secrets in my journal
where I can read between the lines.
“I had conversations, but the upper hand of the masher, phlegm, and baffled stranger would not salute. And the agro. Everything I said was ammo. So I gave him ammo. All of it.”
Cere opened the lid to find furry teal blotches moldering the tops of the apricots.
“Worry eats at your thoughts. I needed to be done with it.”
“Recognize crisis mode. Deflection is a way to cope, but it’s pretext. We eventually have to move past it to understand the dissatisfaction that leads to a major life change.”
“Huh. I’ll think about that,” Greg said. “You’re not mad?”
“I’m working on a new perspective,” she said, taping up the last box. The movers would be arriving any time now. “Ultimately, I’m on your side and hope we get to share a better future. Call me after you’ve answered your own call.”
You are shiny,
like teeth bared
through organic
murmuration.
Is it the love shown
or the love deserved
that makes us worthy?
Two lorn brood
recuperate
in innate pattern,
flockwise;
their calls imitate
a wildish belonging.
ribbon
If I were a ribbon,
I’d curl around your finger
to remind you
that I am always
there. In spills of ink,
siftings of sand, traces,
and twisted strands of hair
Snug between the wanton
hand of death steepling in prayer.
If I were your ribbon.
oracle
She placed her hand on the young king’s chest and closed her eyes: He floated in a river of blood, tethered to a casketful filled with paper money.
Fire cremated the land into black ghosts pillowing the lusty blaze. Through the roar, he heard his name as a boy dipped a toe in from the shore.
The oracle opened her eyes and locked gaze with the young king. “You have enough for now. Do not invade. Take a vacation with your son.”
In returning warmth
that refuses to leave
the season,
mistle breaks,
disturbs a winter silence.
Leave your contortions
where misery can find its
mirthless tune. I’m here
in life’s harmoniacal quietus,
a rival of the snow, parched
as the ground, threshing
its mortal boon.
prompts: sugarcoat fingerprint primrose retrograde saga dormant hypothetical implores plumes resolve normalize shame
November 4, 2021 to November 18, 2021
from the new moon to the full moon in Scorpio
sugarcoat
The sugarcoat fairy has a white wand that sprays a sweet powder onto desserts, glass rims, and hard truths.
Often followed by the elusive tooth fairy who sneaks in to collect your teeth and the occasional sock.
fingerprint
fingerprint
o your voice
unlocks
cliche
ridges, whorls
veins, shape
disturbs the air
in a lover’s mouth
vowels
of
admission
quicken, thicken
the formant
folds deep
in throat
open and close
tremerous
sympathetic
bones and body
lash and tongue
How fast you move, swift Mercury
how slowly your myth wanes
Appearing to regress backward
as you pass in retrograde
Venus relaxes on cowslip wine
made from the primrose
of youth, when a paused
message of love was new
saga
“Sorry about that! It’s a monthly saga. She sought help but her insurance might as well be a coupon for 10% off Midol.
Her support group changed locations without telling her and, oh no.., I can’t find my wallet—“
“GO!” The clerk said, standing in the rubble. “LEAVE!”
dormant
“The term ghosting is an insult to ghosts.”
Cere cut deep into the burning bush, removing dead weight from the dormant plant to stimulate growth in the spring.
“All you can do is treat yourself better than that—care well for yourself—and love comes back. New love.”
hypothetical implores
It hurts. The expectation.
But it was a lipless hypothetical notion.
A narrative unspoken neither guides nor implores action to reach that forever ending, where pride belongs to everyone.
plumes resolve
plumes of lament
$2k in car repairs
filigreed wreathy elegy
time = money + interest
shearing scytheless stylist
resolve mends or ends
in determination
thoughts
like a fresh
haircut
normalize
“Not everything has to be normalized. You don’t comb the beach looking for the least exceptional rock.” I looked at Ash. “Sorry, the graveyard, seeking unremarkable stones.”
Something like a smile broke through Ash’s stolid face. “Or the bones of sane people.”
shame
I’m a firestarter
A ram bored with shame
Blood cut off from tight reins
Cold hand fumbles matchstick
A shrug-off warms up
this sympathy dance
Great romance cues
the strings, notes
like tears drop
Douse a flame
Relax the grip
gentled baton
prompts: trust signifies cafe innocence intimacy accidentalist hurt foreshadow sleepwalk
October 20, 2021 to November 1, 2021
from the full moon to the new moon in Libra / Scorpio
trust
Back to the wilder
from collapse
under stacks
of undecayed
inorganic
matter—
It’s all temporary
Underground digs
in sentiment trapped
Prone to lucid dreaming’s
involuntary maw
Steps into the yawn
of your own pitfall
Take to the trees
like Tarzan—climb
your agile mind—
swing from trust-
worthy vines
signifies
In his ghast and livid beam, no colors absorb; absence signifies his subject in virous torrents of rayed devastation.
I am spared—my eyes cauterized at first sight. Mere ash beside a vacuum, patient for the Spring. Cremains in the kindness of a friend.
cafe
I’m a tourist in their cafe
where they talk over a good song;
Collectors of the medium/ who trade
the pain of kids who don’t belong.
It bounces off the reclaimed beams—
factoids, brag, gimcrackery;
lathers popularity
without a sole
analogy/ of us
on the island of loneliness
innocence
Innocence is a gift—mingled in commitment—of passage.
It has been slain on the altar of infant helplessness sulked in vengeance.
It has been saved by the certainty of power relinquished in permanence.
One day you won’t give your heart to bargainers.
intimacy
At the corners of their bed sate epic tales of wind, fire, earth, and sky loving the anthropomorphized form of their senses, conjured from the aromatic pyre; a tinder nest, intimacy the tender.
Not even the fires of hell refined worked so well to warm the dead.
She was an accidentalist in one great big song about obedience.
More deistic than contrarian, because those small-town panderers just couldn’t be the gatekeepers of divinity.
They sounded more like creations of comedy.
hurt
“You’re being emotional and kinda paranoid,” Maena said. “Read the situation like a book.”
“Like look at a few words, jump to conclusions, and cry into my pillow?” Cere asked.
Maena smiled. “No, we don’t read books like the words are going to hurt us.”
foreshadow
In the afterglow
of a gamma-ray
burst/ in her hard
bright light
His silhouette whistles—
harsh foreshadow,
blocking the lumen;
inkling black hole,
a cold hero’s trope
sleepwalk
I sleepwalk & talk
expose the bare truth
that fear & pain
hang from the pall
that covers the life of day
Mantle worn by soothsayer
who blankets infantile babe
There, in low waves
while the mind hides
memories, ring words
of the dissembler:
vestments
unpicked to rags
©2021 LAFogle / Lesley Ann Fogle
prompts: venture contemporaneous carved priors brash favorable alarm history fret rivulet aim crepuscular stutters shadows cemetery
September 20, 2021 to October 3, 2021
from the full moon to the new moon in Virgo / Libra
venture
It was a foggy night. The smug was heavy in the air. Cere preferred the fog to the gas. If she had to venture a guess, she’d say this circle of hell was a repeating popularity pageant with the grand prize being the flashiest coffin lined with gold velvet cash-stuffed bedding and large enough to store the winner’s favorite toys and suckling gizmos. Cere had her money on Headuptheassicus, which was the nickname she gave Becky Green, the meanest and most popular demon at Hellmont High.
contemporaneous
As the sunlight shortens in autumn,
the moon’s contemporaneous rise
extends the bright moonlight
for several nights;
a hard turn through the zodiac,
the Earth responds softly
while the summer crops
are harvested in light
carved
These words, little doses
of dopamine, spill
onto the page encoding
feelings that range
beyond identification,
carved and contained
in the ink of description;
in the play of depiction.
priors
Do we wring life from its spine—every drop?
Jump over the haters or stop
I see a vault line:
faults and blame, bias and shame;
priors reenacted,
posturing exacted
in the primal part
of the brain.
How long goes
the era of suggestion?
Get ready to jump
brash
Her art made you think; it wasn’t explosively brash or cutting but just the tip of the tine limned through your mind exposing heavy artifacts you’d filed away, postponed as bigger problems you were helpless to solve. But obstructed by the feign of ignorance as doing nothing tips the balance of conscience toward inhumanity.
favorable, alarm
Above the clouds at our feet
If Love were a Titan, were
to step up on the highest
mountain, emerge
from the foam
neath the favorable
mythic moon;
silence
the alarm
of humors
balancing biles of thinner air
We are the very atmosphere
How easily these bodies
breathe as it carries us home
history
It was the biggest “FU” ever recorded in the annals of history. Its echoes shrank the Great Barrier Reef down to a chew-sized crouton. The sheer profundity reduced black hole theories to petty overthinking.
fret
Maena and I called him Gambusi because he looked like a worn one we’d found at a yard sale. The top fold of his rutted brow seesawed with each eye—the near-sighted one for glaring up close and the other for glaring at a distance—like a loose fret indented when a finger slides over it so that a higher harmonic rang with his every word, like the echo of a knife being sharpened, like the hint of screech when that same finger hovers close to a flame. Gambusi was wound tight—warped neck, too; his chin evolved back and down, locked, with no movement in that direction, just the side-to-side head shakes of “no.”
rivulet
Blue Kill rivulet,
I follow you to the fork
on the banks where
my baby walked before
The water picks up speed
just before the tributary,
rejoins the mighty
between this widening shore
aim
Said a man with his best aim:
“I’ll throw my hat in the land of milk and honey”
When the material veil had been lifted
his mind ran like fire ants
crepuscular
The sun retires and shadows lighten,
the wistful glow of our golden hour fades
Specks of light turn on like fireflies
while the deer, fox, and bat play
in the crepuscular twilight;
their cool blue silhouettes
evanesce from human sight
stutters
It lands casual
gradual macabre concern
then a want to share
pain all day
all day
Stutters
of ingrained emotion
till you confide your
deepest stains
Then it neatly packs
both stories
and flies away
flies away
shadows
“While others accept impermanence, we do not conclude such bleak ways of thinking. Our bleakness is in the ode to death but not in its permanence.” A dark shape fell across Maena’s face adding punctuation in that we did not dwell on shadows as harbingers of the sun’s end.
cemetery
If you, Death, were
at my cemetery,
I’d let the friction
of your inevitability
set fire to our effigies
as scapegoats for envy
While the devil
repossesses our
earthly talents
that shake off
in the final dance.
©2021 LAFogle / Lesley Ann Fogle