The “Weekly Prompts” Wednesday’s Challenge is; QUIET PLACES. Please go over and visit their fabulous site by clicking >> Here . My poem Illumination is in response to the prompt
Illumination (a Tanka)
A sunny spring sky
Softly caresses my thighs
Displacing old lies
And illuminates my eye
To the universe’s dye
Ivor Steven (c) October 2021
Here is a poem I wrote last year, and today I am posting the piece as my response to “Go Dog Go Cafe’s” Halloween-themed Prompt Challenge (Guest Submissions), and you are welcome to participate via this link … > https://godoggocafe.com/2021/10/01/halloween-themed-prompt-challenge-guest-submissions/
The Reincarnation of a Pumpkin
My locked bubble is about to go boom
A year I’ve been a stranger in my own tomb
Under a pumpkin lid, hiding my gloom
Where my world was a rotting cave of doom
Now these orange walls are my life-giving womb
Being reborn like a smiling old groom
I’m breaking away from the master’s dead blooms
Escaping on the green witch’s magical broom
Flying over the full moon of autumn
Where I’ll be able to wear my mask and costume
Hidden under my orange Kaftan from Khartoum
And I’ll invade the newsrooms, and all the children’s bedrooms
Ivor Steven (c) October 2020
Hello dear readers and followers, as you may know, I now write for “Coffee House Writers” magazine on a fortnightly basis, and my poem “Cast In Marble”, is in this weeks edition of Coffee House Writers Magazine. … please click on the link below to read my poem at Coffee House Writers …
https://coffeehousewriters.com/cast-in-marble/
Ivor Steven (c) October 2021
Hello dear readers and followers … amazingly, I have still managed to produce my “Twenty Forth Tullawalla” Poetry Booklet….. For new readers that don’t know about these booklets, they are basically the reason why I write poetry. I produce these ‘home-printed’ booklets for the sole purpose of raising funds for my favourite charity organisation, the MS Society, in Australia via the MS Charity Shop here in Geelong. And actually all money’s I receive for any of my poetry .via, submissions, I donate to the MS Society…. I’m proud to announce, that the sale of my “Tullawalla Booklets”, have now gone pass $1500.00, … to all the lovely readers, who have donated, to help achieve such a wonderful amount, a big heartfelt thank you, from “us” and the MS Society … …..Incredibly, there is now a total of “1015 poems”, Yep over “A Thousand Poems” in my collection/series of 24 Tullawalla Booklets. After 4 months, this booklet is finally completed, and ready for sale now !! As always, they are available for purchase, either as a hard copy ‘Booklet’, or a PDF format….. All proceeds go to the MS Charity Shop, here in Geelong West….. Please contact me here through my website page and I can chat about arrangements from there…. Oh, the booklet is called “Tullawalla, I Softly Walk”… And here is the link to my website >> https://ivors20.wordpress.com
Softly I Walk
My sensitive old pen
Bleeds words of why and when
And scrawls blue lines now and then
Life and love have left me breathless
However, my empty body is not heartless
Nor is my tired soul sightless
I hear the crusty sky softly walk
And I listen to my angel’s wings quietly talk
About when her universe turned into chalk
Ivor Steven (c) October 20212
Whoops… Again the reblog button at “Go Dog Go Cafe” didn’t work, so this is a ‘copy & paste’ post today … You may visit my article at GDGC by clicking on the link >>
http://godoggocafe.com/2021/10/01/throwback-friday-tea-leafs-by-ivor-steven/
Today’s poem is one that I have revised a couple of times, and this edition is from November 2019
It’s early morn, time to break away
From last night’s, dream-time soiree
But first, I must make my bed
“Yes, just like Mum said”
Oh, I gratefully do remember
As I straighten the quilt cover
And I like to fluff-up my pillows
Ready for an evening’s bout with stupid cupid’s arrows
I’ve a long storage bedhead shelf
However I’m smiling, satisfied within myself
It’s always untidy and in disarray
And last nights scribbles are all on display
I gather up this multitude of loose words
The mess of my midnight songbirds
Snippets of my subconscious memories
Pieces of forgotten wistful dreams
And I begin to decode my jumbled site
Then emotionally, I start to rewrite
About the tea-leaf’s, floating on a calm sea
Forming love letters, from her to me
Ivor Steven (c) Nov 2019
picnic in the trees
among birds and butterflies
without council fees
Ivor Steven (c) Sept 2021
On “Weekly Prompts” the Wednesday Challenge is, AUTUMN MAGIC. Please go and visit their fabulous site by clicking >> Here and the below poem is my response to their ‘prompt’ ..
Mad-hatters, No Matter the Season
The latter of matter
Did not scale the ladder
The origin of matter
Is in our hearts pitter-patter
Matter is neither flatter nor fatter
“What does it matter
If we are all mad-hatters”?
We are but leaves and twigs of the ground
Awaiting nature’s beckoning sounds
Ivor Steven (c) Sept 2021
Again, many thanks to the editor Kristiana for accepting my poems, and for all her hard work in producing this beautiful anthology. The publication features the work of many talented poets, and I can’t wait to read my copy!
Issue III: hestia (hearth & home) is now available to download!
The digital download is completely free but if you wish to donate/pay as you feel, you can do so through the Donate tab.
Issue III: hestia (hearth & home) explores what home means to us all through poetry, prose, photography & artwork. Contributors reveal how it feels to belong, how we are defined by people and places and how Hestia’s legacy lives on.
Below, Home is the Air I Breathe, is the 2nd of my two contributions to this fabulous magazine
Home Is the Air I Breathe
welcome to our home
the house of rustic timber and stone
home is where my heart is now
and now I live here alone
but I am comfortable
wearing the same old shoes
walking her every mile
she’s in every corner stone
she’s in the marrow of my bones
we share the air I breathe
inhaling her gracious spirit
capturing her living essence
absorbing her love into my blood
pumping through my empty veins
cascading upon my open heart
caressing my solitary core
embracing our souls as one
Ivor Steven (c) Sept 2021
Featured Image credit; Maksym Harbar @ Unsplash
In response to Sadje’s Photo Prompt #Whatdoyousee – 101.
https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/2021/09/27/what-do-you-see-101-september-27-2021/
“Sentinel” (a Haiku)
Ancient clock-tower
Rural city sentinel
Over cobbled streets
Ivor Steven (c) Sept 2021
Eugi’s Weekly Prompt – “Connector” – September 23, 2021, click on the link to visit her fabulous site . >> https://amanpan.com/2021/09/23/eugis-weekly-prompt-connector-sept-23-2021/
Where to Now?
Where do they hide?
When the sea is at full-tide
What lays beyond the sand?
In foreign hands on distant lands
Their long windy road is untraveled
With trials of fear yet to be unravelled
Ivor Steven (c) Sept 2021
Ivor.Plumber/Poet 