Category: Poetry

A selection of writing from February. More of my short-form writing can be found on Bluesky.

Prompt: Knowingly (vss365)

She smiled, knowingly
But he’d never seen her smile
Any other way

Prompt: Beastly (vss365)

Our mediated human hopes and dreams,
Infested with abstraction and decay.
Enshittifying all until it seems,
That life is dopamine without delay.
In base indulgence do we rut and weep,
Then serve our beastly brain another taste,
And incrementally, excuses creep,
To abrogate volition in this waste.
And yet in these contortions is there cause,
To recognise a fluttering of hope—
We risk these realms, indulging in our flaws
To help more noble inclinations cope.

To find, beside the venal and the vain,
Those other seekers, striving for the same.

Prompt: Soul (vss365)

You see, she said
it isn’t right
to bifurcate the whole
to denigrate the physical
and elevate the soul;
You see, she said
with eyeballs and receptors
and a brain—
and every revelation
is complicit with the same:
Your self
your only
frame

Prompt: Ghost (vss365)

A writer
without writing
is a haunt
without its ghost

And when the words
are reticent
is when
they’re needed most

So
Write

Prompt: Lambent (vss365)

This sullen flame
which smoulders
imperceptibly alight
offers lambent
liberties to those
purveyors of the night
Its potential is
unbounded
though it sputters
in the dark
Conflagration
only checked
by symbiosis
with the spark

Prompt: Wound (vss365)

What doesn’t kill you
may make you longer
but I long to
rewind—
before these wounds
wound merciless
around your life
to extricate scar
from skin—
to let you shine
again

Prompt: Bouncy (vss365)

What goes up, they say
must then come down—
but you
transcend such
grave assent

You buoy, you bounce
where others frown
and mountains fill
the vales you rent

Prompt: Mystified (vss365)

Inside the box
you’ll see a sun
behind it shines
another one;
Beyond the suns
a mirrored face
that screams into
the void of space:
That all it knows
and all it lost
is bounded by
this tiny box

Prompt: Crazed (vss365)

The hammer fell once
And crazed this shallow surface
with flaws that endure

Prompt: Stellar (vss365)

You yearned for stardom
And now the people aspire
To know that you burn

I’m publishing an average of around one short piece per day on Twitter, including a mix of poetry and prose, so I’m posting a “highlights reel” here, and the rest can be found on my profile, @PeterRavlich.

If you enjoy ultra short form work, there are hundreds of other poets and writers creating moments of delight, tension, wonder and bravery, most consistently using the hashtag #vss365.

Prompt: Ocean (#vss365)

Yours is the shore
and the shallows
yours are the deeps
and the docks
You are the ocean
whose bellicose
bellows
give beat
to this heart
as it clings
to the rocks

Prompt: Nectar (#vss365)

Your nectar is far
too sweet—
I can’t stop sipping
the heart is
blameless here
but it still hurts
to feel it slipping

#Hamilton #AngelicaSchuyler #TakeABreak

Prompt: Nostalgic (#vss365)

The volumes on
my mental shelves
are battered
Like every book
I’ve ever loved
too much
But those pages are
pristine
that really matter—
Every visit
restored
with a delicate
touch

Prompt: Estrange (#Poetryin13)

Is there
an inverse
corollary
or tacit
apology—
rearrange
estrange
and this
remains

Prompt: Charisma (#vss365)

I know it’s problematic
to conflate sincerity with reality—
to make a character emblematic
when the stage and the page
are more suited to static impressions
than actual accuracy…

But as for charisma
it’s clear there’s
no deficit here—
Miranda’s Hamilton
is revelatory
owning his story
and an absolute
revolution to see.

Prompt: Xenophobe (#vss365)

Losing fear
is liberation;
Holding it
habitual

But when that fear
is fabricated
facile, false and fanciful

An arbitrary othering
of any trait you
don’t digest

You’ll find my
sympathy
is slipping—
please don’t
put it to
the test.

Prompt: Orphan (#vss365)

I sometimes wished
No,
often
while the belt was
coming down
in the latest
punctuation of
my faults

That some other
explanation
for my
being
was at hand;
that could
justify
escape from
these assaults

Prompt: Pachyderm (#vss365)

How ponderous
our parries
when that trunk
gets in the way—
yet how deftly
we deny
our own
détentes

Prompt: Liberty (#vss365)

The figure of
Liberty beckons
with a valiant
verdigris mien
While behind this
inviting impression
Is an irony
cast for a queen

Prompt: Demogorgon (#vss365)

Your petals
seem peculiar
and your botany—
bizarre
While I hate
to hasten rumour
I can’t fathom
what you are
Open wider
let me see—
those look
remarkably like
teeth
just a second
maybe three
to get
my head in
underneath…

Prompt: Angel (#vss365)

You used
to call me angel
but I thought
my wings
were gone—
that time
had marred
the feathers
that I’d fallen…

I was wrong

I was silly
and afraid
but those
do not reflect
on you
and if I soar
again it’s only
‘cos you were my
angel too

Prompt: Rubiginous (#vss365)

Have you seen
my electrons?
I could swear
I left them here…
or there…
or in this vague
proximity

I used to be
exquisite
when I had them
floating near
but now I’m
oxidised for
all to see

Prompt: Velleity (#vss365)

Did I tell you
of a boy—
let’s call him Henry—
who couldn’t quite
decouple from
his sheets?
“I’ll get up soon,”
he said,
a time
or
twenty
and that duvet
was
attached to him
for weeks

Prompt: Submontane (#vss365)

You humans conquer
higher peaks and claim
the climb is tough

While we who burrow
dig beneath—
but never deep enough

You strain and swear
and summit

While we
strain and swear…
until

if we hadn’t
started digging here
there wouldn’t be
a hill

Prompt: Periapt (#vss365)

Wear this in
my memory dear—
it’s fashioned from
the bone
that caught in
Uncle Reuben’s
throat
when Satan called
him home

My darling
don’t be sorry
for
he was the spawn
of Hell—
but wear it
and remember
we’re both
destined there
as well.

Prompt: Ingurgitate (#vss365)

She scoffed a saucerful
of worms
some spiders, and a frog —
that pixie preys on anything
that lingers near her log —

So children, for the love of Pan
stop playing by the bog.

Prompt: Benthos (#vss365)

It’s far too cold
but
plunge me into
your diffuse depths

let me sink
still shivering
until I brush
that veiled bottom
eyes
clenched closed
lungs lurch
skin alone
senses

I’ll stay
a second

and then

kick

kick

kick

my way back
to the
surface

Prompt: Ambrosia (#vss365)

“Well, what do you think?”

“It’s okay.”

“Okay? It’s the literal food of the Gods!”

“Call me a stickler, but I’d prefer the food of the chefs.”

Prompt: Sapid (#vss365)

I’ve carried the taste
since that bakery closed down
sweet nothings linger