RESTLESS SOUL; UPROOTED: Ragtag Daily Prompts

For this week’s Ragtag Daily Prompt, I’ve composed a poem comprising of Saturday and Sunday’s prompt titled RESTLESS SOUL; UPROOTED. Hope that ye enjoy the read! 🙏🤞😁📖

RESTLESS SOUL; UPROOTED

Jenny was a travelling soul
A helpless sojourner
Unable to rest
And always on the move
Never putting down roots
Or staying in a particular town
For any meaningful length of time.
Nor forming any friendships
Or intimate attachments
For fear she’d get too settled
And have to uproot her family
Young girl and baby boy
She grew up in an orphanage
Having never knew her own parents
You can’t miss what you never knew,
I suppose.
“They both died in a car crash
While her mum was in labour.”
Or so she’d been told.
This left her without any roots
Or sense of home & place
And a gigantic hole in her heart

One of the few things the nuns
Had taught her however
Was how to plant stuff.
Flowers; trees & plants
Of all shapes; sorts & sizes
Potatoes; carrots; parsnips etc
Which they would then sell to the local farmers market.
All with the hope of teaching the kids to be self sufficient
They all had a home,
A place where they laid down roots; grew and blossomed into what they were meant to be.

Why couldn’t she do the same?
What was she so afraid of?
Jenny knew that
She’d have to settle down eventually.
For the sake of Jesse & Harper at least
It wasn’t fair on them, this constant moving around.
Every couple of weeks, it was somewhere new.
It was exhausting!
They took it in good spirits but you can tell it’s taking it’s toll!
But it was hard to quell
This restless spirit inside her.
This search for adventure
And those itchy feet,
Well they needed to be scratched.

Should you wish to participate in the prompts then you can access them through the following links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2022/12/03/rdp-saturday-roots/

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2022/12/04/rdp-sunday-rest/

26 LETTERS: d’Verse Fractal Prompt

A. B. C. D.
You know the rest
26 letters
That have stood the test
Of time
Forming a fractal
Fraction of the alphabet
Alpha and Beta
Help you narrate a
Tale or two
Tell poeple who
you are
For
These individual letters,
When placed together,
Form words
(Which make our lives better)
These words form sentences
To describe a time or a place
Bring your emotions to life
Help you retrace
Your soul
Challenge you and console
These sentences merge together
And slowly evolve
Into fully fledged stories
Around which
Communication revolves
Poetry or prose
Fiction or not
These words can explode
Inform and entertain
Our very own language
That we use to absolve
Resolve and explain
Express our deepest desires
Ignite revolutions and fires
Just 26 letters
Can unshackle those fetters
Change our point of view Bring order to our world
And change it too

Written for dVerse poetics. Yesterday’s host, Lisa, says: Now that I have hopefully acquainted you with the concept and examples of fractals and connected them to poetry by subject and application, your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is:

1) Use any of the definitions, examples, images, or application of fractals to inspire you to write whatever strikes your fancy.

OR

2) Think about something/someone in your world that you have, up to this point, only given a superficial consideration of and decide to look a little closer at it/them. Use what you discover as fodder for a poem.

The poem above titled 26 LETTERS is the result. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading it! 🙏🤞😁

FINDING MY PLACE

“There are days when…
When I doubt myself;
When I question myself
My ability
Or inability
My usefulness
Or uselessness
At being a husband
At being a father
Get myself into a bit of a lather
Berating myself
Hating myself
For not having a job
For beginning to sob
“You’re a soft touch
Not up to much.”

Then she smiles up at me
“Da, da, da, da, da”, she says
And I go ga, ga, ga, ga in my heart
As it melts
She leaps up to me
With arms outstretched
I pull her in close to me
And I don’t feel so vexed
With myself

A smile stretches across my face
I realise that’s all I need
A little bit of Ava and Grace
They’re my new faith & creed
My fast forward and erase
My sense of purpose
And reason to get up
Me not feeling worthless
Me finding my place”

Written by & copyright to Ken Hume

19/05/2018

Reach up to the Stars

“If I could reach up to the stars.
And wrap my arms around the moon.
Pull them back down to the earth
And place them all into just one room.

I’d wrap them up like presents
From the vast cosmos up above.
One gleaming star at a time
To show you how much I love

You; your sister and your mum
The 3 little stars in this poem.
How ye lighten up my path
And guide me on my way home

If I could plunge into the deepest depths
Hold my breath for a moment or two.
Perchance lay my hands upon a treasure chest
Carry it back up to the surface for you.

On the tail of a beautiful seahorse
Noblest of underwater steeds
Or the back of a humpback whale
What an awesome sight that would be!

If I could climb up the steepest mountains
To the very highest peaks
I’d pull a cloud down out of the sky
For use as a pillow while you sleep

Sprinkle it with fairy dust
Seal it with an angel’s kiss
Wrap it up with a rainbow
So your slumber would be bliss!”

Written by Ken Hume

07/01/2020

End of an Era

It’s the beginning of the end

The end of an era

Of a simpler time

Before the rhymes

Took hold

And my folks got old

And father time came a knocking

A place I called home

Where I used to roam

Quiet as a little mouse

Squeaking and scampering

Ducking and diving

Out of people’s way

Afraid I would be stepped on

Caught in all those mousetraps

Life can set you

Formerly known as the “Pink House,

Which became our go to address

The home provided solace, shelter

For me, for our family

For so many more

From the world outside and it’s mess

 

Filled with love; security and wisdom

 

INVISIBLE ENEMY

Invisible

Intangible

Leaves a baby in

Indescribable

Pain.

You can feel it

But can’t see it

As it swells up

In baby’s back

That becomes rigid

In agony

She struggles and she fights

And she squeals and cries

But try as she might

All she can do is writhe

In pain.

So you drape her over your shoulder

And draw her in close to your chest

You pat him on the bottom

You rub her back up and down

Furiously

Anxiously

Whispering soothing words

In the fervent

And desperate

Hope

That you can help

Alleviate

Eradicate

Her wind induced torment

When all baby wants is

Just a little more milk

Eventually.

Buuurrrrpp!

Puke spews

From her tiny mouth

Onto your face.

All over the place

Your new skirt

Freshly ironed shirt

Sometimes I think I’d rather

Change the shittiest of nappies

Than see my baby worked up into such a lather

I think I’d be happi-er

Because there’s nothing like wind

In a little babe

To make you feel so useless

And frustrated

Than this sometimes ceaseless

Exhausting battle

with the invisible enemy

WIND.

Written by Ken Hume

21/06/18

YOU’RE NOT A WOMAN (Typical Man)

You’re not a woman

You’re just a man

You’re not a woman

So, you would not understand

The trauma and upheaval

Of a pregnancy, unplanned

Enforced

How your emotions spiral

And your tummy expands

 

You’re not a woman

Of that this is true

You’re not a woman

You wouldn’t have a clue

Of the pain & the heartache

Of a pregnancy, stillborn

Miscarried

It’s impossible to take

Now you silently mourn

The loss

 

You’re not a woman

You’re just a man

A typical man

Responsible for all the wrongs

In this world

Trying to shut the strong woman down

Trying to keep her in her place

 

Nothing could be further from the truth

If you knew this man at all

As far from typical as you’ll get

For since the days of his youth

He has been in thrall

Of the strong woman in his life. Yet

He still gets abuse

When he tries to stand tall

And express his mindset

 

One day, woman

You’ll fall in love with me

A man. A “typical man”

You’ll give birth to me

The sexist man

Will you say the same things?

To him as you do now.

Will you wear the same wings?

That take you above us, proud.

Will you tar us all with the same brush

Paint us with the same colour

Be in such a hurry to hush

Us up and keep us down

Saying, jokingly.

“Ah, he’s just a man”

 

This man was a baby boy once

Born with a cord around his neck

Blue in the face, scary occurrence

Until his father, a man, checked

And asked the doctor to cut the chord

As this man was in distress

Just say the word

Before it all ends in a mess

 

I’m thankful today that one “typical man”

Gave another a chance at life

Cut the chord, gave a damn

And supported the ambitions of his wife

Bent over backwards to support each child

To follow their dreams and walk the road

Less travelled. So we’d be reconciled

With our true selves and never erode

Who we truly are. Thought us to smile

 

Written by & copyright to Ken Hume

15/05/18

Find Your Place

Struggling to find your place

Amongst a frightened human race

Beleaguered & confused

By the world’s ever-changing face.

Constantly trying to chase

Its tail

Struggling to contemplate the grace

Once bestowed upon us all

But now seems lost in space

Squandered by this relentless violence

Death and terror

Floods; earthquakes and tremors

Hovering over planet earth

Like a dark cloud of water

But blood pours down instead of rain

Soaking us all with grief and pain

Our innocence has not merely been beheaded

For that would imply

A swift, clean cut!

Instead, it’s been blown into smithereens

By suicidal bombers

Struck down by kamikaze truck drivers

Shot down by gun toting maniacs

All taken credit for by I.S.

Islamic State

Deciding the fate

Of so many innocents

Becoming all too frequent

Proud of their destruction

Indiscriminate in our eyes

Yet meticulously planned

For our surprise

Simply because they can

Fuelled by hatred

Not by any theological

Or religious superiority

Methodical.

Brutal.

Psychological.

They’ve got inside our heads

Now we live in fear & dread

This is no way to live

There must be an alternative

 

Written by Ken Hume

03/11/2017

 

I Never Knew

I never knew what Love was

Until the day that I met you

Cut open; excavated and lifted up

Out of your mother’s bloodied womb

Eyes wide open, sucking

your thumb, into the Theater room

Your curly hair, matted wet

With your amniotic cocoon

Not a cry out of you

It’d be safe to assume

That you had been around before

This place, it wasn’t new.

An old soul reincarnated

As a newborn baby whom

Was gifted to us

This love.

It grows deeper.

Every day

The more that you grow

The more that you play

With your fingers

And kick your feet

With a smile that lingers

And a look that keeps

Surprising & entertaining

Intriguing us too

How could we be complaining

When we’ve dreamed of you

Since conception

You’re everything we’ve hoped for

And more besides

Surpassing our expectations

With your inquisitive eyes

And your sensitive nature

Giggling at the ceiling

For no particular reason

Pushing yourself up

On your developing legs

Crying out for your bottle

Nearly holding it in your hands

Our Princess

We gladly submit to your commands

For this is your Kingdom

And we, your loyal subjects