Poetry challenge #49: Painful silence

Yesterday was a migraine day. It hasn’t gone entirely so screen work is still slow and difficult. Pain in the head makes it hard to think straight and it distorts thought and vision. The poems that form when we are in a state of tension or pain are different to those that spring from a more placid, stable frame of mind.

The Daily Post prompt for yesterday was silence, a very tempting one when the inside of your head is a mass of jangling nerves, but also one that seems impossibly elusive. The poem below is the first ‘silence’ poem I jotted down. I don’t suppose this is an original form and there’s probably a name for it, but is seemed like enough of a challenge to me yesterday. You can try one out if you like. I think you need at least three stanzas of three lines each using the rhyme scheme:

abb acc add aee

This week’s challenge is to write a poem about pain, physical and emotional. We’ve all suffered pain of one sort or another and it could be a productive exercise to channel the emotions generated by pain into a poem and create something beautiful from it.

Same rules, post the link to your poem in the comments box before next Tuesday, and please don’t let the theme get you down 🙂

Suggested words to think about, not necessarily use

Silence, raucous, pulse, haven, lethargic, silver

The image is entitled ‘Deep dream, white noise’.

 

No silence in the city,

No soft pools of darkness between the lights,

No infinite velvet in the nights.

 

No compassion and no pity,

Where cold shadows fill with ragged lives,

And the night wind is sharp as knives.

 

Close your eyes, the dark’s duplicity

Winks with ceaseless, flashing pain,

Mocking laughter in the rain.

 

To dream of life’s simplicity,

Of gentle swell on oceans deep,

Is all a lie when there is no sleep.