Malachy Moran

Not sure if it’s done yet, but here is the #poem I wrote in response to yesterday’s phrenology prompt

#MPPrompt

I didn't know about Ekphrastic poetry until today. Really enjoyed doing this!

#MPPrompt

Mapped out the brain
Like we could pin point
Arrows to the pain
With blueprints
To where
hate burns
And love burrows
How our fingerprints
Feel the breeze
And our ears
Hear songs the birds sing
Where we
collect memories
Of all the things
Or eyes see
And why we say
what we say

#poem

#poetry #mpprompt

Phrenology

Perception lurks just behind the eyes,
judging the world unseen but not unfelt
Aspirations ride the back of the skull,
easily knocked about by life's rough accidents
Hope lives at the top of the head,
which explains this odd skull ridge,
full of irrational optimism

#MPPrompt

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Magic made mechanical,
wonder made mundane—
the mind reduced
to a machine
doing this
or that

& science agrees
to some degree—
we are indeed
predictable creatures

but we are also
myths & beasts,
monsters & saints—
that don't quite
make sense

despite the schemata
we're squashed into.

#mpprompt

When Shakespeare said
The world's a stage
I dreamed of ever afters.
Fairy tales
And ships that sail
Lovers lost in laughter.

But Hermia
Soon grew to be
An angry girl unfurled.
Reality
No fealty,
So Puck you real world!

Today's #poetryprompt:

I want you to write something outside of your comfort zone. If you normally have structure, write without it. If you never rhyme, do it today. If you absolutely hate love poems, that's what I want to see.

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#poetry #mpprompt

she trailed personality behind her
like one of her extravagant scarves
filmy & bright,
visible & bold
her style was effusion
vivacious with joy
unashamed of strangeness
bubbling up like a spring
making life an adventure
who wouldn't want to follow her?

They mapped you in colors—Hope, Firmness, Secretiveness—little provinces of certainty, as if a life could harden into bone, as if destiny pressed outward until it showed. Fingers traced your skull like Braille written by God, but the real map lived elsewhere: in the tremor before speech, the heat of shame, the mind turning on itself at three in the morning. No chart marked regret. No border held tenderness. Beneath their tidy labels everything moved, wild and borderless as weather.

#poetryprompt #MPPrompt #ekphrasticpoetry #phrenology

Looking to improve my world
I climbed the mountain to self-perfection
Somehow I slid down a canyon
And rode a canal
That mistakenly took me to animal
And now I’m self-destructing
And can’t swim upstream

‪Took my dog to the taxidermist
he'd done his time
an old obedient friend
now I just drag him along
on four wheels

he comes two steps behind
in my trail
never wagging his tail
his eyes fixed on the road
always rigidly loyal

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#poetryprompt:

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mirth, so full of self-perfection
near agreeable and sublime

twice as constructive or ideal
than time or tune

the animal is combative, the human
compares and reflects

yet hope neither perceives
nor aspires

a blush but divorced from
aspiration

individuality lies on the nose

Today's #poetryprompt:

Let's try an Ekphrastic poem. Just write something in response to the image below. (I've been obsessed with the pseudoscience of phrenology the past few days)

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I find comfort
In a summer breeze,
In the birdsong in spring,
In the crackling of autumn leaves

I find comfort in
A child's laughter
A puppy's soft bark
All the love that comes after
A big defeat

I find comfort in
Ocean waves
The beauty of a mountain range
And exploring caves

#MPPrompt

I buried it one night
the shame of a mistake,
left it there to rot

or so I thought

it clung
to my clothes,
showed up in
my dreams,
made a home
in my skin
that no amount
of scrubbing
could wash clean

in time
I understood
that I'm not all good
& I never will be

now it's a lesson
held close within

As a teacher, she could be very strict.
Still, we would follow her after
the last lesson was over to the bus station,
trooping along in single file.
"My rat's tail" she'd call us amiably,
as we followed her flying coattails.

#MPPrompt

Not the boat —
the long remembering after.

Water closing slowly
over where I passed,
a trembling line
trying to forget me.

Still it follows —
that pale disturbance,

the proof
I was never as quiet
as I meant to be.

#MPPrompt #PoetryPrompt

behind the orange trumpeter
trail dirty and torn scraps of paper

some are pictures of people
some languishing away from families
some killed in ‘peaceful’ wars
some without homes, jobs or healthcare

Always
being "perfect" -
little waves of
justification that mean nothing
in a flood
of failure.

#MPPrompt

#poetry #mpprompt

I find comfort in
my friends & family
painting watercolors
singing with the birds
walking under the vault of sky
signs of spring returning
soft blankets
hot tea
my love

#MPPrompt

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#poet
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#writing
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#listpoem
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#poetryprompt

By morning, mercy was long dead —
only habit kept me breathing.

#MPPrompt #poetryprompt

His soul   
was long dead
before his body
followed suit—
it had left him
when the others died,
his kin,
those ones
he'd grown with

the world is
a living place
for the living,
but for some
it becomes
nothing more
than a graveyard
awaiting
their bones.

#mpprompt

Smile was long dead then
a crescent of circumstance
barely lit his face

We thought the Klan was long dead
We were wrong
The orange trumpeter blew his horn
And invited them out of hiding
New names with the same hatred

Love was long dead,
just like Jazz or Punk or Science.
It died when the first bomb fell.
What we feel for each other now
is only the memory, the shadow,
the ghost of Love.
And we can only wonder what
it has felt like to truly love.

#MPPrompt