NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day eight - Can you give us examples?

Can you give us examples?

The barely mentioned character in somebody else's biography
The door that isn't opened, even once, during an entire film
The small coin only seen for a moment as it bounces down a grating
The biro you pick up, scrub on the paper, then drop back into the drawer

That person you really liked, but never managed to get on with
That day you had the detailed todo list, and didn't do any of it
That piece of clothing you bought in an fit of individualism and never wore
That tool which is perfect for the job, which you only bang clumsily against things

This sharp corner on this table here
This inexplicable small tax deduction
This queue, longer than you've even seen here before
This slight tear in your favourite jacket

Those steps up the hillside which fail to have an end
Those people employed to stop you having what you want
Those rules, the ones you were not told about
Those reasons to keep living, the ones you cannot quite recall

NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day seven - Earth-like planets

Earth-like planets...

...where the hanging moment of morning
finds cloud unbound and the song moves on.
Where she sang that song, the one that rhymes
"heart" with "card" and where...

Here's another one!  Jake looks up from the machine.
it's like the universe is stuffed with the damn things--
and another, this one's pinkish... which means
if the Universe is filled with places of this sort,

then life cannot be killed... will always have
another place to go.  He looks around.  She's gone again.
He feels he is in love, but that it will not work.
He'd like to buy her a drink after work

except she never is about.  Never mind,
he calls, in case she is around.  Meanwhile,
at the other end of the telescope, she spreads
her blanket on the ground, just beyond the pale

pink shadow of the untrees, opens the picnic basket
and sits down...

NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day five (delayed) - Art is about learning to ask the right questions

Art is about learning to ask the right questions








"Put Holden on it, he's good."
       — the original Blade Runner

You're walking in the desert when you see a rhinoceros,
until now the magnum opus that's forming in your head
involves sequins—

I don't know why there is a rhino in the desert
it doesn't matter, it's hypothetical
—anyway the rhino looks

as if it might want to criticise your idea that colours
achieve an ultimate unity by fading in the distance
to perfect white.

Would you be worried about living without walls?
They do teach you about walls in the Academy?
No, I don't know

about the texture of the desert, rough I suppose.
Stop interrupting.  Would you like cream
in your coffee?

That's not part of the test.  You are covering the desert
with wallpaper.  Why is that?  Mile after mile
of featureless ivory paper.

One colour extending forever across the sand;
covering gravel, small spiky shrubs, tiny lizards,
dormant toads and jumping mice.

The paste is gumming up the small creatures' eyes.
None of them like it but you don't care.
Why is that?

OK, we're done  You're not a replicant
and your artist's statement stinks.  Oh, I'm a replicant, am I?
Would you like to take this outside?
Why is that?

——written to use the names of different wallpapers that we found while deciding how to redecorate the lounge.