Posts

Posted on

Autumn in a Call Centre

 

Just an everyday workplace tale…

Autumn in a Call Centre

 

When the boss gave out autumn in home-made envelopes,

sour yellow and sellotaped,

the Success Team withered.

“But we stuck to the script,” they choked.

 

The boss said nothing, but stood

scratching her back against the photocopier,

her breath a hot slug of paprika.

HR looked up a policy, then shrugged.

 

When they opened the envelopes, November knifed them 

with its stiff north-easterlies,

red maple leaves spreading from their chests.

They dropped to the floor, rotting.

 

The boss stepped over them in her wide-fit stilettos,

her face waxy, like a butternut squash.

“The shoes,” she hissed. “You all wore the wrong shoes,”

and she walked out into the April sky, wheezing. 

 

 

An earlier version of this poem (then called “Autumn in an Envelope”) was published by Snakeskin Poetry.

Like the poems? Why not follow me on Facebook www.facebook.com/parmenterpoetry or Twitter www.twitter.com/ninaparmenter?

Spread the rhymes!
Posted on

Pillowdrunk

These days, on Friday nights, are you drunk? Or are you pillowdrunk?

Pillowdrunk

The last thing you drank was tea,
it bubbles and stews in your centre,
the saucer swings, and you blend to
leaf-patterned fug. You see,
you’re drunk on a breath of dark,
thrown by the shape of your pillow,
skin down to blood down to marrow,
heaving. Blankets start
to swaddle your reeling heart,
snagging you safe for the journey,
but sleep doesn’t come. Too early.
You’ve waves to ride. You are
red sand on a roaming dune
ready to scatter and fall,
a sailor with nowhere to call,
a fish in the cup of the moon
waiting to drown.

 

Love poetry? Follow me on Facebook www.facebook.com/parmenterpoetry and Twitter @ninaparmenter

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Spread the rhymes!
Posted on

Nettle

Ah, nettles. August walks wouldn’t be the same without these special friends would they? Grrr.

Stinging nettle

Nettle

Nettle…
after the apocalypse,
you, with your pain suit and your stealth roots
will survive –
a zig-zag scrap of hope
(at least for the butterflies).
But, though I know you to be
a sleeping saviour,
unwavering in the face of eco-calamity,
I still loathe you.
Viscerally.

There you stand, waist-high,
all shouty trousers,
the glad-swaggering big I,
your two-bit tendrils lunging brashly –
just an overgrown irritant
acting rashly.

And beside you,
the dreary dock leaves
paddle-faced and dead-eyed
clutch their scout badges tight and simper:
We’re really VERY sorry.
Come, crush our worthless bodies
to ease your blisters.

 

Follow me on Facebook! www.facebook.com/parmenterpoetry

Image by analogicus from Pixabay

Spread the rhymes!
Posted on

Photophobia

It’s nowhere near Halloween, so time for a creepy rhyme…

Photophobia

The light is like the sound of something breaking;
he waits inside the upturns of the waves.
Don’t touch the switch. The click will find him waking.

The kitchen has the scent of someone aching
to live. Reflections hold the things he craves.
Their light is like the sound of something breaking.

If light consoles you, watch its edges shaking
in bedroom corners, cringing at his gaze.
Don’t touch the switch. The click will find him waking.

I wonder, have you sensed a brightness taking
your vision? Have you felt in recent days
that light is like the sound of something breaking?

You may be free. You may be quite mistaken.
I guess you must believe, for now, you’re saved.
Don’t touch the switch. The click will find him waking.

So come to terms with darkness now. Start making
new routes, believe your senses, and be brave.
When light is like the sound of something breaking,
don’t touch the switch. The click will find him waking.

 

First published by Snakeskin Poetry – www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk

Geek notes: This is written in villanelle form, which has a very specific pattern of rhymes and repeating lines. You may have noticed there are only two rhyme sounds (although I’ve been a bit loose with waves – craves – gaze – days – saved – brave!) You might recognise this form from this slightly famous poem by Dylan Thomas. 😉

 

Image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay

For my poems, rhymes and poemy stuff, follow me on facebook! www.facebook.com/parmenterpoetry

Spread the rhymes!
Posted on

Blooming

Bang!

This week I have been mostly… blowing up all the pretty flowers! Or rather, they  have been blowing themselves up in some sort of petal-strewn apocalypse. This poem featured on the lovely blog The Wombwell Rainbow this week, but I thought I’d share the fireworks here too.

Blooming

A celandine went first,
and if we had ever looked, we would have known
it was a freeze-frame of a live firework,
we would have expected
the violence that sparked from the inside out,
the heat petalling sweetly,
each stamen springing a hellmouth.

A rose caught,
thorns spitting pop-pop-pop from the stem,
the leaves crisping, and as an afterthought,
the buds, like charged kisses,
lipped the flames to ragwort and vetch.
An oxeye daisy burst,
white-hot in its eagerness.

We dialled nine-nine-nine,
we called the press, but our words burned away,
and as day bloomed into evening time,
the honeysuckle, its lashes
glowing in the last light of the sun,
tipped a long wink to Venus
and blew like an H-bomb.

 

Follow me on Facebook www.facebook.com/parmenterpoetry!

Artwork by Thomas Suisse on Pixabay.

Spread the rhymes!
Posted on

Araucaria Araucana

I recently visited the weirdest place with my family. Called Robin Hood’s Bower, it has literally nothing to do with Robin Hood – it’s a clearing in Longleat Forest, Wiltshire, where the late Lord Bath decided to randomly plant some monkey puzzle trees.

The clearing is the site of an ancient settlement, and has also been a gathering place for battles of all colours and flavours. But what is particularly eerie about this dark patch in the forest is the evidence of human rituals that take place there to this day. Anyone fancy a night hike?!

It was a place that most definitely needed a poem, and you can find it here at Green Ink Poetry:

https://www.greeninkpoetry.co.uk/poetry-submissions-all/nina-parmenter-araucaria-araucana

 

 

If you enjoy poetry, why not follow me on facebook? www.facebook.com/parmenterpoetry

Spread the rhymes!
Posted on

Night Rails

I don’t know about you, but my dreams are often rooted in my late teens and early twenties, which does rather suggest this was a pivotal time in my brain’s development. This is slightly worrying, given how much beer was being consumed at the time.

Trains, and things that can go wrong on trains, are a massive recurring theme. I am forever chasing around labyrinthine railway stations trying to find platforms that don’t exist, zooming past my stop, accidentally abandoning luggage, losing friends in shape-shifting carriages… I rarely travel by train these days, which is no surprise.

Anyway, here I am, putting in yet another nightshift on Great Western Railways. I should get paid for this.

Night Rails

At night, the trains roll in,
and I run the warp of the concourse
bagged down by luggage. Around me,
to the fizz of missed announcements,
stairways stretch and extend
like the veins of a living labyrinth.
These are the same treads I chased
decades ago, when the rails boot-laced
the two sides of my life. But now,
I am a broken node, a traveller out of time,
tuned to the beep of the door buttons,
yet two beats afloat.
Some nights, when the points align,
the train doors open, and the dark
grants me a seat. For a moment,
we drive the lines together.
But the tracks soon curve
to steal my purpose, the signs
morph to hieroglyphs, and I am stuck,
hitched to my early adulthood, looping
from Coventry to Castle Cary,
destined only ever to change
at Reading.

 

First published by Snakeskin Poetry

 

Follow me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/parmenterpoetry or sign up to the WordPress feed on this blog for regular poetry fixes!

Spread the rhymes!
Posted on

Shock – It Doesn’t All Rhyme

Bit of a shock announcement. The poetry on this site will no longer all rhyme. Please, take a moment if you need it.

Yes, it’s true. Corrupted by poetiness, these days I read and write more and more poems that don’t rhyme.  Oh, I still love rhyme. I still write rhyme. I quite often sneak rhymes into supposedly non-rhymey poems just as a gift to myself. But I have also taken the broken, non-rhyming things into my heart and found them quite… lovable.

So, anyway, look, if you clicked on itallrhymes.com, you will have been rudely conveyed here, to ninaparmenter.com and a site that appears to be called Nina Parmenter Poetry. But never fear. It’s not all about me. I’ll be posting other poets and poety stuff too.

And if free verse is not for you…
Don’t worry. There’ll be rhyming too.

 

 

 

Image by Prawny from Pixabay

Spread the rhymes!
Posted on

Back To Me

Nothing wrong with a little feel good poem from time to time…

Back to Me

This my nothing-happy,
my stone-faced bliss,
this is my sweet release
from grinning artifice.
I am floating on zero,
life-sloughed and stuff-free,
I am guileless, I am tribeless,
I am back to me.

 

For more poems in your life, follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/parmenterpoetry, or follow me on Twitter @ninaparmenter

Spread the rhymes!
Posted on

Bellows

You are supposed to mellow as you get older. I have not. I am barely able to watch the breakfast news any more, for fear of whichever condescending windbag politician is to be wheeled out at 7:30 to trot out the party line. For fear of the rage they will provoke!

So! Today, instead of breakfast news, I am posting my little poemy rant. Enjoy!

Bellows

Hand him a twitch to wake the bag,
breathe him a wind and watch him blow!
His leathery skin will show no marks,
the flames need fuel and bellows.

Offer him up to breakfast news,
pipe him a phrase and watch him blow!
his spasming mouth will puff and squeal –
the flames are fuelled by bellows.

Now cycle it out to the populace!
Pump up their passions and watch them blow
and blurt on their garrulous timelines; feed
the flames with fuel and bellows.

And when some commission arrives to prise
his apertures open – watch them blow!
Why, empty has nothing to answer for.
The flames need fools and bellows.

This poem was first published in the May 21 edition of Snakeskin:  www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk

For more poems in your life, follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/parmenterpoetry, or follow me on Twitter @ninaparmenter

 

Image by suju-foto from Pixabay

Spread the rhymes!