Monday 30 October 2017

Variations on a theme by A.L. Kennedy

A.L. Kennedy wrote an extremely short story “He didn’t. She did. Big Mistake” (1)

Here are my “Variations on a theme by A.L. Kennedy”

He didn’t. She didn’t. Big mistake.
He didn’t. She didn’t. Another baby.
He didn’t. She didn’t. Conception imminent.
He didn’t. She did. Never knew
He did. She didn’t . Conception foiled.
He did. She did. Belt ‘n’ Braces.

© Sheila Ash, 30th October 2017


(1 ) Microfiction at The University of Essex, see No. 28 https://www1.essex.ac.uk/ldev/documents/microfiction/examples.pdf

Sunday 29 October 2017

Chronoscape – by Roger Ley

Please support a fellow writer get published - Share but more importantly Nominate / Vote on Kindle Scout website !.

My writing group colleague Roger Ley has his new novel Chronoscape on Kindle Scout for 30 days - he needs nominations!

Do it now, here https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2I6ETPMWXMQ0B 

I've read this sci-fi book and liked it a lot. or I wouldn’t be recommending it.  All about changing the future by adjusting events in the past and the consequences thereof - news, history changed through backward time travel done via piloted drones on miniature scale (I'll say no more now!) but beware "The future is flexible,we can change it "


In case you didn’t get the message!

Nominate now - https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2I6ETPMWXMQ0B

Wednesday 25 October 2017

Ghost in the Attic by Sheila Ash

The figure looks out through the window
to the world beyond,
the people outside
the figure
behind the grubby glass
of the resting room
looks out longingly
until that moment when the outside
languidly looks up
to their window
vacant except for the sun’s reflected glare

© Sheila Ash, 25th October 2017

Saturday 21 October 2017

How I sound how I sound by Sheila Ash

Nursery rhymes and ballads
Humpty Dumpty and Sir Patrick Spens
remembered unmemorised
their music lost to youthful years when
70s glam rock glazed over
pop Sounds of the 60s
breaking form irreverently
riffing irregularly
improvising Weather Report’s
unconventional ground with Latin fusion
breaking bounds
living out sounds
questioning round the frame of form
releasing words to fly their own way to the page
permission granted
finally accepted
voice found

© Sheila Ash, 2017

Inspired by reading Amiri Barak’s “How You Sound??”

Saturday 14 October 2017

Hawwah by Sheila Ash

Scarfed in the red snake of temptation
the light maid of Sophia sits seductively
surveying The Garden for 
forbidden fruit. In sweet persuasion
her lantern beckons man destructively
with a profoundly disturbing allure

© Sheila Ash, 2017

Creative Writing Ink Prompt October 12th

toni-oprea-407393

Lipogram by Sheila Ash

A lipogram is a type of poem in which you restrict the use of certain letters. I just found this out. It is really difficult to do, at least for me. This was my first short attempt to try and write something only using ‘e’ or the soft ‘e’ sound as the only vowel.

The friend’s letter penned

her intent, sent ahead

meant her death better emended


© Sheila Ash, 2017

Tuesday 10 October 2017

Football focus by Sheila Ash

He spends his Sunday mornings
rummaging car boot sales,
His Saturday nights
trawling ebay
to re-collect the programs
left in the attic of some long ago house move,
to recollect childhood Saturdays at the match
with his father.

© Sheila Ash, 2017

Monday 9 October 2017

Inheritance by Sheila Ash

For you -
I would wield the surgeon’s knife
to cut away society’s cancer at its root,
And banish the bankers
prohibit the priests
mangle the media
polish off the politicians
cast out the corporations
and leave you an eternal Earth.

© Sheila Ash, 2017

Sunday 8 October 2017

The hands of time by Sheila Ash

Clouds breeze across the fields
Corn ripens in the sun
wrinkles crease your tissued skin
your touch tells all our memories

© Sheila Ash, 2017

Wednesday 4 October 2017

Playful Poetry

LIGO/VIRGO
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© Sheila Ash, 2017
4th October 2017
on the announcement of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics (https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html )
This is I suppose a type of Calligram (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligram>)


LIGO/VIRGO by Sheila Ash

Ripples in the fabric of space and time ripple in the fabric of space and time….
Where two black holes merge,
there, undulate and warp and curve violently play,
folding and bending the event horizon
until gravitational waves
burst forth.
In cruciform oscillation
they travel the universe unimpeded
at the speed of light.

Echoes of a violent past
they pass the Earth unseen, unfelt,
like laps upon a seashore on a calm day.
Our existence unaffected
until the winds rev them up to lash our shores,
erode our coastlines,
reshape our lands,
enforced restructuring of lives.

Einstein predicted
these faint echoes of past violence
now seen by interferometers
as wiggles in a laser beam,
their reverberations signalling
the seismic shift
in our understanding of the universe
that ripples through the fabric of space and time

© Sheila Ash, 2017

4th October 2017 on the announcement of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics (https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html )

Monday 2 October 2017

Psychotic prism by Sheila Ash


Our writing exercise this morning consisted of using an object from a collection given to us to craft a character in a scene. My object was a small crystal paperweight, with multiple surfaces, giving a prismatic effect when viewed through, seeing multiple presentations of the  viewed object.

So many voices, indistinguishable at first rise
By breakfast, a choir, not quite in unison
Sings discordantly.
Its chorus coalesces to a chant,
cracks crescendo inside her skull,
Her breathing beats the rhythm of its rant.
Rolling, rocking,
Lashing, bashing,
Back and forth, until
exhausted she slumps,
cradled in her mother’s arms
and cries herself to peace.


© Sheila Ash, 2017