Category: Life

Posted in Life, Music

You Gotta Be…

Posted on by Charlie Alford

Inspired by Pooky’s Poems where today’s challenge involved writing a poem to the rhythm of a song you enjoy. I chose Des’ree ‘You Gotta Be’ because this song has been stuck in my head since the first day I heard it back in 1994; when I was a nine year old English village girl getting up to mischief in her ‘Little Mermaid’ roller-skates. I kept the chorus because I feel as though it’s always been my life lesson.

 

This is who you are today

brown eyes on a summer day

stepping our from behind Grandpa’s knee

Your friends, they will grow with you

fly with you to Timbuktu

live, laugh, dance, this planet

young birds flying free.

 

You gotta be…

You gotta be bad, You gotta be bold, You gotta be wiser

You gotta be hard, You gotta be tough, You gotta be stronger

You gotta be cool, You gotta be calm, You gotta together

All I know, All I know, love with save the day.

 

Listen to want Des’ree said

seal the words inside your head

cherish every chapter cherish every line

some will teach you how to be

but all you need is family

my oh my, yea, eh eh

 

You gotta be bad, You gotta be bold, You gotta be wiser

You gotta be hard, You gotta be tough, You gotta be stronger

You gotta be cool, You gotta be calm, You gotta together

All I know, All I know, love with save the day.

 

I know you’re only nine, but life is beginning

story’s start – moments of time and space

the years keep on turning

they won’t stop; they will find you

one day you will wake up to another face

whoa-oh-oh

 

You gotta be bad, You gotta be bold, You gotta be wiser

You gotta be hard, You gotta be tough, You gotta be stronger

You gotta be cool, You gotta be calm, You gotta together

All I know, All I know, love with save the day.

 

Listen to want Des’ree said

seal the words inside your head

cherish every chapter cherish every line

some will teach you how to be

but all you need is family

my oh my, yea, eh eh

 

Posted in England, Family, Life, Writing

Carpe Dium

Posted on by Charlie Alford

I see you in our little coastal town
a photo awakens a reels of memories
of childhood antics on rocky beaches
and Welsh mountains that we would race down.
A traveller of the last century
I remember how you could spin a yarn
We would laugh at your terrible acting
every moment you made legendary.
Written across a tattered birthday card
printed like a human type writer
said the infamous words “Carpe Dium”
words that are tattooed in my mind and soul
as the world twists and turns without you.

Inspired by We Drink Because We’re Poets prompting us to reawaken a so-called dead language via a Latin proverb. I chose ‘Carpe Dium’ meaning to Seize the Day.

Posted in Life

Who has the fish?

Posted on by Charlie Alford

Oh, Mr Einstein! How befuddling 

you have me questioning and wondering.

If Britain is red; then who is the green

the Swede may have dogs; but where are they seen?

I wrote them out in spider diagrams

but the lines were baffling, my poor hands

needed to spread out across the spreadsheet

twas logical and a little more neat.

But I can’t figure out the German

I know he smokes! But what else can I learn?

Oh, Mr Einstein, it’s taken me hours

and only 2% have these powers?

Asking us questions like, Where is the fish?

Mind-boggling riddle, you just had to dish…

I would love to say that I mastered it

but alas, nay, I may have googled it!

 

The above, a result of a befuddling brain teaser a co-worker e-mailed me today. Written by Einstein the 19th Century predicting/stating only 98% of the population would be able to solve it. Well, I do like a challenge. I took it on. I failed. I succumbed to the easiness and peer pressure that was Google. I found the answer – went back to the riddle and still couldn’t see where I had gone wrong! C’est la vie.

Just for fun here is the riddle:

Five homeowners lived in five separate houses that were five different colours.Each homeowner was of a different nationality, drank a specific beverage, smoked a specific brand of smokes, and a kept a specific pet. No owners had  the same pet, brand of smoke, or drink.

The Clues:

1. The Brit lives in a Red house.

2. The Swede keeps a dog.

3. The Dane drinks tea.

4. The Green house is on the left of the White house.

5. The Green homeowner drinks coffee.

6. The person who smokes Pall Mall keeps Birds.

7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.

8. The man living in the central house drinks milk.

9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.

10. The man who smokes Blend lives next to the man who keeps Cats.

11. The  man who keeps Horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.

12. The owner who smokes Camel drinks Beer.

13. The German smokes Marlborough.

14. The Norwegian lives next to the Blue house.

15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbour who drinks water.

 

With that in mind, Who Keeps The Fish?

Give it a whirl, let me know how you went… with or without Google… I promise I won’t judge!

 

Posted in #NaPoWriMo2014, Life

#NaPoWriMo Day Thirty – “April’s Journey”

Posted on by Charlie Alford
headstone-md1

She noticed the line between B and D

on the worn out stone in that photograph

and thought, what could that line possibly mean?

When she leaves here, she’ll paint an autograph

of all her thoughts, moments and poetry

signed, sealed, delivered with a smile and laugh.

Walking through time, her quest to history

where she wrote letters on a Wiltshire hill

pondering the worlds greatest mysteries.

Lie with her in fields of daffodils

as she gazes into Albion’s windows

from the grassy bench of Salisbury’s windmills.

Or find her dancing sunshine and rainbows

as she encounters New York Down Under

April Twenty Fourteen was quite a show

just like lightening in a storm of thunder.

Her line tastes like chai latte on Mondays

a blissful moment her heart could plunder

From point B, the line is a disarray

of wibbly-wobbly moments

just waiting to be played.

 

Prompt: All the 29 poems I’ve written this NaPoWriMo 2014.

Posted in #NaPoWriMo2014, Life

#NaPoWriMo Day TwentyEight – “Falling”

Posted on by Charlie Alford

Swooping off the cliff like a hungry bird
she follows her path to a places unknown
hunting for actuality – she is falling.
Expressing herself in drawings and words
creating a world inside her mind, her own
rain racing to the ground, she is falling.
Someday soon she will find a little nook
and paint her world in verses and hues;
tales of moments and places she has flown
through her life; a journey is all it took.
Falling.

Prompt: http://www.napowrimo.net/2014/04/day-26-2/

Picture Credits: http://www.falconrygallery.com/displayimage-18.html

Posted in #NaPoWriMo2014, Life

#NaPoWriMo Day TwentySeven – “An Existential Crisis”

Posted on by Charlie Alford

existential crisis

Writing from an unmade bed

weary of the same four walls

wrapped in the same old pictures.

Why am I here?

Wandering up life’s mountain

weathered and crackling under

weak social preconceptions

What am I?

Worn out from institutions

wailing and waffling on;

wars on individuality.

Who am I?

Weakened from society’s chains

who would keep me on the beaten path

waiting for the answer

what will I be when I grow up?

We’re all in the same boat, they say.

Wrong, we’re split into factions

west and east; north and south

white and black – someone ask why?

Why are we here? What’s the point?

What is our objective?

We’re born into this giant globe

We should be the one’s to protect it…

Prompt: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_writing_challenge/poetry/ – Tautogram

Posted in #NaPoWriMo2014, Life

#NaPoWriMo Day TwentyTwo – “Church Windows”

Posted on by Charlie Alford

Day Twenty Two’s prompt has been inspired by Don Charisma’s Art prompt: Paint; that spanned over two days.

Day One http://doncharisma.org/2014/04/19/art-don-charisma-s-prompt/ was to draw a squiggle using paint program and Day Two was to colour/edit http://doncharisma.org/2014/04/20/paint-don-charismas-prompt/ so I decided to take it a step further and put some words to my random art.
RandomDoodle

 

Church windows tell us our story

We get lost in their beauty, look

thoroughly for humanity

for our part in the stain glass book.

We fall though colourful chaos

shaped by life’s imperfections

weighed by an invisible cross

haunted by our own reflections.

Breathing an enigmatic place

we soar down our own unique roads

animating our human grace

within our marvellous abode.

Have you looked in your church window?

Do you know the stories they show?

Posted in #NaPoWriMo2014, Doctor Who, Family, Life, Loss, Mythology, Supernatural/Magic, Time

#NaPoWriMo Day Nineteen – “a weeping angels woe”

Posted on by Charlie Alford

 

Alone in the churchyard I watch

mortals mourning in tears and flowers.

Leaning against a rowan tree

abandoned by my family.

Beneath my feet a girl is weeping

I open my arms and kneel down

In surprise, she looks up at me

screaming like a startled crow.

She runs back through the stone and grass

reaching out to her, I follow

She turns to me – her eyes are cold

and zap – she’s now in the past.

Falling through time – I am weeping;

my eyes hidden behind grey fingers.

Left within eternal sleeping

this is where my Winter lingers.

Posted in #NaPoWriMo2014, Life, Time, Writing

#NaPoWriMo Day Eighteen – “Note to Self”

Posted on by Charlie Alford

20140417-234020.jpg

 

I want to tell you to be brave

to step away from that brick wall

and seek the friendship that you crave

by showing the world you stand tall.

Forget the ones that say you’re weird

and ignore you till your wanted.

Find your passion; conquer your fears;

do what you do best and flaunt it!

Singing loud in the dead of night

but silent as a lamb in day?

No, you need to break out like a kite

and speak out, what you want to say!

Look around you, little missy,

you are a person – just like them;

clever, smart and sometimes witty

but you are – just another them.

Shakespeare says the world is a stage

and each of you have your role and place.

You start your lives with a blank page

each of your moments fill that space.

Live individuality –

it’s like travelling the unknown!

You’re a part of humanity

Oh, if you could see how you’ve grown!

You live on the other side now

still thinking the thoughts you’re thinking…

how you got here? you don’t know how

its just part of the travelling.

Be who you want to be, stay true

as one day, she will be you.