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Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

@blueskypoetry.bsky.social

#BSPP48 #DecemberTinsel
#IcyBreath
#BlueSkyPoetry
#poetry #PoetryCommunity

December

Today the winds icy breath
unstitched the last rotting leaves
from skeletal branches,
sending them to gather against the gate.
I trudge through their decay,
slippers sinking into mush,
as I take out the bin.

Last year the path was swept clean
by hands that knew every uneven crack;
the grasping roses pruned into obedience;
the privet's mohawk
tamed into a short-back-and-sides.
The cheery, purple garden-waste bin
would have been waiting on the kerb too.
Faithfully stood beside its dirty,
brown companion.

Last year you were here,
humming a tune
to hold wildness at bay,
to care for the things
you knew would outlast you.

December 20, 2025 at 9:54 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

My favourite time, when all is quiet and I can write a poem or two!

#MPPrompt

#poetrycommunity #poems #poetry

2:34 AM

I’m still on the sofa.
Sleep doesn’t come easy,
but here the clock slows down.

The house is sleeping.
I’m alone, but not lonely.
I breathe in tandem
with the dogs’ soft, steady snores.
Upstairs, a bed sighs in creaking complaint
as someone shifts deeper into their dreams.

I slip out to the garden
for a secret cigarette
that somehow tastes sweeter
in the hushed, drowsy dark
of the neighbouring houses

The air is damp,
the night unhurried.
Nothing asks anything of me.
And for these few minutes,
in the glow of the amber cherry,
I belong to the silence.

December 20, 2025 at 9:33 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

I've got my copy and can heartily recommend it. Such a lovely poetry book, full of personal moments, beautifully told. Love it. Well done @poetbex.bsky.social ❤️

December 19, 2025 at 10:59 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

Friday is fast becoming my favourite day. Can't wait to read everyone else's take on #PoemsAbout #Money

@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetry #poetrycommunity #blueskypoets

The Price to Pay

Can we get takeaway tonight?
Of course.
That’ll cost me an hour of nodding through meetings
with people who think synergy is a personality,
and ten minutes replying to emails
that make me question my sanity.

The car needs petrol.
Naturally.
That’ll be an afternoon wrestling with code
in a system that resents my existence,
crashing just to make me suffer.

Mum, can I have some new trainers?
Absolutely.
I can cover that with two “familiarisation sessions”
on software no one understands,
and a project plan no one will read.

I’ve booked the cat in at the vets.
Perfect.
I’ve booked myself in for overtime.
I'll pay the bill with a seven-hour upgrade
full of bugs that I'll spend days fixing.

We need to go shopping.
No problem.
Let me just do three hours faking interest
in a dashboard that doesn’t work,
for managers who never use it.

Can we go to the cinema Friday?
Sure.
I'll do another round with the
pointless dashboard,
and finish the stack of overdue reports.

The gas bill’s arrived.
Oh great.
I stare at my laptop, and wonder
what piece of myself
I’ll have to sell just to stay warm.

December 19, 2025 at 5:20 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

This is one I never thought I'd share!

@sonnetsmith.bsky.social
#WildWalkPrompt #Birds
#prompt #writesky #blueskypoets

The Feeties of Tweeties

I keep thinking
I could be the kind of person
who feeds birds from an open palm,
who knows their names,
who feels chosen
when one lands nearby.

But then
the feet.

Those prehistoric little grapplers,
clicking on branches,
curling around anything
with the confidence of creatures
who survived dinosaurs.

I admire their wings,
their impossible lightness,
the way they turn air into music.
Yet every time they hop toward me,
I remember
that beauty often arrives
on claws.

I watch them.
I listen.
I could almost love them.
If only I could forget
what’s holding them up.

December 19, 2025 at 12:34 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

#vss365 #regret
#BlueSkyRelay #precursor
#BlueSkyRelay

@blueskyrelay.bsky.social
@poetguygabe.bsky.social

On Becoming

I was a wildfire once,
feeding on bad love and bitter medicine,
torching every bridge I could find.
Mistaking rebellion for breath;
survival dressed as motion.

I used to fear those older selves.
The girl who was all teeth and temper,
the one who chose wrong doors
just to hear the hinges scream.
But they were precursors.
Each one a necessary bruise,
a dark stitch in the fabric.

I don’t regret them.
Regret is for stories that end,
for fires that leave only ash.
Mine didn’t.
I am the heat that remains.
Built from the missteps,
tempered by the flaws,
shaky ground, bound tight by roots
a base for something strong
to grow.

December 18, 2025 at 11:03 PM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

I wish I'd had time to do poems for more of the #RetroArtPrompt list this week, there were some really good prompts and I have several half-finished attempts, but at least I've managed one!

#reflections #poetry #painting #life
@po3try.bsky.social
@artbyseranya.bsky.social

Reflection

I paint the water as memory:
a stroke of silver,
a ripple that bends the truth
without breaking it.

The trick is suggestion, not precision.
The softened edge,
a hue leaning too far into blue,
a shimmer insisting on light
where the world is shadow.

Reflections are beautiful liars.
They promise fidelity
yet tilt the jawline,
stretch the sky,
making the tree lean
with a secret weight.
I paint them wrong
to be believed.

The eye accepts the lie
by choice; it knows
that mirrors, lakes, and glass
are rehearsals
for the self we hope to see.

How like living this is,
rendering ourselves to others
in shimmering strokes,
convincing,
never quite aligned.

A portrait of the almost,
the nearly true,
the reflection that teaches us
how fragile the real can be.

December 18, 2025 at 10:10 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

I've been trying to get a #petrarchan to work all week, and I finally think I've done it for today's #dilemmas/decisions #promptcombo

Thanks to @hool415.bsky.social for the prompt and to @daveashleypoet.bsky.social for the form.

Stalled

I freeze where familiar pavements meet,
Two equal roads that circle back to home,
Familiar paths lie safe when I’m alone,
Yet choice itself becomes a jagged beat.
My lungs revolt, each breath a broken sheet,
My hands shake hard, my pulse begins to roam,
The world tilts sharp; I’m caged within its dome,
And silence hammers panic’s cruel repeat.

Sometimes he comes, my anchor in the storm,
His hand that steadies tremor in my chest,
Guiding me from the corner’s rigid form.
No path is worse, no path is more or less,
But sameness shatters, choice becomes a storm,
That traps my body in my mind’s distress.

December 17, 2025 at 10:20 PM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

Two very harmonious prompts today from @sonnetsmith.bsky.social and @vssdaily.bsky.social

#vssdaily #prompt #beak
#WildWalkPrompt #Blue-tit
#writesky #blueskypoets #writingprompt #nature #birds

Drama at the Feeder

The feeder sways in the morning light,
the blue-tits dart in,
wings quick as thought.
Seeds scatter like tiny promises
as the magpie plummets,
broad shadow, sharp beak,
claiming the perch as a throne.

They meet in a flurry of feathers,
a quarrel of hunger and pride.
The air rings with small defiance,
against larger arrogance.

Around them, the garden watches
this noisy clash of wills.
Sparrows chatter their commentary
from the safety of the washing line.
Crows are stealthy spectators,
hunting below for the spoils of war.
Wood pigeons coo their approval
of the morning's entertainment.

And when the seeds are gone,
only silence remains,
a truce written in empty husks.

December 17, 2025 at 10:50 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

I have given up the notion that I will ever inspire a love poem, so I wrote my own (before I started working on making my poetry more concise!).

Thank you to @poetickunal.bsky.social for hosting.

@blueskyrelay.bsky.social
#Blueskyrelay #Prompt #Love
#LovePoem

The love poem I wanted

My bejumpered, bespectacled beauty
With corn silk hair a crowning halo,
Shining above a graceful landscape:
Eyes the summer pools,
In which my heart swims.
Lips a field of poppies,
Mesmerising, undulating, dangerously tempting.
Cheeks the rosy apples offered by witches
Sustaining me on my journey

How you burn every room with your fire,
How you break every bridge that won’t stand,
How you rise from each fall, climbing higher,
How you conquer with will, not with hand.

My bejumpered, bespectacled beauty.
Reaches out arms that embrace
with warmth, strength, longing.
Sheltering those within their reach
From the cares and harms of the world.
There I escape the boundary of my being
My heart is wrapped inside.
Captive, captivated.
Trapped forever, content to be so.

How you wrestle each problem with reason,
How you kindle a smile through the pain,
How you battle the night and its demons,
How you rise up to fight once again.

My bejumpered, bespectacled beauty
Whose passion could shatter the moon
And replace the sun with a fire more fierce
Blackening my nights and
Scorching my soul with bright embers.
My heart is warmed by their glow.
They light the way ahead.
Illuminating our path,
Together through the dark.

How I love you with all that I am,
How I breathe only under your skies,
How I follow wherever you stand,
How my world lives and dies in your eyes.

December 16, 2025 at 7:26 PM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

A great first prompt from
@paintbuywords.bsky.social, thank you.

#vss365 #prompt #Memory
#illustration #charcoal #scarf

The Scarf - a charcoal drawing of a scarf and poem:

Found folded in a charity shop bin,
smelling faintly of lavender and dust.
Each stitch hums a name I’ll never know
fingers that looped love into wool.

Now I wear it, and it warms me twice:
once from the yarn,
once from the memory
of being made
for someone.

December 16, 2025 at 3:41 PM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

@onlypoemsmag.bsky.social - I steal mine!

Borrowed Light

The moon wears
A stolen shimmer.
Sunlight softened
Like breath on glass.

I walk through its spill,
Barefoot on dew.
Each step a theft
Of silver.

Trees hold their shadows
Stretching like memory
Across the skin of night.
Aching to be seen.

I am
A flicker in the dark,
Carrying what I can
Of the light that isn’t mine.

December 16, 2025 at 12:53 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

I'm trying to be more cheery this festive period.

Thanks to @ignorantfairy.bsky.social for so brilliantly stepping in to host #Emoetry and the #Gloomy prompt.

Thanks to @sonnetsmith.bsky.social for the #WildWalkPrompt #foliage

Light

The room is shrouded in winter-dusk gloom,
shadows elongate across silver walls.
Hush folds around me, tightens my chest.
Outside trees, branches stripped to bone,
scratch a winter’s lament on the window,
with frozen skeletal fingers.

Then - a switch flick,
glorious brightness blooms.
The Christmas tree awakens,
its foliage radiant,
jewelled with stars.

Coloured lights
scatter gloom
into corners.
Spread warmth
into the dark.

December 14, 2025 at 2:46 PM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

The #monotony of my son's eating habits often distresses me.

(It's an autism thing - but he is happy and healthy and has liquid supplements to make sure he is nourished)

#vss365
@sanjar.bsky.social

ARFID

Coco Pops.
White rice.
Apples.
Baked beans.

The days repeat.
The bowls repeat.
The bite, the chew, the swallows.
Unchanged.

No color beyond brown and white,
no surprise beyond the crunch,
no shift in the rhythm.

The world offers a thousand tastes,
but here,
only four remain.

It is safe.
It is narrow.
It is endless.

Coco Pops.
White rice.
Apples.
Baked beans.

December 14, 2025 at 10:59 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

#BlueSkyPoetry #BSPP48 #poetry #PoetryCommunity #Canticle #Yule

Yuletide

O sing, O earth, of winter’s turning,
Of darkest night, of solstice burning.
The Yule log blazes, sparks ascend,
The wheel of seasons turns again.

Germanic tribes in frost and flame,
Feasted midwinter, in Odin’s name.
Bonfires roared, the mead was poured,
The sun reborn, the year restored.

Rome rejoiced in Saturn’s reign,
With revels wild and loosened chain.
Masters served, the dice were cast,
A festival to outlive the past.

Evergreens in halls were hung,
Symbols of life when death came young.
Mistletoe with magic bound,
Sacred rites the tribes had found.

Then later came a borrowed frame,
A holy birth, a newer name.
Yet underneath the hymns and creed,
The solstice fire still feeds the seed.

So lift your voice, both old and true,
Canticle of ancient Yule.
For in the darkest night we see,
The sun reborn eternally.

December 14, 2025 at 1:07 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

@sonnetsmith.bsky.social I have been quite afraid of chickens since my strawberry picking days. I still have a little scar on my ankle from the one in this poem!

#WildWalkPrompt #Chicken
#prompt #writesky #blueskypoets

Fruit and Feathers

I used to gather strawberries
for summer holiday cash.
Rows of low-growing leaves,
jeweled with blood-bright teardrops.

Sweat tracing lines
down my aching back,
the brim of my cap poor shade
for a sun-kissed face.
Knees cracking as I squatted,
walking through straw like a hen,
side-to-side strut perfected,
as I foraged for the ripest fruit.

Did you think I mocked you?
Or was it just my salted scent you hated?
I never understood
why you disliked me so much,
why you chased me across the farmyard
every day.

You - orange-green plumage blazing,
a cockerel’s fury in the sun.
Me - money gripped tight,
vaulting the gate one-handed,
to escape
your pecking,
angry beak.

December 13, 2025 at 9:36 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

The impish whimsy has definitely been banished this week!!

@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#PoemsAbout #YouShouldntHave
#poetry #poetrycommunity #blueskypoets

Merry Christmases

Year one, you blamed the buck’s fizz.
Champagne never agreed with you.
You were "merry", it was fine;
My mother forgave you.

Year two, you didn’t come at all.
You blamed the Christmas Eve curry,
Not the eleven pints of Guinness.
But I forgave you.

Years three, four, and five came and went in a blur.
You ate your meal in the sitting room,
Always preferring a liquid lunch.
Away from us.

Year six, I brought you whisky.
It didn’t last the day.
And neither did you.
That’s when I knew.

Year seven, you said you were trying.
You should have tried harder
To hide the bottles,
And the betrayal on your breath.

Year eight was bliss.
You were gone, and I could breathe.
Then came your knock.
A gift in your hands.

I said you shouldn’t have.
And closed the door.

December 12, 2025 at 8:45 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

I enjoyed combining prompts yesterday so decided to challenge myself to do more today (I hope that's allowed).

#OurPoetryX #coloredlights

#BlueSkyPoetry #BSPP48 #twinedgarland

#vss365 #illicit

#WildWalkPrompt #Bush

Thank you to all for the great prompts.

The Shops

The shops sit low,
paint peeling,
windows smeared
with the breath of long nights.
Neon hissing.
Calling to the regulars.
Testing cautious strangers.

Inside, the air is thick.
Cheap spirits,
burnt grease,
the shuffle of notes
slipped under the counter.
Illicit trades in whispers,
a nod, a glance,
and the door sighs shut again.

Out back,
behind the bins and broken pallets,
the dark bushes rise tall,
a wall of green that hides the ritual.

They slip through,
down into the hollow,
garlands of smoke twining upward,
eyes glazed,
bodies folding into blackness.

Coloured lights from the shop’s sign
flicker against the leaves,
not festive,
not kind.
A sick glow bleeding into the night.

And the street goes on breathing,
swallowing,
forgetting,
as the bushes keep their secrets
and the shops wait
for the next exchange.

December 11, 2025 at 1:29 PM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

#Emoetry #Cautious

I live a Quiet Life

I'm not one for adventure.
Danger doesn't thrill me
it makes me swear.
It's enough adrenaline for me,
just walking downstairs.

I've not travelled the world.
I can watch it on a screen,
safely sat in my chair.
I panic about catching a bus,
planes I couldn't bear.

I don't like trying new foods.
I like textures and flavours I can manage
to eat without fanfare.
Always knowing there are allergens
lurking everywhere.

I'm the opposite of competitive.
When it comes to winning,
I don't have a prayer.
A cheerer from the sidelines,
So glory I forswear.

I'm not a bold or exciting person.
Living my life day after day,
quietly with care.
Cocooning myself from a scary world
in comforting knitwear.

December 10, 2025 at 3:21 PM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

Three prompts aligned today (and if I'm doing three, it can be extra long!)

#WIPSnips #Pipe
@WIPSnips.bsky.social

#poetryprompt #MPPrompt
@malformed-poetry.bsky.social

#promptcombo #Memorial
@rfsmith.bsky.social

The Pipe

I was asked if I wanted anything
to remember him by.

I was young,
but I knew it was the pipe I wanted.
Not the blackened walnut bowl
he smoked each day,
but the delicate clay stem,
saved for walks across the fields.

When I trudged in mud at his knee,
wrapped in cherry blossom smoke,
listening to stories of the mines
that seemed as deep as the pond
where we sat on the fallen log,
his voice carrying the weight of earth.

Time upon time,
I opened the box,
lifted the pipe to my lips,
tasting this hollow reminder,
tasting cherries,
tasting him.

But the flavour has thinned,
slipped away
like smoke dissolving in air,
and my memories of him.
Only fragments remain,
a pair of overalls,
the flutter of pigeons,
the pipe itself,
a vessel of residual life.

The past tastes faint,
but still it lingers,
dust on the tongue,
love pressed into clay.

December 10, 2025 at 10:12 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

#RetroArtPrompt #House/Chains #writing #writingcommunity
@artbyseranya.bsky.social

Chains

Echoes of prisons, of binding,
of wrists rubbed raw,
of houses where we are not welcome,
doors that exclude us from entry.

But not all chains chafe.
Some sing, link to link,
a soft chorus of belonging.
Not forged by force,
but shaped by hands
that choose each other.

Alone, a loop is nothing;
together, they build worlds.
Each one a hero,
each valued the same.

Sometimes we are strongest
not when we break free,
but when we understand
The part we play
in the chain.

December 9, 2025 at 8:48 AM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

I had to write about my favourite #Memorial for this week's #PromptCombo from @rfsmith.bsky.social.

And @daveashleypoet.bsky.social is to thank for the for #stornello form.

Freda's Grave

On Cannock Chase the heather sways in sorrow,
Freda lies still, no dawn for her tomorrow,
Yet love endures, and memory we borrow.

She marched with them through mud and mortar fire,
Mascot of hope, her trust did not expire,
Her loyal heart would lift their spirits higher.

Now horses, pigeons, donkeys, and dogs are named,
Each sacrifice in our silence is proclaimed,
Their courage shines through as history is framed.

Freda's Grave. A stone memorial for a dog, who served in WW1, surrounded by flowers.

December 8, 2025 at 4:38 PM

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

#SenseWrds

Prompt 155: Buildings Curious Fluttering

#blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
#poetrycommunity #poems #poetry

$Bat Among the Lights Once, weathered barns leaned with beams whispering to the wind. Fields were midnight seas, and trees stretched their arms to cradle the night. Now the earth is parcelled with concrete, hedgerows clipped into obedience. The dark fractured by streetlights, blooming too bright. The bat drifts through this geometry of glass and brick, its wings brushing halos, its hunger met by moths circling the false moons. It's plentifully fed, yet carries in its bones the taste of muted evenings, the weight of stars unchallenged, the vastness of the black before it was tamed. Its flight is a lament, an elegy for what is gone, a shadow threading progress, thriving, yet haunted, by simpler days. Dreaming of a world it cannot return to, even as it flourishes in the light we have made.$

December 8, 2025 at 12:58 AM