Jumping Free - my poems from Not a Bad Word 23rd Sept 2025

 These are poems I performed at the above event - so, here it is Jumping Free - written towards the end of a 10-year off/on relationship with a guy from Barbados.  He eventually went back to Barbados to care for his aging mother with dementia ... long story.

Jumping Free

 

Winding track up the mountain

through the forest of dusty pines.

I stare out as if suspended,

my past dragging behind.

 

I talked to you, but you didn’t hear;

I waited for you so long, but you fell behind;

I watched through mists and windows

but my picture faded and

you couldn’t see me anymore.

 

The track winds up, cutting through rock

I glimpse the sky lapis blue and shiver in the shadow.

Is this it at last? The time to jump?

No another bend and another...

 

Above an eagle circles,

as the clock slows, as my life unfurls,

'like nothing ever mattered'...

I see it coming now, the final bend;

all that’s left is jumping...

 

Will my orange wings catch the breeze;

float me over the shimmering sea far below?

‘Run’, my guide says, ‘run into the air,

and then sit back and feel

Allah’s breathe upon your face’.

 

See me there drifting over the hills, hazed in blue;

time shimmers and stops

as I swoop over the pale turquoise lagoon.

Now I’m swooning, the sky turns me upside-down.

 

Hold steady, don’t flash back, time suspends

as I soar over the sparkling water,

arc around where the red crescent leads

to land softly on the new road ahead.

Anna Meryt 

13//5/2010

....................................................................................................

Cutting through eternity

 The time of trees is measured

in rings

and rocks are stratified

in layers

Cut a slice of me

and see if my time

is visible there -

in brains and veins and bones

or will the search

for ordered patterns of time

kill me

 Anna Meryt ©

May 2005

I think this got a runner up (or something) in a Forward poetry competion 20+ years ago

 

 

Purple prose

  

PURPLE PROSE

Many years ago, when my ex-husband was living and working in Indonesia, he asked me to give feedback on a draft novel by a would-be sci-fi writer he knew. It was well written in parts, but my only real feedback was: too much purple prose.

I never found out whether he finished the book, or whether he took my advice to improve his style. But purple prose has stuck in my mind ever since. You may already know what it is, or you may be wondering — but if you’re a writer, it’s something you’ll want to avoid.

Simply put, purple prose happens when the style overwhelms the story. Instead of keeping things clean and direct, the writer drowns the sentence in ornate adjectives and overblown metaphors.

For example:

Simple: She opened the window to smell the sea breeze.

Purple: Her slender hand clicked the gilded latch, the window swung open and a blast of pure ozone assailed her wide nostrils.

You get the idea. The straight-forward action gets buried under decoration.

It shows up in speech too. You say you’re going for a walk, and someone

 replies, “That sounds absolutely amazing, have a truly wonderful, glorious walk!” A bit much for a stroll in the park.

So why do writers do it? Often because they think it will make their work sound “literary” or impressive. In fact, the opposite is true. Purple prose buries meaning, slows the pace, and risks losing the reader’s attention.

 It interrupts the flow of your story.

 What’s the cure?

 One good method is to read your work aloud, preferably in a writers’ group. You’ll soon hear which sentences flow — and which stumble under their own weight. Others’ feedback helps too: 'Does this serve the story, or just the sentence?' is a useful question to keep in mind.

That said, lush description isn’t always bad. Fantasy, gothic, and romance sometimes benefit from a little stylistic excess. The trick is to know when you’re enhancing the mood — and when you’re smothering it.

 As a poet, I frequently see the same issue in the work of new poets. I run a monthly poetry event and I'm a performance poet with 3 published collections. 

(Not a Bad Word — next one 23rd September @ The Old Dairy, N8, if you’re in London).

Beginners sometimes send me poems filled with flowery, over-lyrical descriptions of nature or emotions. It makes me smile, because we’ve all been there.

In poetry and prose alike, restraint is powerful. Pare down each line. Focus on rhythm — not rhyme — on structure and sound. Most adjectives are unnecessary. Strong nouns and verbs will always do the heavy lifting for you.

So beware the purple prose trap. Keep your writing spare, simple, and clear. Your readers will thank you for it.

CHAOS THEORY

Chaos theory

It's how tiny changes in anything can build into massive effects.  Like a butterfly's wing flapping in Mexico can build into a tornado in Taiwan (that's the popular understanding).  A better example is how tiny changes in atmospheric conditions can make accurate long-term weather forecasting almost impossible.

'Small differences amplify over time, making prediction hard.'  That quote is from ChatGPT - and I think it's the easiest-to-understand explanation.

You see it in Back to the Future movies quite a bit.  McFly has to be careful what he does if he goes back to the past, because if he meddles with events, the future he returns to can change drastically - not always for the better.

I was telling my cousin/niece about a friend and saying this person had a chaotic lifestyle.  'They sound great', she said.  'I love chaos, I even love the word 'chaos'.  

I turned and looked at her in surprise.  Most of us claim to prefer peace and quiet.  We meditate to be mindful and calm.  We moan to our friends when our lives descend into chaos.  But here she was saying the opposite.   She clearly liked the excitement and drama of chaos.  Her life is often chaotic.  She faces challenges that most of us would avoid at all costs - her partner has a life-threatening condition.  Daily, they live on the edge.  Her daughter and grandchildren are neurodivergent and very challenging to deal with sometimes. It runs through the family. So I guess for them chaos is normal.

Chaos also means unpredictable; you never know what's going to happen next.  The rest of us though, think we can pin things down, keep everything the same, to keep chaos away from us.  Another friend told me about her house hunting and my attempt to get her to think more positively about her chances of finding just what she wants - 'Yes but that's not reality is it?  The reality is .... blah blah blah.

I tried to get her to stop predicting the all bad future and think maybe the property she wants is going to come to her, very soon. She's had a difficult few months and tends to predict the future based on the past.  Which is what we all do sometimes, isn't it?  But stop.  Think about it.  How many times have your nay-saying, doom and gloom predictions suddenly switched and a different scenario that you hadn't expected at all suddenly appeared?  Just when you'd given up all hope?

Daily life is totally unpredictable, isn't it?  So maybe my cousin's right, we should embrace chaos in our lives and stop trying to force things to be predictable.  We're all going to die, aren't we? And yet we spend our lives ignoring, denying and pushing away that rather large piece in the jigsaw of our lives. One great Buddhist teacher used to make his followers go meditate in the charnel grounds (in India), that's the place where bodies are burnt on large, elaborate funeral pyres.   It was his attempt to get them to face the most unpredictable event of our lives over which we have virtually no control. Look death in the face and tell me you want your life to be predictable. 

Here's a poem I wrote about this topic a year or 2 ago.  When you approach 70, you realise that most of your life is over and you have to start thinking about how much longer you've got.  This one is relating to that - 

When it’s my turn

 When they come knocking

I think I’ll be surprised

I think I’ll answer the door

and say ‘Oh is it time already?

I think I’ll say ‘but I’ve still got things to do.

I have to finish a project or two.

Are you sure I have to go now?

 

Are you saying it’s too late?

Are you saying it has to be now?

Not any other time in the future?

You’re not joking are you?

This isn’t some scam?

You actually mean now.

 

But my friends will be upset

My daughters will be upset

My grandsons will be upset.

 

I don’t think I want to go now.

What do you mean ‘no choice’?

 

But where will I go?  Who will I see?

Oh my Dad, my gran, even my Mum

will be waiting for me?

My beloved friends Val and Steph

will be waiting for me

They will hold my invisible hands

and guide me through the transition?

 But hang on a minute ….

______________________________________

I'm not trying to depress you. It's just that my beloved cousin/niece got me thinking about chaos and all our futile attempts to push it away from us.  She who lives in the middle of struggle and chaos seems to have found a way to embrace it, even to enjoy it.  Life is unpredictable, isn't it? That's reality.

*Catching the Breeze: A poetry collection: Amazon.co.uk: Meryt, Anna: 9781916369771: Books