Skip to main content

Penny Palmer's Pink Pyjamas

I woke with an idea in my head. A bit of nonsense if you like. So I went with the feeling. This poem emerged in my notebook. This is the third version of it. 
 it gave me the chance to play with alliteration and rhyme...
Hope you like it.


Penny Palmer’s Pink Pyjamas



Penny Palmer’s pink pyjamas
Hung drying on the line
Held in place by giant pegs
Their pinkness, so divine

A substantial woman was Penny P.
Her pyjamas quite immense
They covered her from head to toe
Which all made perfect sense

The morning breeze began to grow
It formed into a gale
Those huge pyjamas on the line
Flipped and flopped and flailed

Penny Palmer’s pink pyjamas
Lifted skywards in a flash
And above her house they floated
Gaudy and pink and brash

The neighbourhood was puzzled
By pyjamas in the sky
A sunset in the morning
Had sent the day awry

Like floating blimps the top and tail
Began drifting out to space
Tumbling pink pyjamas
Disappearing without trace


Penny P stood by her gate
A ciggy in her paw
She knew she’d never wear
Those pink pyjamas anymore

Penny Palmer’s pink pyjamas
Were last sighted floating east
And ended up in Africa
Beside a wildebeest

Alan j Wright




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Poetry Inspired by Images and Objects

There are many ways pictures and photographs can be conscripted to support the writing of poetry. Allow me to share a few ideas with you: Old photographs are a great source of inspiration. Cynthia Rylant explored this idea with great success in her book 'Something Permanent' where she employed the Depression era photographs of Walker Evans to add a new voice to the starkness to the lives of people experienced under extreme circumstances. I have used this strategy to spark many individual poems. In ' I Bet There's No Broccoli On The Moon,' I used a photo I had taken in 2004 while living in New York to inspire a poem. The poem was based on a story related by a friend who grew up in New York.  I regularly combined poetry and pictures in my writer's notebook, drawing on inspiration from the photograph and my personal memories. We can also utilize existing cartoons and illustrations to create ekphrastic poems. I frequently use the illustrations of Jim Pavlidis to co...

Poetry Friday 'Storm On The Island' Seamus Heaney

Given the fact that we recently celebrated St Patrick's Day, it seems appropriate that I take this opportunity to continue the Irish focus and recognize one of Ireland's leading literary figures... Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland in 1939 and died in 2013. He became a multi award winning poet. His first collection of poems, 'Death of a Naturalist' appeared in 1966 and helped to establish Heaney as one of the major poets of the 20th century. From that first anthology, I have chosen 'Storm On The Island.' This poem tells us about the stoic resistance of people and structures to an incoming storm. The island is not named. Poetic scholars believe this is a poem that can be taken literally, as a monologue on the life and attitude of island people facing a storm, or it can be understood as a  metaphor of political struggle on the island of Ireland. Heaney knew both worlds.  The poems of this first collection are grounded in the soil...

Peter Dixon -Teabag Poem

Today I'm highlighting the poetry of Peter Dixon. Peter Dixon was not just a poet. He was a performer, educationalist and artist.   He grew up in London during WW2, and as a boy his schooling was far from successful. He struggled with spelling and the understanding of word, form and grammar, so he tended to write secretly at home, drawing and writing of things largely ignored by schools.   Despite this difficult phase of his life, Peter eventually became a school teacher and then a senior lecturer in education. It often mystified him as to how all of this came to pass. As a teacher, he strived to be unbiased and did not neglect the children who experienced learning challenges.   Peter Dixon became a full time children’s writer and educational consultant. His first book was published in 1978. Whilst living in Winchester, Hampshire, with his family, he   contributed to over 100 poetry anthologies and had seven collections of his own work published including Grow Your O...