A TANKA

Perhaps I was Misreading My Recurring Dream Of Foul Toilets

My therapist helped me to see it as a metaphor

I wake up sweating

can’t use toilets full of poop

bad school memories*

or she says ‘can’t lose your shit

for everyone else's shit’

When Martin Rushton started his Never-Ending Poem he opened the door to many things. Connection. Finding new writers. The challenge of writing something different, something outside our usual genre perhaps.

Thanks to Tina L. Smith who prompted me to keep Martin’s chain growing with a prompt to write a Haiku or poem about dreams

Now I invite you to join the chain Susan Brearley, Caroline de Braganza, Dražen? Dražen!, Mark Kelly, Marilyn Flower, Jack Burt, Jen Kleinknecht,

Your prompt is ‘Metaphor’.

The challenge is to keep this going (and growing)

• write a poetic (any form) response to the prompt
• tag some wonderous poets, or even some practising ones like me
• add a new prompt
• feel free to link my poem in, tag me and publish (anywhere, any publication).

And remember to mention Martin Rushton’s Never-Ending Poem as the instigator.

*I wrote about my early childhood memories of toilets and school bullies. I always believed my dreams were simply replaying those times.

©Marie T Smith at She Wordsmiths…writes for a good many Medium publications and is a sub-editor for Muddyum. She has been credited as a top writer in Humor, Food, Travel, Cooking, This Happened To Me and Satire along the way. She is also a published writer in Travel Magazines and a keen photographer of wildlife. She is still practising poetry.