#NaPoWriMo Day 12 and tonight I’ve been writing a piece of free verse inspired by Prickly Pears – a tribute poem to all the performers tonight. Normally, I’d tell you to remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the eleven preceding it) there. HOWEVER, I promised a recording to the performers, so you get it here too (and I’ll just have to come up with an extra gift for the Patreon subscribers to make up for this not being exclusive…). --- fayroberts · Prickling Tribute We are safe, sound, and wonderfully colourful, loving the brilliant wisdom of glittering sensitivity, lifting each other, comfortable challenges, deft and considerate. Intro Do or die is not today, burning down expectations, searching out the dangers, mistaking the ways of working, turning lurking in perfection into freedom. Kate Sinners pay for the mistakes of making noises, canonically confetti-strewn, and construing duty as a reconstruction of a stumble. Gareth Barsby Clap out the chaos, refusing to inflict infantile isolation, reject rot, recognise the wild sanctity of humanity, games making fiction a breathlessly empty treachery. Vayl Let’s teach each other constructive alignment, pedagogically, paradoxically dodging OFSTED, bodging observations, repetitively dictating today’s duration, even though it feels endless. Pip Open a correspondence into a lifetime of idealism, downing a cocktail of positive experiences, reeling and rocking, mocking the inevitability with a grin. Ash Consumption of society’s norms can be filling, drilling into the bedrock of toxic assumptions, dumping constructions, rolling the stones over and over to the conclusion of inevitability. Sandra Unprompted preparation paves the way for a final trip, flipping memories over on the grill of reality, the musicality of island tides gifting something undefinable, measured in its loss, sweet as Paradise. Phynne~Belle Triple-time gifts us dancing experiments, bending shackled minds to wander and wonder under the bedrock echoes of the resounding repetition of loneliness, serendipity abandoned, surviving unforgiven. Joycey Fresh words flourish in fertile space, stretching restless frustration into a new cage, hemmed in, digging into resentment, then switching optimistically, gathering new meanings, leading to graceful patience. Tamika Paradoxically, we walk in contradiction, begging for attention, twitching in syncope, drifting in focus, opening minds to the ‘craziness’, not lazy, but blunted, shunted into a category that clatters at the periphery. Ashley Cued up, we examine bigotry under a magnification of narrative that serves only the kyriarchy, wicked and wilful monochrome, honing the agenda of apathy, the gift of those who spike the path mendaciously. Phoenix We’re a patchwork of fingerprints, beauty painting a palimpsest of history, gifting us a view that inevitability depends on compliance and forgetfulness, the weft of deft love and clear eyes against the warp of greed. Suzy We carpet bare memories with prettiness, mess swept under the fashionable patterns that distract from the demons inscribed into the grain, blame bobbing down the rivers of sweat buoying complicity. Bethany Colour flourishes up walls, adorning imaginations with grace and clipping, trimming situations with disappointment, impressing lines into blank pages, the ages connecting, washing up against our shored stories. Lee We have opened many windows into compassion dashing, sweet, spendthrift and multiplying, kindness a warm gift that benefits every member of our shared continuity. Gareth Bartlett Automated text tells a layered set of mixed messages getting tangled in parallel meanings, gleaning more than nonsense, the strangest guest of humanity, sentience being a lucky dip. Clive And finally, functions summoned by departed friends send us into a litter of plastic bagged eternity, wildness lined with polymer, bone-deep, changing our definitions, prinked colours murmurating across the canvas of the mind. Beth Thanks for the inspiration Poster of the event because why not?