Matthew!!! Welcome aboard. Response to follow.

Early childhood memory of a persistent nightmare and jumping into my parents’ bed.

For #promptcombo & @rfsmith.bsky.social - thank you

#poem #poetry #nightmare #nightterror

I saw Chagall properly for the first time in a small municipal museum in the seaside town of Tossa de Mar in Catalunya. ‘The Light-Blue Violinist’ utterly captivated me as has every Chagall work I have subsequently seen. Thank you so much David for sharing this very sympathetic poem.

👏👏👏👏 Excellent work Paul, congratulations!

Ah, I recognise this as an awakening to self-counselling, a much recommended but seldom understood phenomenon. I like the style and rhythm of this short work. Thank you for sharing it with us.

I once spent a week in Yerevan, Armenia, on business. As I was trying to get to sleep one night, the entire building shook. My first earthquake but I recognised it nonetheless and my head filled with a response just as you have described. You have done the painting fill justice Emily, thank you.

I once visited the Fundacio Miro on Majorca, a museum created from his studio there with a lot of items that he had used in the creation of his work. It is a bit as you describe and you reminded me of it as I read your poem which I like very much. Art may be chaos beautifully/meaningfully presented.

#PromptCombo Friday's #Visions,
@rfsmith.bsky.social
Have a great weekend

Thanks #promptcombo #poets for comments, etc this week and @rfsmith.bsky.social for the prompt. Have a lovely weekend all, with R&R in the spring days. Yesterday I saw my first #swallow of the year 😊

Three Poems by Paul Connolly Lothlorien Poetry Journal Edited by Strider Marcus Jones Poet - Publishes poetry and fiction online and in print periodically. https://lothlorienp

lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2026/04/thre...

I am thrilled that @stridermarcusjones.bsky.social has published three longer pieces of mine on the wonderful @lothlorienpoetryj.bsky.social They’re all #visions Millennial is urban, Worlds’ Ends concerns places & histories, & The Mark is folkloric. @rfsmith.bsky.social #promptcombo #poetrycommunity

Organic intelligence (O.I) is a vision. The circuits need more mechanism to become more like us. It is too fluid at the moment. How to make it more jerky, angular. It flows when it should judder. Too silent. You need to hear a whirr, click. Metallic slide. Soon it will scare us by its otherness. Soon it will be so like us it will frighten by its similarity.

Hi @rfsmith.bsky.social Ronnie, have a great week. My third response to your cracking #promptcombo #Visions is from my ongoing series "A World Where':

In lieu of writing a new piece (I might manage something in the next day or two) here's an Ekphrastic piece to a painting entitled Eschatological.

For #promptcombo #visions @rfsmith.bsky.social

Yeah, I’ve done my share of staring… Then it came to me eventually that it is important to have the vision first, before going anywhere near the board or that piece of paper. Thank you so much for sharing.

I am profoundly grateful that I grew up in an area bordered by the hills and the sea. I saw and felt many forms of life, physical and metaphysical brought close together. I could not express the many moments of impact that these ‘contacts’ create better than you have here. Thank you Andy.

I like this poem very much Jen, expressing the absolute emptiness of that moment when we pass from one reality into another. No denying, no escape. Thank you very much for sharing this with is.

Yeah, he was a complex character but then who isn’t. Some painters have worked hard to keep their lives private or at least oblique, I think of Dali. Then again Chagall seems very open by comparison. I think visual artists have the most difficult task in clarifying their thoughts in their work. 👍

I like this Scot. For me it clearly expresses the idea that ‘they walk among us’. While the vast majority try and try to simply live their lives on the planet, too many others attempt improvements that enslave and kill with impunity. Thank you.

Ah ha! The Sinclair C5, the Commodore 64…. driverless cars, AI and absolutely finally Skynet. No, we probably should not dare to follow. Good question Francis.

#PromptCombo #Visions for Wednesday
@rfsmith.bsky.social

Yes Francis, I’ve bought that postcard many times and these days in particular it seems difficult to envisage any form of alternative. However, there is always a way back usually triggered by the smallest event and I’ll work on that for my next prompt (God, what a twee response from me).

Picasso Out of blank space gouge out shapes of apples and light, as instrument digs a blister into palm He cannot afford mistakes, steady handed controls citrus bite of wives and mistresses. Strong stink of oxidized linseed oil, resins, ground cork, wood flour and pigment all pressed together and flattened. In later life after bull sunned atrocities. If mistakes made disguise, or begin again. A head on challenge. Black eyes carve the shapes, Print bold red, yellow and green. A still life, unstilled creation.

Hi @rfsmith.bsky.social Ronnie, have a great week. My second response to your cracking #promptcombo #Visions:

Here's my #visions #PromptCombo. Inspired by the movie Burnt by the Sun. Thanks, @rfsmith.bsky.social!

#PromptCombo Here is one of my #Visions, for Tuesday
@rfsmith.bsky.social

Residual Waste I pull up, a car full of a life well lived, one for which there is no longer space in this ever-moving, changing world. I unload the boot and my vision blurs. Paints: the exact shade of blue, us in every hardware shop until you found it. Bright, ugly, twenty years out of style, now nestling with creosote and battered gloss tins. Large and bulky: recently emptied. Your favourite chair clangs into the container. You, snoozing after dinner, enfolded in its leather arms. Without you, it is just a chair, and yet I cannot look as it is swallowed. Scrap metal: to some, the frames suggest weakness. You were never weak. To me, they ignite images of your strength, your independence. I wonder how many other stories live in that knotted pile of twisted steel. Residual waste: neither one thing nor the other. Even here, among discarded things, I see your life laid out, mixed with the remnants of other people’s stories. The car is empty. My heart is still full.

My offering for #PromptCombo
#Visions

Great prompt. Thank you @rfsmith.bsky.social

None of these letters
will form
anything
prolific or
profound,
none of it will
ever amaze or
astound,
my visions
a muted gray,
the horizon
a blur of nouns
and verbs,
I’m in stalemate
and just staring
at the board

#vss365 #promptcombo @rfsmith.bsky.social #poetry

She returns familiar bass beats of woodcock wings low across heather where earth meets rock meets the sky where the air shimmers separates where voices carry from the earth below the sky above in the vibration of this land she returns as the world quiets

In these parts, there is less distance between this world and others. Many thanks @rfsmith.bsky.social for the excuse to write about it for #PromptCombo #Visions, inspired also by this morning's encounter with one of our resident woodcock!

#poems #poetry #poetrycommunity #scottishpoetry

to the moon and back people hailed heroes forgotten seem black poplars' dreams hidden messages under resilient bark they carry cyclical wisdom — darkness at the clearing my thoughts race faster than Artemis gazing into torn skies soot lands on a teary face

I hope this one qualifies for #PromptCombo themed #visions

#poetry in #alt-text

Thank you for hosting
@rfsmith.bsky.social

Squirrel Drey Year I make my new year in crook of the old roughly weave a platform of live green twigs. On top of this, add compressible, fold materials like moss dreams, damp leaves. rig an outer skeleton of timed twigs, vines around the insulated core, fill in with thought through bulk to strengthen the design. This wordful mouth and front paws carry in stuff. My head and face bend stiffer twigs fit tasks, push imagined worlds, desires into place with my legs; shred doubts dry lining hold it with my front paws, chew and shape inner space cavity of my visions by lying in them and turning around, not dying.

Hi @rfsmith.bsky.social Ronnie, have a great week. My response to your cracking #promptcombo #Visions is a sonnet from my forthcoming collection with The Red Ceiling Press, The Drey Skin: