The Versesmith

dVerse Poetics   Launch: light and truth of painting Today for Poetics, I thought we might write from a selection of Rousseau’s artwork. Choose one of the paintings in this post and let it be your muse. Additionally, use the above epitaph as a launch point to describe where the painting takes you, the viewer. Oops... I jumped into it after reading just the first sentence, neglecting to read " Choose one of the paintings in this post ..." until I'd already written to this painting, The Equatorial Jungle .   image You do well to stay hidden. Man comes. Everything he touches, everywhere his feet roam, where his eyes wander, he desires to Conquer. Dominate. Crush. ©2026 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved  

 Poets and Storytellers United Friday Writings #237 For your optional prompt this week, please return to one of your favourite Friday Writing prompts of the past, and to that same prompt write something new.  My choice is: Friday Writings #105: ‘Starry, Starry Night’ from December 1, 2023, which I did not do then. ...your optional prompt this week is to be inspired by the song, ‘Starry, Starry Night,’ and/or by Vincent Van Gogh himself.   The Starry Night:  Wikimedia Commons The stars are spinning. My head is reeling, drunkenness sans drink. T he stars accelerate, spiraling, whirling, gaining speed. Or, it it me, racing 770 mph* through space, laying stationary on my back, staring up at the wheeling stars? I once read, The s tar s are in constant m otion. Barnard’s Star, 4 th nearest Earth , will bridge the diameter of the moon every 180 years. A century, a millennium, to notice change in the constellations....

  It's Quadrille Monday at dVerse .    Pen us a poem of precisely 44 words (not counting the title), including some form of the word puff. Rather than puffy things, like clouds, puffball fungus, or puffins, I though of those who are puffed up with pride. THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES He doesn’t walk, he struts, or strutted years ago, now slowed and stumbling, unsure of where he is. Always proud though. T hat hasn’t changed. If anything it’s grown with puffery shouted from the dwindling crowds. Do we pity? I don’t. He  pitie s no one. ©2026 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved   #dVerse #quadrille #44words#poetryprompt