Night rain
I had forgotten
your voice
yet here you are
like an old friend
A tanka for Frank, who is hosting at dVerse tonight. We are celebrating National Tanka Month, and looking at 3 Japanese 5 line forms. Frank gives a straightforward explanation on his dVerse post. I’ve written many haiku, but this is my first tanka.
I’ve crossed some thresholds
with a blood libation,
some with music and champagne.
I’ve slipped through some
unknowing.
I’ve stepped with confidence
from one warm room
into a maze carved out of ice,
myself caught behind thick glass,
watching one world,
part of another,
coldness becoming part of me –
and then I’ve passed
from wilderness to pastureland,
missing the gateway,
my eyes fixed too far in the distance.
I’ve lost charms, and I’ve found them.
I’ve stepped through mighty doorways
carved with old gods and scenes of
metamorphosis – and found myself
unchanged, and waiting for me –
opened bland doors into bland rooms
scented with pain and kindness –
I have learned
that each breath is a step,
and the pathway clear sometimes,
and sometimes hard to trace
I mixed a bit of Fix-it
to fix a pesky hole.
The Fix-it fixed my fingers
to the Fix-it in the bowl.
So if you mix up Fix-it
I suggest you use a stick:
if you stick your stick to Fix-it,
so what?
A very silly poem for De – WhimsyGizmo – who is hosting at dVerse tonight. See if you can guess what the word is.
“Take me to Valmain”, she sighed
“For I was young there, and my feet took wing
I was a lady of La Reine des Glaces
And danced in honour of the Autumn King.
And we drank fine Shiraz from crystal globes
And stepped it back and forth ’til it was morn
And all the lamps in Valmain shone so clear,
The birds sang, thinking it was dawn”.
“Alas, Valmain is silent now”, I said,
“And all the lamps that lighted it are dim
There are no rustling skirts or dancing girls,
But the wild birds still sing”
“Then I shall travel to Valmain alone
And see if what you say has come to pass,
And if Valmain is dead, I shall die too –
The last true lady of La Reine des Glaces”.
I’m hosting at dVerse tonight, and asking you to be inspired by the names of heritage vegetables. Strange but true.
They silence him, but his shadow shouts on – a nightmare scream that fills the room, echoes down the corridors. They shut the door, but the scream spills under it. They brick up the doorway, plaster over it, so that you’d never know the room was there, but the scream remains.
They leave the house. Ivy grows over the walls, blocks the windows, but the scream continues. They bulldoze the damn house, but still the scream is there. People move away. The street empties. No-one can live there.
The neighbourhood thins out. Empty houses can’t be filled. The scream just spreads, filling the whole city. It won’t be drowned by sirens, car horns, piped music. People leave their homes, their jobs – relocate. The scream is alone, echoing down silent streets of boarded-up shops, empty apartment buildings. Dandelions split the tarmac.
Bjorn is hosting prosery night at dVerse. It’s our only prose prompt – 144 words, including a line from a poem. Tonight’s line comes from Maya Angelou’s Caged Bird: “his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream”.
A dog fox crossing the patch of green
our gazes meet I am observed
for a moment black eyes shining
unruffled from the hedge
-I am, I am- a bird calls
each predator singing its own existence
each prey singing of life
Frank Hubeny is hosting at dVersetonight. He suggests a “double 7” poem – 14 lines. He’s using a sonnet form, but it’s not obligatory. I’ve done one of those split poems – 3 poems for the price of one. That’s good value.
Sometimes I fly away,
take a perch on a high branch,
a telegraph pole,
look out.
I turn my back
on the messy brood.
Someone’s speaking in halting Italian,
there are wargames and workouts
and sudden bursts of laughter
and the smell of baking
and someone wanders in to chat
and I love it. I’m treasuring these days –
these impossible, improbable,
unexpected days of closeness
that have landed in a time of gentle
distancing. We’re watching movies,
making bread, and talking talking talking.
Sometimes I fly away,
find a high place,
watch the sky.
A poem about solitude in lockdown, for Bjorn at dVerse.
Let’s get silly
in the kitchen –
let’s be indiscreet –
let’s crank up
that music and
cook up
some hot beats –
let’s knock out
a rhythm
on a baking sheet –
crash some
saucepan cymbals,
bang some spoons
and stamp our feet.
A more cheerful quadrille for Lillian at dVerse. We’re being silly tonight.
Oh my silly heart
and love clowning in
with all its grief and glory
and mascara trails
and the madness
of it all. Phone numbers scrawled
on scraps of paper,
fluttering down
onto the rails
and the sunrise
oblivious.
Youth’s a foolish time.
A quadrille forLillian at dVerse. Our word is “silly”.
The stone was parchment coloured
and the shade was clean sliced blue tinted
and we ate pasta in a quiet square
as if we’d never eaten it before,
as if we were a painting of the first
people to eat pasta. We were art,
and we drank wine, impossible,
clear as sunlight, clean as water,
and the afternoon strolled by,
pausing to watch us, framed there.
Lillian is hosting us at dVerse. She’s in lockdown and she wants to travel the world on our words. In our house, we’ve been thinking about Italy. A lot.
