Author: lillian

All That Jazz

lillian35 Comments

Swingin’, swayin’ to all that jazz
Max drummin’ drums to syncopate
Ella’s scat, can ya dig it mate?

Billie’s sultry voice croons smooth as
liquid gold. Zoot suit struts janglin’
while Louis puffs his cheeks far as

air can go. Cool rhythms gyrate,
swingin’, swayin’, to all that jazz.

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Great jazz musicians referenced in poem include Max Roach drummer, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, both jazz singers; and Louis Armstrong, trumpeteer extraordinaire. Written for dVerse Poet’s Pub. Victoria asks us to create an Octain Refrain: Poem composed of two tercets and a couplet. Each line must contain 8 syllables. Poem must contain the following rhyme scheme: A b b, a c-c a, bA   Another poetic sudoku! A is the refrain with first and last being the same or close to the same. Second stanza c-c means there should be an internal rhyme within the line. Quite the challenge!  Photo credit: Free-Pik.

Solidarity

lillian32 Comments

Gaggle me group think
wisps of snipers
brooding, hence their evil
festers in murmuration.

Starlings not, cowards yes,
they prey on innocence
maim, murder,
crow hatred as they kill.

Life and exhaltation, a lark to them,
bombs strapped on chests
with heaven their goal,
wing straight to hell.

Let us become congregations
like plovers in flight with doves.
For they are small as one
but pure of heart,

powerful as they soar
symbols, nay beings
of peace and love.

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Written for dVerse. De asks us to write a poem using the names given to gatherings of birds. She thoughtfully provided a wonderful list from which I’ve chosen the following: flight of doves, brood of hens, congregation of plovers, exhaltation of larks, gaggle of geese, murmuration of starlings, murder of crows, and wisp of snipe.  Photo credit: Nevit Dilmen.

 

Lovers

lillian33 Comments

Sun slips into sea
tinging waters pink
as first love’s blush.

Their love, sowed and tilled
through leaving tears,
rekindled in this place

where sky melts blue
into waves of aquamarine.
Bodies meld familiar

then spark as old wick
stammers then flames,
passion reborn.

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Quadrille (44 word poem) using the word “melt” as prompted by Grace, tending the bar at dVerse, a poet’s virtual pub.  Photo: sunset from our deck in Bermuda.

Aging in My World

lillian35 Comments

I choose life with mystery. Space.
Question marks, exclamations, ellipses
not brackets or parentheses.

Certainty directs,
connects dots by numbers
like choreographed dance steps.

Give me ad lib, jazz scat
one man band with knees that bang.
Meander, run, or tra-la-la.

Tap shoes. Not silly silk slippers.
Too much between Point A and B
to follow a tutu pink linear path.

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Photo Credit: Shirley B.  Posted to Poetry Pantry on Poets United.
Thanks, Bjorn, for the introduction!

 

Kilauea

lillian12 Comments

Thick viscous red-orange glows
slowly oozes over blackened fissures,
moonlight its only witness.

Pele’s tresses lengthen in waves
undulate, hiss, bubble heat
flow surely, but slowly, angry not.

Ancestral guardian hesitant to erupt
she lives, breathes forward warning
all shall be buried in quiet wakefulness.

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Photo: from our lava walk on the Big Island in Hawaii. We walked on Kilauea — it is still continually and slowly flowing, adding land mass. Pele is the Fire Goddess and considered creater of the Hawaiian Islands. Her flows create her hair, smooth waves of hardened lava. Late to the party — I am postint to Open Link Night at dVerse Poet’s Pub.

What Fury We Hath Wrought

lillian32 Comments

Moon sliver fades in and out through shards of clouds in pitch black sky. I peer from my window, wrapped in warm flannel, pane thrown open. Tree frogs mute with wailing winds. And I know, though I cannot see, ocean currents are whipped in fury, hurling themselves upon eroded shore.

Mother beats her breast
mea culpa my children
peace I cannot bring.

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Written for dVerse Poet’s Pub, Haibun Monday #9. Hosted by Rajani who asks that our subject include the moon. Photo by Lucretia.

Yeter

lillian3 Comments

Day’s end tinges waters pink,
visceral beauty before my eyes.
Across the globe, streets stain blood red,
violence explodes in wails.

Gulls soar ‘neath pastel skies,
disappear on horizon as day dims to end.
I kneel in prayer for a mother’s grief,
her dreams lost in Turkish setting sun.

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Dedicated to my dear friend, Aslihan. Turkey has yet again suffered an unspeakable violence. Yeter translated: enough. The word appears was added today on her Facebook page. Photo from our deck as sun sets on this Bermuda day.

Arachnophobia Be Damned!

lillian25 Comments

[With apologies to Mother Goose]

Little Miss Muffet determined to stay
plots on her tuffet as bravely she sits
needles in hand she prepares now to play,
two legs to eight, but rapier in wits.

Nursery rhyme loser? A girl who has fits?
Web spun over years into dark comedy.
Finger pricked in the snatch, spider flits
flails, then falls. Arthropodic tragedy.

Silken threads become elegant to the eye
blood dots cloth as she doth smart
needles weave and suddenly stop with spasm cry.
Game over. Venomous to the heart.

Curds and whey topple, she utters a moan
dead heat with spider, they lie on the stone.

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Written for dVerse Poet’s Pub with Gayle tending bar. We’re asked to write a Bouts-Rimes which is French for Rymed Ends. This form began in the 17th century as a rhyming game. Gayle’s challenge: use the following fourteen words in the order presented: stay, sits, play, wits, fits, comedy, flits, tragedy, eye, smart, cry, heart, moan, stone. These words were borrowed from a sonnet by Edmund Spenser. These words, in this order, must be the end line rhymes. For me, another poetry sudoku!
The real Nursery Rhyme:
BY MOTHER GOOSE
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

 

Rebirth in the Galaxy

lillian5 Comments

Somewhere, light years away,
what was held in trust
shall revive.

The first one thousand miles
between earth’s implosion
and moons’ forever paths,
churns debris, seeds of possibility,
until a shooting star ignites
and a new land births itself.

Small roots find their way
and those that flower understand,
heritage matters.
The Universe remembers
those who strove but could not save
scorched earth, her favorite son.

And so at Latitude 38
she creates a divine place,
reconfigured in her galaxy.
A quiet place of timbers
where midst aquamarine waters,
her children shall try again.

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Found Poetry: following titles taken from the bookshelf in our Bermuda rental: Held in Trust by The Bermuda National Trust; First One Thousand Miles by Gordon Phillips; The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard; Heritage Matters by Dr. Edward Harris; and Latitude 38 (a magazine). Photo: from a walk along Bermuda’s Old Rail Way Trail. Poem is inspired by Global Warming, something that too many seem to deny.