Gardenia laden breeze flutters lace curtains. Nightgown clad, right silk strap slips. Gentle hands reach slowly rest lightly on shoulders, wait patiently. She sits alert, but melting. His hazel-flecked eyes ask. No words. Just asking eyes. She smiles shyly, nods, and quietly murmurs yes.
Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Bjorn asks us to include the word “eye” or a form of the word, within our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!
Serenity, I walk in bliss. Trees breeze-whisper, nothing amiss. Soft ferns hushed, shimmer velvetly. Moist, fresh forest scent, nature’s kiss. Your lips come to mind. Ecstasy. I walk in bliss. Serenity.
Shinrin-Yoku is Japanese for forest bathing: bathing in the forest atmosphere, taking in the forest through our senses.
Grace is hosting Meet-The-Bar Thursday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. She’s asked us to write a Sparrowlet, a poetry form invented by Kathrine Sparrow. Here’s the elements of a Sparrowlet: 1. stanzaic, written in any number of sixtains (6 line stanzas) I wrote 1 sixtain. 2. syllabic: each line must be 8 syllables each (Often written in iambic tetrameter – I didn’t!) 3. Line 1 and Line 6 of the stanza is written in 2 himistichs (I had to look this word up) 4. Rhymed, rhyme scheme is BbabaA. 5. The 2 halves of Line 1 are inverted and repeated as a refrain in Line 6. The lst line MUST be the EXACT SAME as line 1, just switched around. You cannot change any of the words. (Punctuation may be changed to accommodate the meaning.) RRA, RRB xxxxxxxxb xxxxxxxxa xxxxxxxxb xxxxxxxxa RRB, RRA
Luckily Grace included an example of a poem written in this form within her prompt. The example for me, was much easier to follow than the definition itself! Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us to try this form — or just to see how others wrote with it!
Photo from a trip to see my niece in Ohio a number of years ago.
She picked one of the two. Not her roots in rural life, golden brick road more tempting. Drove it to wealth, fancy home in fancy heights prestige, black tie events.
Ignored the signs. Exit ramps, detours available, this way outs. Drove and drove, hard and harder.
Too late she realized, the road she picked? Sadly a dead-end street.
I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. I’m asking folks to choose one adage/proverb from a list I provide, and use it as their inspiration for their poem today. The list includes adages from Aesop’s Fables, Adagia, Poor Richard’s Almanack, the Bible. I also provide one line from a movie, which is the line this poem is inspired by: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Forrest Gump, the movie.
Join us at 3 PM Boston time to see the full list. Then write your poem and post it so we can enjoy together! Image from Pixabay.com
She was born in the fortieth century. Her lineage could be traced to earth, before it succumbed to supreme neglect. It is her wedding day. Carrying a bouquet of hybrid plumeria fertilized by star dust and carnage from deteriorated communication satellites, she slides between Ursa and its latest shard, to meet her chosen mate.
“Where is the payment I required for my body to wed your being?”
Handing her a package vibrating with energy he mouths “It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. As you mandated.”
Once unwrapped, it floats toward her three breasts illuminating them, and then seemingly melts into her circuitry. She smiles, knowing she is now impregnated. Her kind will continue. No longer needing this other being, her eyes turn iridescent green and devour him. She fades into the celestial skies, content to know she will multiply.
Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Bjorn is tending the pub and asks us to include the line “It is a moon wrapped in brown paper” in a piece of fiction that is 144 words or less, sans title. The line is from the poem Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy, a Scottish Poet who was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009-2019.
Prosery: a form created by dVerse. A line from a poem is given for the prompt. Writers must include the line exactly word for word (punctuation may be changed) within a piece of prose (not poetry) that is 144 words or less, sans title.
Holding kite, excited to run grinning in sun. Wind picks up speed flight guaranteed.
Running down field, kite takes to air eyes glaze in glare. Excited screams, Better than dreams!
String tugs, yanks and breaks. Kite floats free stilling her glee. Kite disappears brings on the tears.
Written for Meet the Bar Thursday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Today, Grace asks us to “explore an invented poetry form – The Minute Poem. It’s a 60 syllable verse form, one syllable for each second in a minute. The theme must be an event that is over and done completely, as in a minute. Since the dominant line is short, the effect is likely humorous, whimsical or semi-serious. It was created by Verna Lee Hinnegardner, once poet laureate of Arkansas.”
For me, it’s another “sudoku” poem!That is, a complex form that challenges me. Here’s the elements we must adhere to: * It must be narrative poetry: tell a story. * It is a 12 line poem made up of 3 quatrains (3 four-line stanzas) * Syllabic form is 8-4-4-4, 8-4-4-4, 8-4-4-4 (8 syllables in the first line of each stanza; 4 in the second, thrid and fourth line of each stanza. * It must have the rhyme scheme of aabb, ccdd, eeff * It should be a description of a finished event (preferably something done in 60 seconds).
PHOTO: taken in Bermuda about 7 years ago when we went to their Good Friday kite festival.
“He went to sea in a thimble of poetry.”Poet Warning, Jim Harrison
Wynken, Blyken and Nod my childhood friends, lived in the well-turned pages of mother’s Child Craft book of poetry. Their neighbors always made me smile, the Old Lady who lived in the shoe, Miss Muffet sitting primly on her tuffet and that merry Old King Cole too.
I often dreamed of that crazy cow jumping over the moon, prancing round the stars. I lived in my imagination where no one yelled at anyone, hugging my yellow sort-of-teddy-bear smeared with mother’s lipstick so it always smiled at me.
Those dog-eared pages, oh how I loved them. When mama read to me, all was good and calm and fun.
Linda is hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. She introduces us to Jim Harrison (December 11, 1937 – March 26, 2016), an American poet, novelist, and essayist, and provides us with a number of lines from his works. We are to choose one line and use it as an epigraph at the beginning of our poem. An epigraph is a short quotation at the beginning of a book or chapter (in this case, a poem), intended to suggest its theme.
I still have two of the Childcraft volumes published in 1949, including the Childcraft Poems of Early Childhood. I loved these poems as a child and then read them to my children and my grandchildren too. Photo is from the book.
Curtain billows in wind. Candlelight flickers, flame shivers, dips, almost snuffed out. Metaphorical for our predicament, but a gentler scene.
Healthcare systems threatened. Tsunami of violence, hatred, inequities. We cup our hands around the flame of hope, trying to protect it through these storms.
It’s Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today we’re to include the word “shiver” or a form of the word (not a synonym) in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Pub opens at 3 PM, Boston time.Come join us!
* A derecho is a wide-spread, long lived, dangerous windstorm.
Our lives are made of moments, some plain, some filled with awe. Looking back I was surprised how many included sipping through a straw!
My mother showed me how to sip orange juice to go with grahams; Then coca cola and ice cream sodas helped make me who I am. Chocolate milkshakes, creamy and thick should be against the law. The memories sweet, of all those times sipping through a straw.
In college I learned about Scotch Mists, served with straws black and thin; As were those Mai Tai’s with rum and gardenias that almost did me in. Anything sipped through a straw was yummy. To me a special treat, Until the memories of hospital stays I do not wish to repeat.
When your lips are cracked, your mouth is dry and your body feels so raw There is no better thing the nurses can bring than water to sip through a straw. It’s funny the things that come to mind; the adventures, the things you saw. My life’s special moments have often come when sipping through a straw.
Straws is written by Lindsey Ein: wonderful writer, wonderful friend, and mother to our dear son-in-law. She shared this poem with dVerse LIVE on Thursday – I’m just a bit late posting it.
The only job she could land landed her in an out-of-the-way town. She’d cajoled and connived her way to a choir of four. Refusing to admit defeat, she would not call them a quartet.
David, eyes cast down interminably, droned a background hum for whatever tune was sung. Delilah, the defiant one. Deliberately off-pitch to shine, spotlight stolen by default. Dissonant in life as well.
Miriam, the honey-blonde. Sensuous red lips licked and dewed before each word, mouthed dulcet tones too late. Behind in every measure, she flashed her thigh for all to see beneath unbuttoned robe.
And Carl, the rapper. Lordy, what a snazzy guy. Snapped his fingers while chanting words. Smelled of weed with eyes glazed, unwilling to shed his percussive beat.
She smiled and waved her baton, directing the motley crew. Sweat dribbled down her chest to that delicate spot between her ample breasts. Music is as music does, always music to her ear.
She’d defied the warnings, music her one true love. So here she stood, tone deaf and proud. Her quartet, after all, was magnificently loud.
Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets across the globe.
Today, Laura asks us to write a “sound poem” choosing one word from five lists she provides. She also points us toward Hart’s Thesaurus of the Senses, a valuable resource for poets. Laura, I ordered a copy yesterday. The words I used (or forms of the word) were drone, dissonant, dulcet, dribble, and chant. I also added a fifth word from the list, honey. Truly had fun with this prompt. Thank you, Laura! Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!
PS: dedicated with humor to my daughter and son, both of whom direct a chorus and/or choir; and son-in-law, who composes choral music.
Image from A Scrub’s Life, February 1, 2017: “Sometimes We Can Be A Little Tone Deaf”
They lived in the forest. Two offspring of Elsinora, the Witch of Evildore. They’d been learning her trade for many years. Memorized spells, chopped beetle wings, boiled cat’s blood. Now the time had come. Elsinora smiled through blistered purple lips. They were ready. They’d consumed all her ancient books; syphoned memory strands from her pustule covered head.
“Rest now, my dearies. Come to me and bring no book. For this one day we’ll give to idleness. Let’s take your measurements as you rest. Boot size for broom stirrups. Breath velocity for hexes. Quickly now, my loves, as the spirits have ruled. I shall disappear when the moon ebbs and you shall rule the lands. Control those naive two-legged creatures who assume they are the dominant strain. Come sit with me and I shall gift you reign over all, on this my dying day.”
Written for the prosery prompt at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Ingrid hosts and asks us to include the line “And bring no book for this one day we’ll give to idleness” within our work of fiction that is 144 words or less in length, sans title. The line must be used word for word, but the punctuation may be changed. The line is from Wordsworth’s Lines Written at a small distance from my house which is included in the collection Lyrical Ballads.Image from Pixabay.com
