Salty like hot dogs (and tears). Sweet like marmalade (and life).
Cuppa
Hands curve around mug
Smell of java, swirl of cream [sigh]
Pink sunrise
One warm sip, this new day begins
The breakfast of champions:
Coffee
Write a Cameo poem—a tiny, distilled moment—on any theme you choose.
Overheard
Malicious whispers
Between two
Co-workers
My heart grew cold at their words
Squeezing in my chest
Breathing stopped
Blackness obscured sight
My fists clenched
And unclenched
Thoughts swirled like a tornado
Unholy and wild
Office chair
Calmed me in this storm
I held on
Took a breath
Straightened my back and went out
“I heard what you said”
This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge: to write shadorma poems.
The shadorma is a compact Spanish syllabic form built from a six-line stanza with a strict syllable pattern: 3 / 5 / 3 / 3 / 7 / 5 (26 syllables total). It is typically unrhymed, and a poem may consist of a single stanza or a series of stanzas.
For this challenge, the theme is Sensory Details.
Write a close-up study of a single inanimate object or a very specific moment. Think small and focused rather than narrative or expansive. The power of the poem should come from sensory observation—what can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, or felt.
Yes, this actually happened. It was a specific moment and I tried to write the sensory details of it.
Amelia’s knights neighed
Her black pawn had tea with my white
Our bishops talked
“What are they talking about?” I asked
“Hello,” she said, bobbing one up and down
“How are you?” she said, bobbing the other similarly
She giggled
“This is more fun than checkers,” she said
Amelia is in third grade
“The pieces are people,” she stated
“Can our queens be friends?” she asked
I paused
“That’s not how the game works,” I told her
She pressed her lips together
Then she reached over and touched her pawn
The one that was head to head with my pawn
“But they can still have tea, right?” she asked
“Can I have a kitty?” itty-
bitty me asked my father — rather,
my mom put me up to it. It
seems that she knew new
kitten would equal no. No,
unless she rigged the odds. Odds
are he would say yes to me, mea-
ning I asked, pleading, “Yes?” — “Yes.”
We were on an army base at the time. The family with the kittens had recently come back from Japan.
This is my attempt at an Echo Poem, this week’s W3 Challenge. An echo poem repeats the ending syllable (or syllables) of each line. That’s it. No strict rules about meter or length.
This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge: write an alphabet poem
We had two options: 26 words (which I did) or 26 lines.
Assume
Question
Guess
Look
Notice
Unearth
Examine
Scrutinize
Ponder
Weigh
X-ray
Open, Close, Test
Build
Zero in
Deliberate
Know
Verify
Judge
Misjudge
Reconsider
Hope
Yield
Forgive
Never assume, because it makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me
The next time change is two weeks away! GAH!!! On March 8, we must turn our clocks ahead and lose an hour. I’m not a fan.
In Val’s Seasonal Scavenger Hunt, prompt #3 is to write a Dizain describing your personal journey into the new season. A dizain is a ten-line French poetic form, popular in the 15th-16th centuries, featuring 10 lines of 10 syllables each (or iambic pentameter) and a strict ababbccdcd rhyme scheme.
Here’s a dizain bemoaning the upcoming time change.
I bristle when it’s time to change the clocks
It seems to me that time is time is time
The change of seasons we cannot outfox
Circadian rhythms are somewhat sublime
To muck with them just seems to be a crime
C’mon, old body, you can re-adjust!
It’s not a choice — in fact, you must! You must!
In the fall, then once again in spring
I’ll do it, but I’ll do it with disgust
The brittleness of age dislikes the swing
The apples at the store were soft
Their crispness was long gone
Too long sunsets were early
And too late was the dawn
Snuggling with her Tigger-Tiger
Kept little Molly warm
As outside snow swirled and blew
Another winter storm
“It’s almost March! When will this end?”
Mamma wailed and whined
The blinding blizzard hammered down
Of Spring there were no signs
Molly hugged her Tigger-cat
And cried, “But Mommy look!
Since we can’t go outside today
Let’s read another book!”
This is my response to Val’s Winter Scavenger Hunt‘s second prompt: Use the following words in a poetry form of your choice: apple(s), sunset, tiger, hammer.
You hide, avoiding spotlight and regard,
Let others have their moments in the sun
Small talk, large groups for you are both quite hard
Thus you oft eschew the words, “Well done”
What creature, then, can I compare with thee?
An earthworm making soil in the dirt?
Or detritivore cleaning up the sea,
Hard-working anti-social introvert
A hoverfly works hard to pollinate
The lovely flowers everyone enjoys
Yet no one pauses to appreciate
The busy flying workers of no noise
Some people never see, will never know
The one who does, and doesn’t seek to show
W3 Challenge this week: write a love sonnet to yourself.
Let this line guide you:
There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in Yourself … that is the only true guide that you will ever have.— Howard Thurman (1899 – 1981)
For Christmas, my brother gave each of his surviving siblings a mug with a QR code on it. My QR code leads me to a trivia question each day. My sister gets the bird of the day. Another brother learns a little history from his. The gift-giving brother learns about an unusual creature each day. The other day his creature was a Sea-Pig:
Scotoplanes globosa, commonly known as the sea pig, is a species of sea cucumber that lives in the deep sea. It is considered a detritivore, or something that eats detritus, decaying organic matter. These kinds of creatures are crucial to the ecosystem, but we seldom consider them.
Out of sight, out of mind.
They probably like it that way.
I know that I do
Oh, to pocket time
It flies one season to next
Simply catch a star
This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge which is to create a haiga by pairing a haiku (traditionally about nature) or senryu (traditionally about human foibles) with a visual art form of my choice. The theme: the long-awaited shift from winter to spring.
I think this is a senryu? It is a human foible to think we can control time, right?
The artwork is a little self-indulgent. It’s a collage I made at Christmas. I also made a few ornaments along the same theme, but never did anything with them.
Detailed? Abstract? Both?
I was searching for blogging challenges this morning. Having a challenge keeps me posting. The challenge of Detailed or Abstract — or both came from Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge (CFFC) which, it appears, has been taken over by Dan Antion. Cee Neuner started the long-running challenge. She encouraged blogger/photographers to take photos or go through photo archives and post photograph(s) based on the prompt. Mostly, she said, to have fun.
This was a photo I took in the Adirondacks. I was there with a friend who is very knowledgable about nature. If you’ve never walked in the woods with someone who knows them well, make it a bucket list item. My Adirondack-loving friend knows the common names and Latin names of all the trees. He know the birds. He knows the stories and the lore. I love hearing it all.
The yellow-bellied sapsucker pecks holes in horizontal lines in basswood trees because they like the soft bark. Apparently they also like apple trees, birch trees, maples and more. They drill their rows of holes then leave them for the sap to ooze out. Later, they return to eat both the sap and the insects trapped in it.
To me, I just liked the look of the tree with its vertical bark lines and the horizontal sapsucker lines.
In my quest for blogging inspiration, I found a poetry challenge: frozen water that called for using synonyms for the famous “frozen water” in Minneapolis without using the word for immigration enforcement. I’m way over the word count for the challenge, but I’ll put it here FWIW
Winter walk
Snow and cold
Past a tree
Many holed
Does sap freeze?
(Water will)
Sap won’t run
In this chill
What do birds
Who eat sap
Dine on now
Sap’s the trap
People use
Something worse
[sideways move
in this verse]
Intimidation
Immigration
We are lost
As a nation
Take away
Legal status
Now they are
Called non-gratis
They are NOT
All worst-of-worst
[unintentional
outburst]
I sigh a sigh
‘Cause I don’t know
How to help
Or where to go
At the feeder
There’s a jay
“BULLY, BULLY
GO AWAY!”
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 