Tag: W3

poetry

Over the Town (a poem for two voices)

Sally9 Comments

Come fly with me!

(a leery look)

Come fly with me!

(nose in book)

Come fly with me!

(a heavy sigh)

We’ll go up high
And see the town from the sky!

I’m dubious.

I’ll keep you safe,

I’m dubious.

My darling waif.

I’m dubious.

Come now! Make haste!

Your hope is quite displaced.
My feet on earth are firmly based.

We’re going up!

I’m not a bird!

We’re going up!

This is absurd!

We’re going up!

Cannot look down.

Oh! Look around!
You’ll see our lovely little town.

Oh me! Oh my!

Look at the trees!

Oh me! Oh my!

Feel that breeze!

Oh me! Oh my!

It’s charming, yes?
And you would never guess!

I was blinded by my stress.

This is in response to this week’s W3 prompt — a choice of two Marc Chagall paintings for inspiration. Initially I was going to use the other painting — The Big Wheel — and try to write something about my trip to Paris in 2017, but I kept going back to the other painting, Over the Town, which I ultimately used.

I’ve never written a poem in two voices before. I wanted to tell a story. This is what came out.

poetry · swimming

How I Relax

Sally14 Comments

Dive into coolness
Catch, pull, release, recover
Stroke, flutter kick, stroke
Exhale into the water
Turn my head to catch a breath

The W3 prompt for this week is:

The more I read about haikus and tankas, the more I realize that something is lost in translation. A tanka is more than 5-7-5-7-7 syllable counts. It’s actually not syllable counts, it’s kana.

What’s a kana, you ask? I’m not 100% sure because it’s something in Japanese. And Japanese “uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana.” (according to Wikipedia) English is phonetic. These two language systems aren’t the same. How can we adapt something like poetry from system to the other. I don’t know.

But I know how I relax. A pool is my happy place and swimming laps helps me unwind.

So here’s my tanka-ish whatever.

collage · poetry

Meditation

Sally16 Comments

My mind’s a scattered mess
Errant thoughts I cannot catch
Direct result of stress
I deeply breathe — attach
This diffuse excess
As if herding butterflies
To scented blooms of peace
I deeply breathe — and sighs
Open me — I cease
Needing order. Chaos dies.

This was much harder than I thought!

The challenge was to write an acrostic poem using one of five words: Discipline, Meditation, Enthusiasm, Tumult, or Trouble.

My poetry muscles are weak.

I just started working out with weights again at the gym. Some of my flesh-and-blood muscles are SO SORE. Thank goodness my brain doesn’t hurt the same way 🙂

I realize this collage is not terribly meditative, but I was looking through my photos for one of a butterfly and found this collage that I made years ago. It made me laugh.

flowers · poetry

Daffodil

Sally20 Comments

Daffodil
Smiling flower
At my workplace
Joy in the clutter
Laughter

Daffodil
Overfriendly salesman
Hogging the conversation
“Hey, there! Notice me!”
Pretension

A double-elfchen written to participate in a poetry prompt from The Skeptic’s Kaddish W3 #54

An “Elfchen” has a set form of 11 words, the lines having 1-2-3-4-1 words, respectively. The first word is the topic and the final word is often a commentary or summary. The two elfchen are supposed to present opposing views.

Seriously, though — is there an opposite to Daffodil?