NaHaiWriMo 2019 week 4

NaHaiWriMo 2019 week 4

The final week of this year's NaHaiWriMo month.

I found the prompts this year difficult to use to attempt true haiku. (If these succeed at all, I'd call them senryu.) I'd sooner take my inspiration from the natural world around me. But NaHaiWriMo aims to inspire a daily haiku habit, and in that respect succeeded with me, by showing me how I prefer to approach haiku and that I would like to do so, if not daily at least a lot more often.


#22 nearsightedness

labelled a snob –

until I get glasses

and see who’s who

#23 casserole

recipe  says 

cast iron dish –

my cauldron?

#24 school play

stumbling infants  

brilliant on stage

by senior year

#25 hair brushing

100 strokes 

night and morning …

the aunties lied

#26 bank account balance

pension day –

bills and groceries

balance zero

#27 canned meat

canned meat –

I turn

vegetarian

#28 school principal

Years later, ‘Look! it’s

Mr Wilson.’ Vague-eyed

he lifts his hat. 

To be shared with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #442.

Seasonal Dreams

Seasonal Dreams

Across the world they dream of Spring

with balmy breezes, hazy mist,
dandelions and lizards....

Winter in the northern half of the world

has been very white, very hard.

Here dandelions thrive all summer long

while mists are wintry things. Rivers 
are flooding now, and giant waves lash the coast
as the cyclone passes over. We dream

of autumn’s lesser heat and gentler wind.

Written for Season Your Poetry at 'imaginary garden with real toads', where Toni asks us to choose from a list of seasonal words applying to Spring in Japan, or at least the Northern Hemisphere. (So of course I had to do a bit of subverting.)

The Goddesses of Shining Light

The Goddesses of Shining Light

This poem is a circle of women shining their light.

This poem is a sisterhood, a holding of hands.

This poem is a group of Goddesses in velvet cloaks.

This poem is a prayer for peace in the world.

It is the visualisation of a six-pointed star

sending golden light onto the planet,

and focusing in – to this country, this town, 

this building, this group, this individual heart – 

then out again from our collective hearts….

This poem is a circle of women shining their light.

This poem is the stopping to hug when we meet in the street,

or the smile and the wave if we haven’t got time to stop.

It is preparing meals for the one who is sick, when she can’t,

or driving her to her medical appointments.

It is speaking the names of those who are absent, with love.

It is a sound bath of healing for those we place in the centre.

This poem is a sisterhood, a holding of hands.

This poem is a swirl of dancing colours,

This poem is music and moving feet.

This poem is rising and falling arms

like a wave, or a forest, or a flutter of scarves.

This poem is a meeting of hands, in turn, around the circle;

a gazing in turn, deeply, into each other’s eyes.

This poem is a group of Goddesses in velvet cloaks.

This poem is a group of dancers whose velvet cloaks catch the light.

This poem is a sisterhood, a holding of hands to connect our light.

This poem is a circle of women shining our light, bathing in light,
sending light out to our world. This poem is the Goddesses of Shining Light.

Written for 'imaginary garden with real toads' – Wordy Thursday with Wild Woman, this time featuring Hannah Gosselin's Boomerang Metaphor form. (In this poem I have made some slight variations to the form.)

NaHaiWriMo 2019 week 3

NaHaiWriMo 2019 week 3

More unusual haiku prompts from NaHaiWriMo 2019

#15 deportation

long-handled

brush and pan –

spider moved out

#16 drinking glasses with lipstick marks

girls’ night out –

indelible

memories

#17 coin toss

‘Come in spinner!’

but where’s the excitement –

legalised

(Refers to Australia's historic gambling game, two-up, traditionally played on Anzac Day, legalised in 1973.)

#18 diagnosis

diagnosis – 

how bright the sunlight now

before it fades

#19 drool

damp patch

on the pillow -

aged child

#20 babies

helpless

soft, floppy

tyrants

#21 cell phones or movie theatres (or both)

signals

from out of the dark

light the screen


Linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #441

NaHaiWriMo 2019 week 2

NaHaiWriMo 2019 week 2

More very short writings in the shortest month; 
prompts from NaHaiWriMo on facebook.

#8 black cat

crossed my path

lingered and stayed –

black cat magic

#9 cape

pillow-case flaps

from infant shoulders –

Superman!

#10 vegemite

acquired early

the taste of vegemite –

aahhh!

#11 computer crash

darkness –

nowhere to go

in the void

#12 gargoyles

gargoyle statue

minus neck chain –

a gift

#13 commercials

ad break –

grab the remote

hit Mute

#14 subway

underground –

rumbling fills the space

louder down here

Like a Dandelion Pushing Through Concrete

In the midst of danger and pain,

in the midst of cruelty and fear,

strangely when you come near

it seems there is no bar, no lock, no chain.

In the midst cruelty and fear

our eyes meet and our every word,

we know, is finally heard.

You grow daily more dear.

Our eyes meet and our every word

becomes poetry, becomes heart-song.

We are home to each other, we belong

in each other’s eyes and voice. It is good.

Becomes poetry, becomes heart-song –

in the midst of danger and pain –

this secret discourse, this tricky terrain:

all is well even where everything is wrong.

In the midst of danger and pain,

in the midst of cruelty and fear,

strangely when you come near

it seems there is no bar, no lock, no chain.

For the catena rondo form challenge at Poetic Asides. Except, now it's done, I perceive that I have got the rhyme scheme a bit wrong and it's not really a catena rondo ... not quite. A catena rondo variation, perhaps!

Also sharing with Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ Love

It's Valentine's Day. I remember and celebrate someone I loved in difficult circumstances.

NaHaiWriMo 2019 week 1

NaHaiWriMo 2019 week 1

Prompts from Michael Dylan Welch's facebook group, NaHaiWriMo, Feb. 2019, week 1.


#1 dirty diapers

baby smells –

pungent calls for care

change to sweet

#2 thin walls

thin walls –
lucky I too like
heavy metal


#3 motion-activated light

slow journey

the moon swells and shrinks
near or far

#4 spam

salty taste 

but texture bland –
my childhood

#5 artificial colouring

love my white hair –

closer to dying
no more dyeing

#6 pigs' feet

butcher’s shop –

rows of trotters
unmoving


#7 sidewalk

quick dog jumps

from hot bitumen
to grassy verge

Yes, it's February again, time to celebrate the shortest literary genre during the shortest month – with some very challenging prompts! 

Shared with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #439

Refusal

Refusal

I hear your song – the liquid gold

that floats, enticing me: ‘Take hold!

Reach up into the cool night air!’

But I am not so crazy bold.

How could I grasp a song that flies

like fire across the darkening skies?

Its molten edges twist and fray,

an evanescent cloud of lies.

Your voice is beautiful; your words

are gleaming bright, but they are swords.

I know by now the shape of pain:

these notes are blades, not singing birds.

The music pierces to my heart,

and yet I say we shall not start

the bright duet you’re offering.

Tempter begone! Be off! Depart!


Another Rubaiyat for Poetry Forms – The Rubaiyat at dVerse. This time I decided to try the option of using tetrameter. The metre is not quite perfect; even Shakespeare understood that a strict metre may need to be varied slightly to avoid monotony (smile). Even so, this took a lot of work, a lot of attention to detail and experimenting with the best ways to employ the rhymes. 

As for the content, it's an imaginary situation – though I'm sure we've all experienced similar things at times.

Also linking this one to the Tuesday Platform, In these times of love and oppression, at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Dreaming of Andrew

Dreaming of Andrew

There he, is my dear husband, not dead after all. How

could he have been here all this time and I didn’t know?

Still white-haired, he’s walking freely. His beautiful face,

when he sees me coming towards him, fills with a glow.

He’s in a little stone house by the beach. I’ve not seen

this place before, but he has been living here it seems,

cared for by an old friend of ours who, it turns out, owns

this cottage. (No need to explain things further in dreams.)

We are so happy! Together again, what rapture!

… Even after I wake up, I can still recapture

that joy, so strong in the dream that it stays with me now –

a sure foundation which nothing will ever fracture.


A Rubaiyat, for Poetry Forms – The Rubaiyat at dVerse. I learn online that 'Rubaiyat' refers to both the ancient Persian poetic form and to its English variants. Reading that the original Persian had 13 syllables per line and no set metre, I thought I'd try that. The rhyme scheme is one of several traditional variations. I found the 13-syllable line unexpectedly hard to manage and the results rather prosey. However, even Fitzgerald's translation of Omar is more philosophical than imagistic a lot of the time, so I'll let it be.

Yes, the dream and its aftermath did happen, quite recently. I realise with hindsight that the dream cottage was at a beach which was the scene of the joyful reunion of a long-parted couple in a movie I saw not long ago; and the friend who owned the cottage in my dream is someone who did sometimes come and spend time with Andrew in his final months, when I was his carer, so that I could go out for a walk.