The distinctive hips of swagger
Hair like Slash, moves like Jagger
Surely there is more to me
Than sex and drugs and what you see
A second thought, a need for pause
A giving to a needy cause
Revealed within the spotlight’s beam
I’m just as shallow as I seem.
cosmic zeitgeist pulse
launch of a fragile ego
orbit Trappist-1
soar high, ultra-cool dwarf star!
detractors light years away…
This bartender doesn’t like me. I used to enjoy reading great literature and could recite poetry…“what happens to a dream deferred?” – might still help me make enough of an impression that someone sitting at the bar won’t mind making up the coins I lack to pay for my beer.
sweet brown lacquered tones
shoulders elbows, eavesdroppers
ring marks – hops on grains
hops on trains, buses, and brains
fingerprints, the smell of coins.
This structure’s eye accepts light but not wind. Within the rectangle I cannot see my breath’s product. The floor resembles cork; our senses fill gaps in perception. Does one read emptiness with disdain or horror? The sun recedes. I fear ice in the trees, weight on my chest.
thoughts evaporate…
heaven’s clowns release their tears
sink! or swim time’s tide
silver trails depreciate,
mollusca’s retreat for one
Tanka inspired by Robert Okaji’s prose. Robert is a poet extraordinaire who blogs at O at the Edges. He is a beer connoisseur, foodie, sharp knife aficionado, and doesn’t take himself too seriously. Thanks so much for collaborating Bob! It was through reading this post on Bob’s blog a while back that I came across the haibun, beginning my love affair with the form.
Half a Haibun is an ongoing (and occasional) feature here at 10000hoursleft. A collaborative project with bloggers I admire- they write the prose that I then use as inspiration for a tanka or haiku. The intention being that together, we’ll create a whole; 2 halves converging to add a richness and complexity to one another, in the form of a haibun. Others in the series:
The two bedroom apartment and the job I had were because of Thom. We built a life together: eating breakfast, driving to work, eating lunch, returning home, eating dinner. His reliable presence smothered me.
But the alternative was to return home.
“Now, will you marry me?”
Why not, I thought.
love’s blind artisan
stokes furnace, raising ashes
thirst’s empty vessel
brimming in complicity
Madame Pele’s dormant wrath
Tanka inspired by an extract from The Unhappy Wife, by Dr K E Garland. The book is a fictionalised account of the real lives of 12 women who are/were in unhappy marriages, and includes an afterword by relationship coach Anita Charlot. The extract is from Chapter 4, capturing the world of one of the ‘voiceless’ wives. I am currently reading my paperback copy and loving the insight into the characters and unique circumstances that have caused the dysfunction in each relationship. Kathy has done a great job distilling the essence of her wives (as she calls them) and painting their unique shades of unhappiness in an engaging read. If you’d like to order yourself a copy, head to kegarland.com.
This is the first of an ongoing (and occasional) feature, called Half a Haibun. I look forward to getting stuck into this collaborative project, with bloggers I admire submitting prose that I will use as inspiration for a tanka or haiku. The intention being that together, we’ll create a whole; 2 halves converging to add a richness and complexity to one another, in the form of a haibun. Look out for more from December 2016 onward, as my November is all about THIS.
I have a haibun in the current issue of Contemporary Haibun Online! CHO is a quarterly journal dedicated to the form. I’ve relied on it for guidance and inspiration via the fine examples in the published works. It is really encouraging to find space for my writing outside the fairly subjective submission criteria here on 10000hoursleft, and even more so to be among the writers I have enjoyed reading on the site.
If the haibun seems familiar, that’s because I originally posted it with a tanka, here on this blog. Thanks Bob Lucky for the encouragement and challenge to give the prose a stronger poem which ultimately resulted in the haiku that got me over the line.
She always said family is strengthened by sticking together through life’s twists and turns.
As the matriarch, she’d kept us close with her stories, recipes that could not be recreated by anyone else, and hugs that spoke volumes where words failed to capture the nuances of shared joys, sorrows, or more often, everyday moments that would have otherwise gone forgotten if not infused with her love.
Now her home spun twine is unraveling, edges frayed from the tug-o-war over everything she’s left behind.
a life quest of love
ties woven in her heart’s loom
pulse of the bloodline
cardiac arrests the rein
a legacy unravels
Prose inspired by Sonya’s Three Line Tales, Week 17, tanka inspired by RonovanWrites’ Weekly Haiku Poetry Prompt Challenge #98 (quest, rein).
After coming up with the title, I looked it up to see if one of the other 7billion people on the planet had thought up that combination. Yes, apparently not much original thought remains (I’m kidding), there is a film of the same name that has received an 8% rating on rotten tomatoes, ouch! Have you seen it? Would that rating stop you from watching it, or would you happily put aside 1 hour and 27 minutes of your life for a little Rick Moranis?
bubbling pots transpire
rumbling storm of hunger strikes
raindrops through faucets
fluro’s lightening flicker
microwave beeps- dinner’s thawed!
Prompt words from Ronovan Writes’ Weekly Haiku Poetry Prompt Challenge: lightening, rain. Seeing as I’d written about rain before, my well felt dry for this week’s prompt until I thought of rain water through my kitchen tap, breaking the creative drought.
sparks fly! conception!
a stellar invitation
save the date! it said
forty weeks of gestation
enter dragon, leo-fire
That’s me, leo AND dragon. A fierce combination, right? Although I don’t live my life guided by astrology, I do identify with a lot of the traits assigned to my signs. On the topic of life path’s and traits being foretold, check out Dan Millman’s Life Purpose Calculator if that kind of thing interests you. The link gives a bit of info, but if you want to read more, plug the number and ‘life purpose’ into your search engine- be prepared to go ‘wow!’ I have the book and I was blown away by the eerily spot on descriptions of not only myself, but countless friends and family members.
The opening line of the tanka was inspired by the most amazing thing I’ve learnt in recent days: at the moment of human conception, following the fireworks of the horizontal dance (one of a number of ways to conceive), the event is marked by tiny sparks flying in celebration of the successful creation of a zygote (years before ‘it’ becomes a tantrum throwing 23 month old). The light emitted is caused by the surge of calcium when sperm enters egg, triggering the release of some of the egg’s reserve of zinc. The released zinc then binds to small *molecules and together, they emit a fluorescence which was detected by Scientists at Chicago’s Northwestern University in the past week, using fluorescence microscopy. The phenomena had previously been observed in mice. The light of life! It has huge implications for IVF and leaves open (in my mind) endless questions about creation, life and the connectedness and meaning of it all.
*My reading has not yet shed light on what those small molecules are, so any readers who may enlighten us, please do so in the comments.
Prompt words for the tanka (dragon, invite) from 8 year old poet, Miss E– guest prompt-maker for Ronovan Writes’ Weekly Haiku Poetry Prompt Challenge #95.
crafted in the womb
of earth’s mantle, mollusc’s shell
iridescent gem
brilliantly refracting stone
nature labours, profit born
Inspiration for this tanka from RononvanWrites’ Weekly Haiku Poetry Prompt Challenge #94 ‘diamonds’ and ‘pearls’. The memento mori is Damian Hirst’s sculpture ‘For the Love of God’, produced in 2007, photograph courtesy of Aaron Weber. The skull was cast in platinum from an 18th century skull, encrusted in non-conflict diamonds and set off with real pearly whites, to the tune of £14M. Hirst alleges that he sold it for £50M to an anonymous consortium. So many points to discuss, but I would say vulgarity and greed are the first things that come to mind. At least they were non-conflict.
full moon’s tidal dance
breaking waves of purple light
reign of crying doves
scent of violets in bloom
solar orbit, fleeting life
Inspired by the artist we knew as Prince. His music lives in the souls he moved. Prompt words sun (interpreted as ‘solar’) and moon from RonovanWrites’ Weekly Haiku Poetry Prompt Challenge.
Postscript: It was after posting this that out of curiosity, I read about the scent of violets (it is late here, so I couldn’t go seeking violets to have a whiff). I learnt that after stimulating your olfactory receptors, the aromatic compound that gives violets their scent (ionone) temporarily shuts off the receptors, taking away your ability to smell the flower. How fitting and serendipitous that violets are known for their ephemeral scent! There is nothing more I’d like to do right now than smell a violet for a little while.
Work in Progress 