Revisiting Padua – Sijo – April 10, 2020

past discarded farm instruments
I went wandering one day–
attracted to bright autumn colours
when I soon  became aware –
that  long dark wintry shadows
were menacingly all around me.

gsk ’20

You can find out what type of poem this is in Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie .. Glassary under Sijo

Fish in the Snow – December 15, 2017

Floating Fish in the snow

Winter came early for us in the Lake Valley of southern Trentino.  Because of the Lake Garda’s microclimate we usually only see snow around mid January, if then.  The other morning the sky was heavy and what looked like fog was actually snowfall.  It snowed the whole day through changing our autumn suddenly into winter.  As I looked out towards the courtyard in front of my house, my fish wind chime began to tinkle and I imagined a world with floating fish.

December
cold grey morning sky
first flakes fall
ice crystals
softly blur my world from sight
hills of snow – growing

Silence grows
as snow flakes gather
transforming
humdrum scenes
into something new – special
never seen before

In that morn
of cold December
suddenly
in silence
a fish floated in the snow
outside my window.

gsk ’17

 

 

 

 

For B&P’s Shadorma and Beyond – Dedicated to Dylan – October 26, 2016

This week when I went to see what Paloma had decided to write about on Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie I was delighted to see she was asking us to write a shadorma or series of shadorma inspiring ourselves from Bob Dylan who this year  was awarded the Nobel for Literature 2016.

Listening to his music once again brought me back to my adolescence.  I was not a bright and chirpy teenager I’m afraid.  Due to my personal problems with my parents I’d turned towards the darker side of life, the futility and hopelessness of a world without reason and love at least so it was then in my mind.  I would sit for hours, music full blast in a candle lit room listening to the angry and often obscure lyrics of the music of my age …  Bob Dylan was one of my favourites with his flat smoky voice and gut moving lyrics.

 

Things Have Changed

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind
There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes
I’m looking up into the sapphire tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

This place ain’t doing me any good
I’m in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood
Just for a second there I thought I saw something move
Gonna take dancing lessons do the jitterbug rag
Ain’t no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove

Lotta water under the bridge, lotta other stuff too
Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road
If the bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I hurt easy, I just don’t show it
You can hurt someone and not even know it
The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity
Gonna get lowdown, gonna fly high
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie
I’m love with a woman who don’t even appeal to me

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I’m not that eager to make a mistake

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

Bob Dylan

Everything changes and sometimes that’s for the best and sometimes for the worse … but usually  it’s just what it is…  here’s my attempt at a shadorma (3/5/3/3/7/5) based on the above lyrics of one of Dylan’s more recent songs (2009).  I’m not quite the same as I was in the 60s and can’t really get into that darkness … but oh well … there’s worse things that can happen:

The change of a Phoenix dying

time’s passin’
and when I look ’round
ideals gone
fires quenched
inside the secret mirror
well, everything changed

no lost loves
full of brave new words
time just passed
leaving me
dry-eyed and disillusioned
with my should have beens

time drifts on
getting through a day
imagining
a new way
without hurting, pain and you
just floating along

illusion
change that isn’t change
antique pain
obsolete
weeds – grown in a potter’s field
over my childhood grave

everything
seems to change but me
loneliness
craziness
hidden in this music box
filled up with truth’s lies

maybe love
(that illusive flower)
and ideals
have a place
in this crazy wonderland
of amazing grace

let me fly
(though you can ask why)
just because
I was born …
and now everything changes
as the Phoenix dies

© Gsk ‘16

It seems to me whilst I’m listening to Dylan’s music that his subject matter hasn’t really changed all that much throughout his life – his songs are often about his perception of the dark side of life.  Here he isn’t speaking of masters of war or walking around a watchtower that is life but it’s still the desperate insight into life itself,  this time growing older and losing ones ideals to a reality painted without hope, where one doesn’t care,  where one is easily hurt but hides it and hurts others without being aware of doing so.

Here’s another of my favourites –  Mr. Tambourine Man to take us onto another trip 😉 the music is bright and peppy but if you think this is chirpy song … think again, here are the LYRICS.

 

 

Autumn Colours – Shadorma – October 15, 2016

dearest friend
these autumn colours
bring to mind
fall feasting
on jujubes and persimmons
(before snow flakes fall)

© Gsk ‘16

B&P Shadorma & Beyond – Full Circle – October 15, 2016

Homage to D. H. Lawrence – Autumn Rain – October 1, 2016

Autumn Rain

The rain falls
a harvest of tears
black and wet
sheaves of pain
as the stalks droop and are drawn
what was sown is reaped.

Into the cold
no warmth awaits now
dripping rain
falling leaves
no thoughts of resurrection
men are slain – rain falls.

Redemption:
in the falling rain
winter fields
lie fallow
until the awakening
in heaven’s fields set.

Gsk ’16

Today I returned to B&P Shadorma & Beyond introducing a poem by D.H. Lawrence for a shadorma interpretation by our readers … the above is my interpretation and the following is Lawrence’s poem:

Autumn Rain

The plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;

the cloud sheaves
in heaven’s fields set
droop and are drawn

in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face

falling — I hear again
like echoes even
that softly pace

heaven’s muffled floor,
the winds that tread
out all the grain

of tears, the store
harvested
in the sheaves of pain

caught up aloft:
the sheaves of dead
men that are slain

now winnowed soft
on the floor of heaven;
manna invisible

of all the pain
here to us given;
finely divisible
falling as rain.

D. H. Lawrence

Written for B&Ps Shadorma and Beyond at MindLoveMisery’sMenagerie

A Fall (Shadorma) – September 10, 2016

Today on Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie – “B&P Shadorma & Beyond” offered to us by Candy – we read a delightful poem by Lisel Mueller who born in Nazi Germany was forced to  immigrate to the Mid West, United States with her family in 1942 when she was 15.  In 1997 she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Here a one of Lisel’s wonderful poems:

Things

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock as face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image,
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye.
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.

© Lisel Mueller

our Candy wrote a Shadorma inspired by this poem and asks us to do the same:

you are my
stella lucida
shining when
darkness comes
illuminating corners
where nightmares can hide

© cgk 2016

(Here is my attempt …)

A Fall 

just falling
off my path’s shoulder
I tumbled
into a funk
then this topsy turvy world
seemed reality

like Alice
all logical thought
suspended
I wondered
when my fall would ever end
and still I tumbled

(free falling
vanquishes breaking
not crashing
– gravity
guarantees a brusque return
to reality)

stark naked –
reality’s blush
seemed modest
to the fool
at the heart of fashion news –
copy cats just purr

© Gsk ‘16

Journey – Experimental Quadrille – July 19, 2016

Yes, the journey
began like all journeys
one step at a time

Some songs were sung
and some anthems played
yes, they shared a few tears

one became famous
one became homeless
the other died

And I – watched the music box
go ’round and ’round

© Gsk ’16

I came across this consignment from dVerse whilst visiting a fellow poet’s site (Write a poem in 44 words with the word “journey”) – it seemed interesting so I thought I’d give it a try … the poet is Candy from RHYMESWITHBUG and her poem is entitled: Summer Journeys.

Unfortunately I also read on dVerse that our dear fellow poet Vivi from VivinFrance passed away on July 5th … this will be such a loss for all of us.  My sympathies go to her family for their profound loss.

I remember when I first met Vivi – she advised me to buy Stephen Fry’s  “The Ode Less Travelled” (which I did) so that I might find a more fluent way to write poetry … rhythm instead of syllable counting (which I still like to do very much).  I’ll miss visiting Vivi’s posts an enjoying her dry humour.

And still I watch the music box go ’round and ’round … and another tear falls.

A Single Dandelion – Free Verse (Wordeling) – June 30, 2015

 

a single dandelion
stood in that empty spot
next to an ancient
wooden spool
swaying

Paladins and Pirates – Etheree/Tilus – May 3, 2016

 

clash
unrest
as markets,
crash constantly
and the people call
upon bright memories
of peace and prosperity
and of brave paladins of old
who’d took up the sword and rally all
to beat down the treacherous scalawags

my friends, those saviours never existed
paladins won’t come to save the day
pirates abound and scalawags
wreck disastrous ruin
as homeless multiply
in the name of greed
all may be lost
markets crash
people
clash

no  easy solutions
we must all
work

© G.s.k. ‘16

§§§§§§§§§

I couldn’t tell you where this morning’s reflection on the world economic situation came from, I was thinking about something completely different, anyway …

I guess there were/are always a lot of pirates and scalawags (as well as real issues – like expensive war spending)  involved in keeping the world economy in its perennial oscillating state – paladins in the form of central banks and governments have tried to resolve the most recent problems over the last 10 years by reinforcing banks, companies and countries that over-stretched themselves heavily investing in toxic assets. They too are now stretching themselves thin – economically speaking.

World economy isn’t even a little easy to understand – though we do like to find someone or something to blame everything on – in other words a scapegoat. A paladin won’t solve our problems and neither will a scapegoat.  I won’t deny that banks, their executives, corrupt government officials, nearsightedness, the proverbial 10%  and all that jazz don’t exist.  However, let’s try to see where we too work into that scenario, because we do – and we my friends are the manipulated majority.

I came to the conclusion, pretty much forty years ago laying under a bed as bombs fell outside my house in Chad, that as long as everyone looks out just for number one there will always be disunity and economic disaster. From burning down forests to beating up those who are different – closed-minded violence, bigotry and selfishness, is an endemic disease among the people’s of the world which will keep us, the majority of humanity, in a state of poverty – moral and economical – and that 10%?  They enjoy the wealth which we happily give them and then just as happily destroy their profit givers.  They couldn’t do what they do without our collaboration and consent…  something to think about.

 
Etheree

The poetry form, Etheree, consists of 10 lines of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 syllables. Etheree can also be reversed and written 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Get creative and write an Etheree with more than one verse, but follow suit with an inverted syllable count.

Tilus

A non-rhyming, 3-line poem with a syllable count of 6-3-1.

Desert Rose – Shadorma and Tilus – May 1, 2016

the desert
as the wind whispers
the sun burns
life hides deep
under the stony shadows
of a desert rose

© G.s.k. ‘16

in his blue veil he rode –
the desert
rose
😉

© G.s.k. ‘16

B&P’s Shadorma & Beyond – April 30, 2016 – I used the video from Paloma’s lovely prompt – but wasn’t really feeling too horsey today … so I wrote about the Sahara … where the desert rose – a rock formation – can be found … in the shadow perhaps we’d find a small insect – like a scorpion 😉

 

Carpe Diem Special #208 Sara McNulty’s 4th “fantasy” shadorma – here is our last celebratory post in honour of Sara McNulty  who won the Carpe Diem Kukai dedicated to time.

shadorma — a non-rhyming six-line poem in 3/5/3/3/7/5 — or a tilus. A tilus is a non-rhyming, 3-line poem with a syllable count of 6-3-1.