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

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.

Burning Advice – Shadorma – March 17, 2016

“Cooling waves”
pontificated
bright-eyed Sue
“won’t prevent
Dave getting frightfully burnt
just watch and you’ll see.”

And of course
she was just too right!
A lobster
was paler
than young Dave’s skin that evening
and far less in pain!

He’s happy
although a bit crisp.
He did say
he hates Sue’s
haunty know-it-all advice
and would druther burn.

© G.s.k. ‘16

 

Shadorma (3 – 5 – 3 – 3 – 7 – 5)

(5) Words: | WAVE | COOL| PREVENT | BRIGHT | WATCH |

Weekly Writing Prompt #28 Week 14th March 2016

Distilling Marcel Proust – Shadorma – January 16, 2016

fear of death
awakens our mind
our slothful
careless mind
to all that we will miss upon
slipping through the veil …

how careless
to be bored by life
tomorrow
or tonight
our life might slip away – gone
it’s our human fate

© G.s.k. ‘16

 

B&P Shadorma & Beyond – January 15, 2016 – Distillation 

This week we will do a poetry distillation … the poem I chose read by Alan Rickman passed away this week is: Text: Marcel Proust – Life Would Suddenly Seem Wonderful.  I’ll be distilling it into a shadorma.

[A shadorma is a non-rhyming six-line poem with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5.]

Winter Fantasia – Shadorma, Tanka and Haiku – January 2, 2016

fanciful
wondrous pink magic …
five giants
watch the sun
sink into lake Garda – ah
cherry blossom skies

the sunset
bidding us goodbye
blushes pink
we enjoyed
this last day before the snowfall
in the olive groves

this morning
crows caw in the fog
harsh and loud
brash calls
they navigate with echos
like old black foghorns

§§§

even as I write
the fog shrouds Arco’s valley
the sky whispers – snow
inviting is the fireplace
and my mug of hot green tea

winter’s arrival
with each new snowflake
a fantasia

© G.s.k. ‘16

B&P’s Shadorma & Beyond – Shadorma – January 2, 2016

The Shadorma is a poetic form consisting of a six-line stanza (or sestet). The form is alleged to have originated in Spain. Each stanza has a syllable count of three syllables in the first line, five syllables in the second line, three syllables in the third and fourth lines, seven syllables in the fifth line, and five syllables in the sixth line (3/5/3/3/7/5) for a total of 26 syllables. A poem may consist of one stanza, or an unlimited number of stanzas (a series of shadorma).

An Angel Doomed – Haiku/Shadorma – December 28, 2015

Weeping Angels – Photo Credits: BBC

an angel doomed
no longer able to smile
flawed and broken

when did it happen
what dried up his compassion
where is he broken

where’s the flaw
which part is wanting
which note flat
he’s rigid
and he’s strict as a tombstone
his heart is frozen

can we thaw that heart
bring light where there’s darkness
the answer is no –

only he can find
hidden within his own soul
the need for change

© G.s.k. 15

 

(5) Words: | PART | STONE | FLAW | STRICT | NOTE |
The Secret Keeper’s Weekly Writing Prompt #17