Harbingers of Change – Haibun – September 4, 2016

 

A colourful leaf fell past my window this evening, bright harbinger of change, awakening me to other signs that I should have noticed.  The silence of the empty swallow’s nest, the chicks have long gone but when did they fly away? There, listen carefully, do you hear the honking of passing geese overhead?

Autumn is boldly approaching leaving behind it the suffocating heat of summer. The seasons tumble one into another, each day passing quickly, soon the blackbird will sing in spring again!

leaf and bird
in winter and summer
harbingers of change

© Gsk ’16

Heeding Haiku With Chèvrefeuille August 31 2016 colorful leaves – Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie

The Novitiate – Gothic Horror – March 16, 2016

– Brooke Shaden

The glare of the sullen sunset beamed upon the lone novitiate who would be ordained to the night, in the cathedral-like structure dedicated to Lady Nyctophilia – patroness of those who lurk in the gloom. Ironically, she’d been quite the eristic and really very clever in her negation of vampires and the sort, yet there she stood, looking like a puppet with irregular strings attached about her head, ready to be pulled into the very heavens.  One couldn’t deny however,  that she really wasn’t quite herself.

Going back just a few hours before, she’d walked into the Metropolitan to meet her young man, a handsome swarthy gentleman, *oriundo from Sardegna, or so he’d said.  She sat down at his table and he asked the waiter to bring him the lady’s drink and the soda siphon.  She’d gotten used to his quirky idea that he should personally splash her drink from the soda siphon. This time however, the siphon had been sophisticated and contained a subtle drug.  She drank her drink and gradually began to feel detached from herself.

He led her out of the hotel and that  was the last time anyone from her set would ever see her.  He put her into a Rolls Royce which actually belonged to the “Lady Nyctophilia”, known to everyone else as the Countess of San Severino.  She was driven to the Cathedral of the Night.  Once she arrived, she was disrobed and a tiny tattoo was placed upon her just above the erogenous zone known as the mount of Venus.  What followed would terrorize you or I, but she was beyond terror, in the Rolls the swarthy young man, had made passionate love to her and she was now his, in body and soul – as testified the two tiny marks upon her neck.

© G.s.k. ‘16

 

*oriundo – native (of a place, especially a native of Italy but living abroad)

Photo Challenge #104 and Wordle #101 “March 14, 2016”

1.Glare 2. Nyctophilia (a love or preference for night, darkness) 3. Novitiate (the state or period of being a novice of a religious order or congregation. the quarters occupied by religious novices during probation. the state or period of being a beginner in anything. a novice.) 4. Structure 5. Tattoo 6. Eristic (a person who engages in debate; conversationalist. the art of disputation.) 7. Erogenous 8. Irregular 9. Adjust 10. Lurk 11. Siphon 12. Terrorize

Mountain Walking – Haibun – January 15, 2016

to the olive grove
ten minutes as a crow flies
fond memories

When you’re fit climbing up the side of a mountain is paradise.  The very air seems to help you up, your heart of course increases its beat and maybe your breath comes quicker and soon dopamine starts pumping through your veins. If the hike up is a real challenge finally adrenaline joins the cocktail of hormones and whatever else is making that walk fun, is it a wonder that walking can become addictive. Time flashes by as you fall into your own breath, feel your leg muscles flexing and elongating, hear the sound around you sort of muffled but very much alive.  Before you know it, you’ve reached your goal, maybe a lodge where you’ll spend the night, or a land-mark, like an abandoned village or a cross on a hill-top and you think how quickly time flies by when you’re having fun.

imagination
dishes up fond memories
back in training

© G.s.k. ‘16

Heeding Haiku With Chèvrefeuille, January 13th 2016

A Sea Dirge – Lento – Shadorma Wordle – November 6, 2015

water submersible maiden –
daughter of kelp, wakame and nori
mater of ungainly migrations caused by a
seawater plexus of nickels and dimes – muore.

moan you who’ve mutilated the sea she said
atone for your destructive ways, make haste,
groan for the phases change nonchalantly
dethroned you will inevitably for this waste.

in the sea
where life once began
like off-brown
melanin
lentamente poisons form
a lifeless desert

© G.s.k. ‘15

Written for Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie: Wordle and B&P’s Shadorma & Beyond

A Lento consists of two quatrains with a fixed rhyme scheme of
abcb, defe;

All the FIRST words of each verse should rhyme.

1.Water 2. Submersible 3. Kelp 4. Migration 5. Plexus (a network, as of nerves or blood vessels. any complex structure containing an intricate network of parts: the plexus of international relations.) 6. Ungainly 7. Nonchalant 8. Mutilate 9. Nickel 10. Melanin (any of a class of insoluble pigments, found in all forms of animal life,that account for the dark color of skin, hair, fur, scales, feathers, etc. I for one have very little and therefore cannot tan despite sun exposure.)11. Phase

12. The last word I want you to invent (give a definition in the beginning). If you are fluent in a language other than English you can alternatively teach us a special word in that language. These words will be gathered up for future use ,-).  My word is lentamente and it means slowly in Italian. (Muore means dies – nori is an alga)

Paper Tigers – Wordle/Free Verse – February 24, 2015

 

Concept for Wrath of the Titans – by Daren Horley

 

The Paper Tiger we thought defunct
stood in his partition of the world
dead drunk by all his power, now sour and curdled –
but he still twinges besotted in his bowl of dark draught …
only anabiosis had set in creating death’s illusion.

His Altruistic enemy – faced by the empty visage of inertia
for the good of us all – resuscitated vestiges of the old cold war
now twinging we look on
wondering if it might not have been better
just to be crushed by a wayward meteor.

To think we once augured an end to the conflict
only to find – once it was over –
that the strength we thought we saw was only a chimera –
just Paper Tigers: no winners – just losers …
who pompously filled the old news reels gloating
in the gloaming of our failing worm wooded civilization.

© G.s.k. 15

The wordle contains 12 words those words are:

Broken, Visage (the face), Paper Tiger (a person, group, nation, thing that has the appearance of strength but is ineffectual), Defunct (no longer in use),  Partition (a division, separation), Anabiosis (bringing back to conscious, reanimation after apparent death), Curdle, Meteor, Altruism (the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others), Twinge, Bowl, Draught

Yves has prepared us an exceptionally difficult wordle!  Of course Paper Tiger was the word that set the tone for the whole poem … anyone born before 1980 will have recognized the appellation immediately … and from whence it came 😉

Anabiosis also means: A temporary state of suspended animation or greatly reduced metabolism. I used it like this … draught is that lovely beer that you get at the pub … also known as draft beer or just draft when you’re in said pub.  Chimera comes from Greek mythology and was sort of a fire-breathing dragon and was a said to be a terrifying beast … but now days in English it’s used when we want to talk about a dream that is unlikely to come true.

 

Written for Monday Wordle Prompt at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie

Wordle – Prose Poem – February 11, 2015

The Chatelaine

She was a living symbol of elegance, like a renaissance castle but covered in a soft purple shawl.

Hidden deeply, was the dungeon where her soul shrivelled imprisoned, the oubliette opened onto an unused courtyard, where none ever came and the sun rarely shone.

Her rippling dark hair was like an improvised canal of moonlit water, flowing down her shoulders, reminding one man of holy scripture and another of a lovely piece of erotic poetry.

Her smile, never syrupy, never reached her eyes, looked upon the world, a petition for love, a request for a paddle that would guide the tiny canoe of her heart, severely dented by love’s disappointments, into serenity.

When she died, young and alone, one god looked upon her, he mourned her passing passionately and so transformed her into a willow that looked eternally out to sea, silently calling to lost lovers guiding them to the safety of her shores.

© G.s.k. ‘15

Mindlovesmsery’s Menagerie’s wordle contains 12 words: Canal,Ripple. Elegance, Shawl, Scripture, Improvise, Baggage, Oubliette (a secret dungeon with an opening in the ceiling), Syrup, Dent, Paddle, Petition

Amphibian Booties – Prose Poem/Wordle – February 8, 2015

Tiny booties once bound his feet, tender and soft wool wound about his tiny toes, no, long gone are those booties now, down a worm-hole of time.  I hear the sound of his clomping down the street (which would instill fear into a Cabaret clown living in Nazi Germany) with his amphibians just like jack-boots and yet I know all his wounds, hopes and fears, that haven’t yet been tempered by years and years of experience. No tiny toes fill these boots wound about with socks of fleece, walking down the streets sealed in hard leather, emitting sounds like stormy weather.  The seal of childhood has long gone into the tumbling eons of time … alive now just in my memory seen through the looking-glass of this old Alice, who’d tumble gladly down that rabbit hole, to hold once more those tiny feet, wound in fleeced booties … ah, they smelled so sweet.

© G.s.k. ‘15

wound, sound, burst, clown, emit, glass, fill , seal, another, tumble, fleece, instill

written for Sunday Whirl and Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie – BJ Shadorma & Beyond using Brenda Warren’s Sunday Whirl Wordle.

wound, sound, burst, clown, emit, glass, fill , seal, another, tumble, fleece, instill

 

Wordleing – January 28, 2015

chords of summer
listening to Vivaldi
jaw hangs in stupor

blazing hotly
summer sun shines proudly
cicada’s drone
bats hide in cool dark caves
AC drones throughout the day

a drizzle of stars
rain of celestial bodies
St. Lawrence’s night

force of nature
reckless astral pride
falling star

prevarication
that light fixture in the gym
false sunshine

© G.s.k. ‘15

Comment:  This week I’d decided to experiment and write haiku for the wordle keeping to a common theme … I found that it’s infinitely easier to write normal verse or flash fiction with wordles.

Why force an explanation
Or resort to prevarication
This reckless experiment
About our astral firmament …
Is a bodiless drizzle
Of forced drivel …
This illumination
Blindingly struck me
Making .. my jaw drop, while
Reading each off-key chord,
My pride shrivels
And I write this, in a stupor.
Haiku is just not suitable
For wordles or word prompts!
In my opinion.

© G.s.k. ‘15

 Force, Body, Astral. Stupor, Drizzle, Jaw, Pride, Chord, Blinding, Reckless, Prevaricate (to speak falsely, to give the wrong impression), Fixture

Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie – Wordle

Serene Blue – Syllabic Verse – January 13, 2015

Lavinialeyna Deviant Art (Renee Boynton artwork )

 

serene
dark empty nights
swirling curling around my mind
without you
here

lonely
dark empty nights
dancing in a sea of blue light
gracefully
dream

asleep
dark empty nights
dreaming in shades of serene blue
in velvet
chains

the dawn
bright new morning
reveals infinite new shades
blue darkness
fades

G.s.k. ‘15

Random syllables: 2/4/8/3/1

Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie – Photo Challenge

A Wordle for WordPress – Wordleing – January 12, 2015

A Scarecrow on your house
And a Glitch in your collective works!
Mighty nerds with the brains of currants
Living in some obscure parallel universe,
With what perversity do you play
With the lives of those who blog …
Without affinity for those who write
Using mere words instead of code,
You’ve now padlocked script images
Making them to fade away …
(And what say you of “Quote”
that leaves bracketed empty space?)
The glamour of your pages
Are without a doubt a plus
But your jagged hungry need
To not leave well enough alone,
Sends up a coral destication
With each change that comes to the fore.
Ah to ditch the perverse codes
That you daily send upon us …
Methinks we might go Blogger
And leave this mess behind.

© G.s.k. ‘15

 

1. Padlock 2. Glamour 3. Ditch 4. Perversity 5. Fade 6. Affinity 7. Parallel 8. Desticate (to squeak like a rat) 9. Jagged 10. Scarecrow 11. Hungry
12. Currant (a small seedless raisin, a small edible berry found on shrubs of the genus Ribes)

Post inspired by WordPress and Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie – Wordle #43