Song of Childhood – Quatrain – Red Wolf Poems – December 7, 2014

Do fairies fly in soft lofty shadows
Far above the lost forgotten door,
Where Puff the Magic Dragon passed
With the brother’s Grimm and Anderson?

Old dust brushed frost on my lost toys
There with a forgotten hop-scotch pattern –
Ah, soft as a sigh I see them now,
Waiting for me, in my mind’s eye.

My youthful games come back to me
Hidden in thoughts of hoary glossed frost –
Though autumn fills my mind with musty dust
The song of childhood calls to my soul.

(c) G.s.k. ’14

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The Words: fly, dust, song, puff, frost, fairies, soft, door, lost, toy

The Twist:

Part two is the addition of three extra words that are near-rhymes (frost, soft, dust). Part three is mention a child’s game in your poem.

Linked to Red Wolf Poems

Wordle – December , 2014

She reflected on the world of parasites
As the dying day faded away …
The politicians legerdemain continues
Convincing us all that we need them –
The grit of their deception tarnish their shields
Yet we never seem to notice,
Pulsing vibrant words blare from the TV
Reagan and then the burning Bush
Convince us to renounce our freedom
And our humanity … in exchange for raw greed …
Did no one notice the bubbles bursting …
The Bodhisattva of Peace sighs,
His spirit outlined in the dying verses
Of an old song …
The void cannot be put off forever …
Every song ends
For everything there is a dusk
And the night fell.

G.s.k. ’14

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This was inspired  by The Red Wolf – We Wordle number 31 … which I’d missed.  I just discovered that for some reason I no longer followed the blog and so was not getting the notifications by e-mail that I usually got …   The Red Wolf Wordles are a real challenge.  Not only do you get a lot of interesting words to work with … but there’s always an extra twist … read on to see what I mean and click the link to read other poems and the full post – Bastet

dying, spirit,  parasites, void, legerdemain, Bodhisattva, reflected, pulsing, dusk, grit, raw

That was the simple part. Now for the (slightly) harder part. First I’ll give you a phrase. Meditate on it, incorporate it somehow in your poem. It doesn’t have to be straight-on and literal: feel free to weave it or its idea into your poem in some way. Now, the phrase:

“Every song must end.”*

Secondly, here’s an added trick. I’m going to ask you to play with time in your poem. I’m inspired by this concept as we’re currently studying Ghost in a Red Hat by Rosanna Warren in my ENG 631 class.

Warren has a wonderful sense of time. In some poems, she roots the reader firmly within a present moment. In others, she plays around with time, not only through (sometimes unexpected) use of verb tenses but by sliding around to different time periods within the same poem. In particular, one of my favorite effects she uses is writing about past moments in present tense — which make the past moment seem more tangible, immediate, and real.

Red Wolf Poems Wordle 31

A Gourmet’s Soul – Free Verse – November 17, 2014

Jose Fernando, Still Life With Oysters, Lemon and Belgian Beer

 

A subtle mix is a gourmet’s soul
His palate is his most erogenous zone –
To taste fresh fish an orgiastic event
That yields great sighs and lingering smiles –
With hints of toasty bits of bread and wine
You’ll have good sex with him anytime –
So don’t despair my darling girl –
Buy him fresh oysters and abalones …

(C) G.s.k. ’14

 

Sunday Whirl words: lingering, fresh, tends, palate, hints, sex, yields, toasty, soul, mix, subtle

Red Wolf Poems

Red Wolf Poems – Wordle # 30 (with a twist) – November 8, 2014

I elaborate the ritual and
Tolerate your shallow make-up.
… Just incinerate these candles glowing – and
Then perforate these slack silver letters…
I exasperate demands for love
And create my potions with great care.

By the fireplace sit, drink my magic wine
Known as Love Potion Number 9.

(c) G.s.k. ’14

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Here are the eight words from Red Wolf Poems:

candle, wine, silver, shallow, letter, demands, fireplace, slack

And we have TWO twists this week:

Take these five extra words that rhyme, and include them in any way you wish in your poem. Use them for internal rhymes or end-line rhymes.

elaborate, tolerate, perforate, incinerate, exasperate

Write your poem in the Present Simple Tense. Here’s a link for a definition and a game to play, if you wish.

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/present-tense/present-simple

Bastet’s Origami Boat – free verse – October 25, 2014

Cleopatra Boat by Gershon Legman found on Gilad’s Origami Page

Bastet’s Origami Boat

with …
reams of newspaper
blurred and painted
she sits in pink pajamas
on an imaginary rock
clean rhythm of waves
splash her cold feet
then she sets sail
on her origami boat

no destination nor plans
no goals and
no ambition
she just sails onwards
going forward
lazy and free
in a sea of dreams
on her paper boat

(c) G.s.k. ’14

 

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Linked to We Wordle for We Wordle: blurred, paper, rock, wave, pajamas, painted clean

 

Golden Books – Free Verse – October 10, 2014

Toblino Castle by GSK

In the spring of my existence
Glorious are the illustrations
Of my beloved Golden Books.
Laying here on a rug in October
I meet :
Inviting, a mysterious wise stranger,
Or maybe a horrible dark wicked witch,
Mud-streaked travellers through dank woods
And I gallop through the skies on a flying pony …
Day in and day out …
I while away the long seeming empty hours,
Alone but rarely lonely,
Inventing stories for these illustrations,
Since Mommy has no time to read to me.

Nursery rhymes and fairy tales
Are now my poetry and flash fiction
In this October of my waning years
I’m never lonely but accompanied
By the strangers that I meet each day
Who lead me to startling illuminations
From the mud-streaked reality of society
To startling encounters within my soul
This road may now be in decline,
No lofty mountains do I wish to climb …
Soon I’ll walk in winter cold
But for now …
This is the harvest of my days
Seeded in my early spring
From a Library of Golden Books.

(c) G.s.k. ’14

 

The Wordle:

Jules: illuminations
Hannah: October
Irene: stranger
Barbara: mud-streaked
Debi: library

The prompt:

“October is a transformative month.

It’s harvest season. It is said “to bend with apples”. Said of course, in eternal reference to Keats’s “Ode to Autumn”. It harkens toward winter, and that, my friends, is the great harbinger that engenders a great mellowing. An internal transformation that mere mortals are forced to undergo. If only we never grow up.

 

If you had to write a story, I want that story to include these elements:

1) passage of time – perhaps have the character speaking in childhood or youth in part one; and then speaking as an older person in part two.

2) an ending that has so little and so much to do with the earlier parts of your story. Digression becomes the core of the story.

3) yet it is an ending that lightens the load.”

 

Red Wolf Poems – We Wordle

 

We Wordle – To Cecil The Pig – Memento Mori -Sepember 28, 2014

To Cecil The Pig

Ah – when I think of you dear Cecil,
I feel myself fall into a trance …
‘Tis hard for me
To keep track of all the hours I stayed with you.
Emperor of your kind …
The fine bristle of your hair,
The lovely look in your pinkish eyes,
And oh …
Your immoderate love of popcorn..
Alas in the end
‘Twas the bane of your existence!

How fair you were … so that still now,
I think of you.  ‘Tis true … your odorous
Effluvia was something to be forgotten …
But –
Your exultations … your appreciation,
For the food I brought you each morn,
Was one of your saving graces!
Alas – how they’ve rendered you.

Yet … dear Cecil,
You’ll still be with me for a time though.
Through this sublime offering we now enjoy,
We do not forget and indeed, we thank you,
For this lovely bacon that accompanies our eggs.

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Accompanying the wordle (words below) at Red Wolf Poems  is a beautiful post (just click the link to read it) … with an invitation:

“… this week, let’s think about writing a memento mori poem. Memento mori (Latin ‘remember (that you have) to die’).

purpleinportland: trance
Irene: track
Jules: skin
Christopher: emperor
Misky: popcorn
Barbara: bacon

An Ode to Bloggers Gone … September 12, 2014

An Ode to Bloggers Gone

Where went the bloggers
When their muse dried up,
And their papers written
Now memories,
Dry as a desert rose …
There’s no word no news,
Only a blank page where once
We read brilliant words.

Did they fall into vanilla skies
Or drown in green autumn wine …
Perhaps like moles
They’ve hidden in holes …
With a gin stain
To define their souls.

I know not where these bloggers went …
Perhaps to Gehenna
or Dante’s Paradise …
But as long as rivers flow
And the sun and moon still set,
There’s hope that yet
We’ll read their moving odes.

(c) G.s.k. ’14

Wordled for Red Wolf Poems

The worlde words and their creators:  Hannah: green, Laura: wine, Jules: bloggers, Christopher: papers, Irene: vanilla Marilyn: gin, Barbara: moles, Purpleinportland: stain –
from poetry written for Barbara’s last Thursday prompt for Red Wolf Poems.

Red Wolf Wordle – August 2, 2014

This is Red Wolf’s Wordle!

Not all birds are of a feather,
Sit upon the chestnut’s branches
The peacock trills alone
In a farm near my house,
His tail wheel colored in flashy blues …

The swallow blends in with the shadows,
Unlike the flashy peacock …
When the next full moon shines,
He’ll leave our shores for Africa
Perhaps getting caught in the monsoon.

The trills and fluty song on the wind
Of the birds at sunset,
Fill my heart with joy …
Standing on this mountain path
I sing at the top of my lungs.

Wild Red Wolfe Wordle # 20

Summer Rites

Commemorating the eternal mystical cycle …
We bowed low before the moon,
Like natives, in their incarnated grace,
From the border of my memory.
In tribute to our past,
We sipped grandmother’s dandelion wine,
In the magic circle in the wood …
We began our celebratory rites,
Incarnated by the flames and
Dedicated to a planet never seen.
The clay golem rose,
His form glinting against the sky.
He took the bowl from my hands
Then drank deeply.
His majestic symmetrical shape,
A perfection in its way,
Was our eternal tribute
To life.

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This week’s Red Wolf Poems’ Wordle # 20 is composed by using these words from the poets who participated in Red Wolf Poems’  Prompt #214: Celebration and Ritual drop by and read them both!

Rosalyn: eternal, cycle, magic
Jules: grace, moon, celebratory
Barbara: wake, follows, usually
Irene: border, natives, incarnated
Rick1: clay, shape, planet
Rick2: memory, grandmother, bowl
Stimmyabby: wood, flame, glinting