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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Stars - haiga




(photo taken - Wellington, 27th April 2014)

Monday, April 28, 2014

Poem of the Day : Rain


by Kazim Ali
 
With thick strokes of ink the sky fills with rain.
Pretending to run for cover but secretly praying for more rain.

Over the echo of the water, I hear a voice saying my name.
No one in the city moves under the quick sightless rain.

The pages of my notebook soak, then curl. I've written:
"Yogis opened their mouths for hours to drink the rain."

The sky is a bowl of dark water, rinsing your face.
The window trembles; liquid glass could shatter into rain.

I am a dark bowl, waiting to be filled.
If I open my mouth now, I could drown in the rain.

I hurry home as though someone is there waiting for me.
The night collapses into your skin. I am the rain.
 
~~~

Thursday, April 24, 2014

The show



(100-word flash fiction)

THE SHOW

The lead guitarist was missing and the crowd was getting restive. Jerry, frantic, was about to improvise when there emerged an elderly man carrying a guitar case. He slowly walked over to Steve’s place.

“Steve couldn’t come.” He quietly answered Jerry’s angry, questioning glare. “I am his father. I’ve come to take his place. The show must go on, shouldn’t it?”

That night the guitar sang of pride, childhood, loss and triumph. It was spellbinding.

After they closed, Jerry invited Mr.Faulkner over for a drink.

“What happened to Steve?”

Mr.Faulkner’s tired face crumpled.

“He had a heart attack. He’s gone.”

~~~

Written for the amazing group Friday Fictioneers led by Rochelle. For the photo prompt below -
 

Copyright - Bjorn Brudberg


Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Poem of the Day : Earth Day


by JANE YOLEN

I am the Earth
And the Earth is me.
Each blade of grass,
Each honey tree,
Each bit of mud,
And stick and stone
Is blood and muscle,
Skin and bone.

And just as I
Need every bit
Of me to make
My body fit,
So Earth needs
Grass and stone and tree
And things that grow here
Naturally.

That's why we
Celebrate this day.
That's why across
The world we say:
As long as life,
As dear, as free,
I am the Earth
And the Earth is me. 

~~~

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

On the rocks


Today is Earth Day. Hope the Earth is happy with the way we are treating it.

(Akatarawa Forest, Wellington, February 2013)

~~~
 

Monday, April 21, 2014

The fading light

(shot at Canberra, Australia, Nov 2013)

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Poem of the day : Christ Human


Descending Theology : Christ Human


BY MARY KARR

    Such a short voyage for a god,
and you arrived in animal form so as not
    to scorch us with your glory.
Your mask was an infant’s head on a limp stalk,
    sticky eyes smeared blind,
limbs rendered useless in swaddle.
    You came among beasts
as one, came into our care or its lack, came crying
    as we all do, because the human frame
is a crucifix, each skeletos borne a lifetime.
    Any wanting soul lain
prostrate on a floor to receive the poured sunlight
    might—if still enough,
feel your cross buried in the flesh.
    One has only to surrender,
you preached, open both arms to the inner,
    the ever-present embrace,
which props one up, out reaches every grasp.
    It’s in the form embedded,
love adamant as bone. The miracle is not just
    you became us but also
those breathed-in moments allotted to us each
   (even poor Brother Judas),
when one relinquishes self and will and want.
     Then you're laid bare in us,
and for some briefly gentle eyeblink
    we bloom and are you.

               ~~~

The fitting - haiku



I try on poems
like clothes to see which fits
my soul

~~~

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Music – haiku

-->


angel dust, rain song
the beat ‘neath butterfly wings
Mozart

~~~

Friday, April 18, 2014

Thursday, April 17, 2014

The spinster

(100-word flash fiction)

THE SPINSTER
1994

She finds the abandoned baby one dark evening in the bushes outside her house. Her orphan, spinster heart overflowing with love she herself has never known, pours it into his tiny life.

2004

Like a tidal wave, his ‘real’ parents crash land, accuse her of ‘kidnapping’, threaten to get her arrested, finally leave with him, leaving her lost, broken and crumpled like a wasted ruin. She picks herself up and plods on.

2014

She is late returning to an empty home from her retirement party. As she pushes open the gate, a young man steps out of the shadows.
~~~


Written for the amazing group Friday Fictioneers led by Rochelle. For the photo prompt below -

Copyright - Douglas M. MacIlroy

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Monday, April 14, 2014

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Flight - haiku



brown and dusty
the ground erupts on the wingtips
of sparrows

~~~

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Friday, April 11, 2014

Homecoming - Friday Fictioneers

(100 word flash fiction)

HOMECOMING


He stood alone on the dusty little railway platform. The train, having sucked people into its metal belly, had rattled off. Where was his father?

Disappointed, he climbed into the solitary taxi. It was night when they reached his remote hamlet. When the driver stopped unexpectedly in the village square, he began to protest.

Suddenly, the place burst into light. Festooned with dried rice stalks, the square erupted with fireworks and the cheers of the entire village. His father stood beaming and his mother rushed forward to embrace him.

He had returned after 10 years, the hamlet’s first qualified doctor.


~~~

P.S. Wanted to write something positive this week after all the sad stories I’ve been writing :) but it seems it has come out rather flat :(

Written for the amazing group Friday Fictioneers led by Rochelle. For the photo prompt below -

copyright - DLovering

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Autumn - haiku


scorch marks
from a long ago summer
autumn heals

~~~

The tree
must want to kiss the earth
autumn leaves

~~~

 

Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Blackberry picking - haiga





Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Monday, April 07, 2014

Sunday, April 06, 2014

Birthday present - haiku


we stopped the clocks
and slept for an extra hour
birthday present

~~~
 
the trees shake loose
their autumn leaves on me
birthday present

~~~
 
passing years
bestow hard won wisdom
birthday present

~~~

Saturday, April 05, 2014

Prelude - haiku



nights glide in
their cloaks trimmed with cold
prelude to winter

~~~

Friday, April 04, 2014

Thursday, April 03, 2014

Lights! Camera! Action!

(100-word flash fiction in poem form) 


Lights! Camera! Action!

How ardently she wished
to shut out those words
that followed her everywhere,
into the bath, into her dreams,

that pecked at her brain
like a cerebral woodpecker,
from age 3 to age 18
from child-star to super-star.

So, first she invited over
a deadly little virus,
it took with it her hearing
and most of her voice.

But she was too famous,
her mother too ambitious
the voices didn’t stop
the roles kept coming.

Then came the fall-
it cut up her face, broke
some bones, nothing
plastic surgery couldn’t fix

Finally, the fire did it…..

~~~

This week’s entry for Friday Fictioneers, that amazing group led and prompted by Rochelle :) The prompt is the following image -

Studio Lights from Kent

Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Dawn - haiku


dawn
light breaks through night's curtain
peeping Tom

~~~

day breaks
night unfolds its embrace
a seedling sprouts

~~~

melting darkness
shows you that too much light
will hurt

~~~


Tuesday, April 01, 2014

April the 1st


I read somewhere
that time is a trick
not at all linear
or orderly
like soldiers would be
in a march-past,
but is rather like a sheaf
of pages piled up on top
of each other
our tomorrows stacked
on our yesterdays
like heavy burdens
of possibilities.

Today,
I dived into that buried pile,
assumedly accessible,
and surfaced on the page
of an yesteryear me,
all blush and innocence,
with a heart that had not yet
learned to distrust,
whose smile still seeped
into lucid eyes
and who is clueless
about how to shape
possibility into reality.

What do I tell
this past version of me?

I then wonder
of all the possible futures
I could have had
why I choose the page
I am now on
and if I had chosen differently
would I be in another sheaf?

or did I even have a choice?

Is it time that tricked me
or is it life?

I stand outside
and gaze at the stars
sliding slowly across the sky
and time trips me up again.

The light that I see
is not the star
but a mere memory of it,
the light that left it
so many light years ago,
by a trick of time
reaching me now,
a ghost, nothing else,
a faded celebrity,
a beautiful echo
that chose to fall
on today’s page.

And then,
everything shifts
and dissolves
like illusionary shadows.
Time is nothing but this moment
and life is happening nowhere
but in this moment.

And April the 1st
is just a label.

~~~