Stars - haiga

(photo taken - Wellington, 27th April 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.

 

~~~

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 -

 

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. 

~~~

On the rocks

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

(Akatarawa Forest, Wellington, February 2013)

~~~
 

The fading light

(shot at Canberra, Australia, Nov 2013)

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

~~~

Music – haiku

-->

angel dust, rain song

the beat ‘neath butterfly wings

Mozart

~~~

Nature - haiga

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 -

Dead locks - haiga

After the rain - haiga

Beeline - haiga

Flight - haiku

brown and dusty

the ground erupts on the wingtips

of sparrows

~~~

Rain - haiga

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 -

Autumn - haiku

scorch marks

from a long ago summer

autumn heals

~~~

The tree
must want to kiss the earth
autumn leaves

~~~

 

Blackberry picking - haiga

Rambling river - haiga

Cherry tomatoes - haiga

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

~~~

Prelude - haiku

nights glide in

their cloaks trimmed with cold

prelude to winter

~~~

Autumn sonata - haiga

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 -

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

~~~

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.

~~~