Sensuous Sundays - Brewing nostalgia

Brewing nostalgia - tanka

the pot on the stove

bubbles up aromas from

childhood. Warm, soothing

comforting, like Mother’s touch

like a loyal puppy lick

~~~

Awe

"The next time you are awed by something, let the feeling flow freely through you and do not try to 'understand' it You will find that you do understand, but in a way that you will not be able to put into words. You are perceiving intuitively through your right hemisphere. It has not atrophied from lack of use, but our skill in listening to it has been dulled by three centuries of neglect."

From the book "The Dancing Wu Li Masters.

Sensuous Sundays - Eddies of memories

Eddies of memories - tanka

fleeting sandal scent

like a rogue wind whirlpools leaves

stirs up memories

chasing the light on your skin

all the way into shadows

~~~

It rains inside me

(100 word flash fiction)

It had been raining that day when you ran from my arms and down the driveway to the waiting school bus. So eager you had been to show off your new raincoat, you had not even turned back to wave goodbye.

Every year, I bought new clothes for you just a little bit bigger. Added one more candle to your birthday cake. Redecorated your room, changed the posters. I hope you like Jennifer Lawrence.

They said you’re dead. But they didn’t find your body, did they?

Today, there are 21 candles. Who could be at the door in this downpour?

~~~

It is spring here and we are tired of the rain, wanting only fine, sunny days, but Rochelle has to post a rainy night photo just so that we don’t forget to feel grateful for the rain.The weekly party just started over at Friday Fictioneers with this photo prompt –

(photo © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields)

Grace

"The grace of god means something like:
Here is your life.
You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't be complete without you.
Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don't be afraid."

~ Frederick Buechner

Sensuous Sundays - Kiwifruit

Kiwi fruit - haiku

mini bursts of

sunshine turn into honey

did I hear a bee?

~~~ 

image source - internet

Suspended

(100-word flash fiction)

The chair topples on the first kick. As if on cue, she steps outside herself.

She is amazed at how the body is wired for survival, as she watches the legs, puppet-like, kick into thin air. Chest straining, by habit, trying to suck in air, so abundant outside. Face crimsoning as blood rushes to her brain. Bells going on inside, screaming ‘Mayhem!’ ‘Mayhem!’

She loses all sense of time. And that dreary greyness that had festered inside her like a light-sucking ghost. She crackles with an aliveness her body had never felt. Unimaginable lightness fills her being.

The door opens.

~~~

Rochelle has posted a lovely image for this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt.

Photo copyright Ted Strutz

The gift

On dVerse Poets, it’s Abhra’s birthday and he asks, what gift we would like to give him. Or the world. As I was reading his post, quite by happy chance, I heard the tui call …

THE GIFT – tanka

into the cup of

the evening the tui

drops its golden song

my beggar heart rejoices

the moon rises in delight

~~~

What do I call you?

What do I call you? - Haibun

We were young and grieving when we met.

Pain had sat on our lips like wounded birds, afraid to fly. And shone from our eyes, like rough-cut diamonds. It must have emanated from our being, white-hot and searing, drawing us together like moths to a flame. Like little girls, we had giggled, eating candy floss, as though we could pluck joy out of the cool, night air with sticky fingers. Maybe we laughed because we wanted to cry. Maybe we realised that pain can be transmuted into joy. Our hearts cut open and the pain billowing out with our out-breaths allowing joy to flow in with our in-breaths.

That night, at the fair

Joy was sweet, light candy floss

You woke up smiling

I dare not think what I would be if you had not come into my life. It’s like imagining a rainbow with colours missing. Or music with holes in it, the heart searching, in vain, for the missing parts. Or spring without butterflies, afternoons heavy with torpor. I am grateful for the pain that brought you to me, bound us together and then set us free.

What do I call you?

for some things there are no words

just joyful silence

~~~

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Bjorn and Hamish have set the challenge for Haibun Monday – to write a Haibun inspired by Khalil Gibran’s words. The edict is to write only one haiku, but I am a rule-breaker, and also, the second one just prostrated itself on the page. What to do? I couldn’t kill it. Sorry, Bjorn.

What do I say about Gibran? The heart swells up with joy just thinking about his words. The lyricism, the melody, the grace, the soulfulness and of course, the simple truth in them. I am eternally grateful to the person who introduced me to Gibran.

Sensuous Sundays - Fresh sheets

Fresh sheets - haiku

lying on sheets, crisp

with sunlight, redolent of

sky and fragrant winds

~~~

Minnie Mouse

(100-word flash fiction)

“Matt, come here!” His father’s shout shatters his glorious dream, in which a spaceship had landed beside his house, extended a long, metal arm into his pesky sister’s window, extracted her and shimmered out of view.

His mother’s staring at something on the table. Above the shaving foam over half his face, his father’s frown is ominous.

The object on the table whirrs, beeps and glows incandescent blue.

His brother, Mark, bursts into the room. “I can’t find Minnie anywhere. She’s gone missing.”

“Wowser!” His grin is wicked. “It wasn’t a dream. They took Minnie and left a mouse instead.”

~~~

Come Friday, it’s time to write a piece of flash fiction for the eclectic group Friday Fictioneers hosted by the lovely Rochelle. This week's photo prompt is -

 
Copyright- Marie-Gail Stratford

Remember the time

For the dVerse Poets challenge – Gender Bender. Kelly Letky set us the challenge to write a poem from the point of view of the opposite sex. Very difficult, I just found :)

REMEMBER THE TIME

There is grass growing

on your grave, little one.

Remember the time

when you had walked

on the grass and found

a wriggling worm. You

had run to me afraid and

I had lifted you in the air

and you had declared

you could touch the stars.

I don’t notice the stars anymore.

The tree beside your grave

is shedding leaves, little one.

Remember the times

when you had lain on

my chest, quiet and gently

breathing, and said it felt

like a tree. My arms

the branches. I suppose

you meant strong

and stable and rooted.

You had never seen an uprooted tree.

There are daisies

on your headstone, little one.

Remember the time

your mother and you

had made daisy chains

in the meadow not noticing

the birds that had snacked

on our picnic lunch.

How the two of you had

giggled until my belly

was full of your laughter.

She has not smiled in a long time. 

~~~

In my family, my father was the gentle one, pouring his gentle affection on me unconditionally. Of course, the scenario described above didn’t happen in my case, but I can imagine my father would have been devastated, I being the only daughter and the apple of his eye.

 

Sensuous Sundays - Wildflowers

Wildflowers - haiku


raindrops on my face,
pinpricks of cool. Like tiny
desert wildflowers

~~~

Death poems

On dVerse Poets Pub Gayle sets the challenge :  To write in haiku or tanka style to the theme of Jisei (Japanese death poems).

Gayle also says, "In ancient Japanese, Chinese and Korean cultures, a practice was used at the time of death to capture the last words spoken. This practice was called jisei (in Japan) or death poem and is the “farewell poem to life.” Jisei was written by monks, samurai, the literate and poets of these cultures. One of the earliest recorded jisei dates to 686 C.E. (Common Era) or in Christian terms, B.C. (before Christ) with the death of Prince Otsu who was the son of Emperor Temmu of Japan."

Japanese death poems - tanka

~~~

I hear the sea sing

in my veins, of homecoming.

Save your salty tears

for life and its sorry tales,

not me. I am going home.

~~~

This vain, heavy shell

I no longer need, fading

softly like daylight

surrenders to night, sighing

soft promises of return.

~~~

This shell will return

to its womb. My sinews will

turn into roots, limbs

into tree-trunks. And my song

will trill out from the tree tops.

~~~

Soon, I will be rain,

falling on seeds, springing them

into life. Lusty,

fecund, virile, alive. Death

is a mere wisp of a veil.

~~~

Sunbeam

(100 word flash fiction)

Family gone, career over, there was nothing to live for.

And so, she stood at the bridge, the portal between this life and the next. Above her, dark clouds rolled. The sky was already in mourning.

The office farewell gift, a brooch the colour of sunrise, felt heavy in her hand. As though pinning her down, inexorably, to the fabric of life.

She felt a tug on her sleeve. A teenage girl in tatters. A baby on her hip. Begging.

Inside her heart, gears shifted and moved. A sunbeam shot through the clouds.

“Would you like a meal? A home?”

~~~

Friday Fictioneers flash fiction for the photo prompt below -

PHOTO PROMPT © The Reclining Gentleman

The power of awe - tanka

What's a poem but

the shell around the heart being

split open by awe

beauty comes out of hiding

and love does a little dance

~~~

Sensuous Sundays - Chocolate

Chocolate – haiku

silken smooth melting

taste buds in sweet drunken swoon

dark ambrosia

~~~

The thief

(100 word flash fiction)

He pushed open the rusty gate and walked calmly to the crumbling house.

He planned to overpower her when she opened the door, force her to open the safe and decamp with the loot.

But, the door was open. She was lying on the floor. Her breaths long and laboured. Each one like it was the last.

Should he run, or call for help?

‘Who are you?” asked the emergency call operator.

The woman in an old photo on the wall looked just like the one in a photo he had carried in his wallet for 20 years.

“Her son.”

~~~

For Friday Fictioneers photo prompt below -

photo prompt © David Stewart

Writing

Glenn Colquhoun GP and poet on 'How do writing and medicine fit together?'


"Mainly they complement each other. Sometimes a poem is about trying to touch your hand as lightly as possible on the fabric of the universe. Medicine is the same."

Amen to that!

An Old Woman

by Arun Kolatkar

An old woman grabs
hold of your sleeve
and tags along.

She wants a fifty paise coin.
She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.

You’ve seen it already.
She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt.

She won’t let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.

You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.

When you hear her say,
‘What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?’

You look right at the sky.
Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.

And as you look on
the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.

And the hills crack.
And the temples crack.
And the sky falls

with a plateglass clatter
around the shatter proof crone
who stands alone.

And you are reduced
to so much small change
in her hand.

~~~