Author: Ken / rivrvlogr

Poetry

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 14 Comments

Poetry

Poetrythe poet
unabashedly
announces
each moment
is worthy of a poem
each is a poem

with
each
new word
a poem
will take the reader
deeper into its relevance
broadening the experience
until the reader
understands
those thoughts
are
true

My response to Day 7 of napowrimo.net, which asks us to write either a shadorma or a Fib, contains both.

The Fib is a poetic form created by Gregory K. Pincus that plays off the mathematical Fibonacci sequence to arrive at the syllable count per line. For a 6-line poem, that count would be 1/1/2/3/5/8. Each count is determined by adding the 2 previous line-counts. A multi-stanza poem can be written by linking multiple Fibs together. Mine was created by reversing the syllable count in the second half – 8/5/3/2/1/1.

A shadorma has one or more 6-line stanza(s) with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5. I posted a shadorma for each day of the month during November 2017.

~ Day 7 ~

Image source: Wikipedia

Instillation

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 19 Comments

Instillation

Instillation
(TANSTAAFL)

Blue collar, with roots deeper than any walnut or oak.
I remember those black walnuts from Uncle Bill’s farm.
Shells as hard as the hammer to break them.
And bitter, but hard work can be that way. Even if
a vacation on his dairy farm was more work than play,
it still made great memories.
He wasn’t a man to shy away from work.

Neither was his brother, whose lessons carried me through life.
Even before I worked beside him on a loading dock,
there was work in the yard, digging a trench for a foundation.
Pulling the transmission out of one of my first cars and replacing it.
Building a barn when he finally bought his own piece of land.
The years I put in on the dock after he retired.
The many years after that driving a truck, making deliveries.
The lesson that got me through all of that was simple.

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

 

This poem is my response to Day 6 of napowrimo.net, which asks us to use a quote from a favorite book as inspiration and as the title for a poem, and then to change the title of the poem. The term TANSTAAFL (“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”) was a theme in “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” by Robert Heinlein, (1966). The complete phrase was already in use by the early 1940s.

NaPoWriMo 2021

~ Day 6 ~

scattered clouds drift by ~ gogyohka

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 20 Comments

scattered clouds drift by
a beautiful day to be out
a tufted titmouse agrees
sunning turtles splash as I pass
my paddle slices the water

 

This gogyohka (off-prompt for Day 6 of napowrimo.net) is my response to Colleen Chesebro’s #Tanka Tuesday #Poetry Challenge No. 220, #Poet’sChoice.


Gogyohka (pronounced go-gee-yoh-kuh)
~ a form of Japanese poetry pioneered by Enta Kusakabe in the 1950s
~ 5-line poetry ~ like tanka, but with freedom from restraints
~ no fixed syllable requirement
~ no conventions regarding content
~ brief lines in keeping with the tradition of Japanese short verse

NaPoWriMo 2021

~ Day 6 ~

Image: The Moreau River in April, Missouri

The Sweetest Wine ~ quadrille

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 30 Comments

The Sweetest Wine_2

The Sweetest Wine

Together, our horizon knows no bounds.

The nearest rose and the most distant star
could not be closer to this truth.

Yet the scent of a rose,
the beauty in a star, cannot compare.

One kiss from you, and I know the sweetest wine.

The Sweetest Wine_1

This poem (off-prompt for Day 5 of napowrimo.net) is my response to Quadrille #125 – In Praise of the Grape, the prompt from Linda Lee Lyberg at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, which is to use a form of the word wine in a 44-word poem, with no required meter or rhyme.

NaPoWriMo 2021

~ Day 5 ~

Images
Wikimedia Commons – Rosette Nebula surrounding star cluster NGC2244
Astronomy Picture of the Day – “cluster galaxies and cluster dark matter, analogous to the many points of light one would see while looking through a wine glass at a street light”

Thoughts Never Shared

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 18 Comments

Thoughts Never Shared

Thoughts Never Shared

No hourglass will hold the sand that sifts
through my fingers at this moment.
As I stand here, my thoughts
are of the present we could have had.

Walks on the shore.
The shells we would take
as mementos. Your favorite
dish with linguine, you scoffing
at any choice that has shells or rotini.
Laughter, as we share a private joke.
Talk of our future, our eyes locked,
communicating in unspoken words.

The ether holds my closest connection
to you now, your name mere pixels
before my eyes, never fully in focus.
Messages never sent languish,
familiar only to me.

I place one message in a bottle,
turn to the shore behind me, and cast it
into the future we’ll never have. I turn back
to gaze into the desert before me.

This poem is my response to Day 4 at napowrimo.net, where the prompt is to use a photo from @SpaceLiminalBot for inspiration. I chose the above image, also seen here.

Per napowrimo.net: “liminal,” in other words – a place or sensation that exists at or on both sides of a boundary or threshold, neither one thing or the other, but something betwixt and between.

This WordPress editor is driving me crazy!!

~ Day 4 ~

Vespiary Breviary

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 19 Comments

Vespiary BreviaryVespiary Breviary

Such fine paper, never to know the feel of ink
Closely guarded, with secrets never to be told
Chambered, holding more than words could convey
Delicate, while infused with hidden strength
Touched by wings, yet never meant to take flight
A message delivered with a sting far greater than any words
Pray the experience is a positive one

This poem is off prompt for Day 3 at napowrimo.net. I just couldn’t get into the challenge.

It’s an edit of something written in August 2020, two weeks after my bicycle injury. The memory of both is still pretty vivid. I could have sworn I posted it, but WordPress tells me otherwise. I guess I was so wrapped up in that that I never got around to posting this. As I stepped through the sliding door onto my deck, I passed through a spider web. Turning to brush the fibers from my face I watched as one long strand stretched and tugged at a wasp nest tucked under the eaves. Two wasps immediately took flight. In a split second, one of the wasps managed to sting both of my middle fingers as I waved my hand about to keep it from my head. A day later, I still couldn’t get my ring past the knuckle. Yes, the same hand that was swollen from my bicycle mishap two weeks earlier.

Image source: pestworld.org

~ Day 3 ~

900 Miles

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 29 Comments

900 Miles

90, 271, 71, 70

There is logic in that progression.
There to here, a direct route.

But it was not logic that drove me.
It was love that brought me down those roads.
Logic would have asked, “Why?”

Leave behind all I’d come to know in my life?
But what would life be without you?
And so, I chose this road rather than a life of regret.
I chose you, and that made all the difference.

This poem is my response to Day Two at napowrimo.net, where the prompt, inspired by the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken,” is to “write a poem about your own road not taken – about a choice of yours that has ‘made all the difference’ and what might have happened had you made a different choice.” In 2012, I followed my heart and moved from New York to Missouri.

~ Day 2 ~

Productive Reality ~ ekphrastic poem ~ with audio

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 31 Comments
 

Productive Reality

Productive RealityExpand your mind. Suspend
disbelief and bring relief. Seize
that fine line between yesterday
and tomorrow. This moment,
any moment, is yours to uncover.
Whatever you find, wherever
you find it, you’ll still be here
when you get there; always
be there, even when you return.

The deeper you go the more
you’ll know. With no load
to carry, the world is in your hands.
Experience sonic expansion.
More than memory, the mansion
of your mind is a palace, no less
than the world that surrounds you.
More than you know,
and more than that, awaits you.

This ekphrastic poem is my response to Day One at napowrimo.net, where the prompt is to write a poem inspired by the animated version of “Seductive Fantasy”, by The Sun Ra Arkestra.

NaPoWriMo 2021

~ Day 1 ~

Also shared with OH MY! It’s April Fools’ Day!
(or Open Link Night) at dVerse ~ Poets Pub.

moon no longer full ~ senryū

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 28 Comments

moon no longer full
there is less light in the world
when a friend passes

This senryū is my response to Colleen Cheseboro’s #Tanka Tuesday #Poetry Challenge #219: #specificform, which asks that we write a haiku or tanka on any subject. While mortality has been an occasional subject in my poetry over the years, it seemed to become more of a recurring theme once I reached Medicare age, three years ago. What can I say? People around me are getting older. I’m getting older.

Images
Wikimedia Commons – Heron at New Moon, by Ohara Koson
Waning gibbous moon, Jefferson City Missouri, 01 April 2021


This will serve as my poem for Day 1 of National/Global Poetry Writing Month,
in case I don’t meet the challenge at napowrimo.net.

NaPoWriMo 2021

~ Day 1 ~