Love

Ride the Waves ~ chant poetry

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 35 Comments

Here’s a pause in my travels this month, with a response to a dVerse prompt.

Ride the Waves

light-sparkles-on-waves

    Erie Basin Marina, Buffalo, New York

Waves flow in the air that surrounds me.
Waves flow in the emotions within me.
Waves flow in the love found within me.
Above me.
Around me.
Beneath me.
Release me from constraints.
All that I fear
falls to the side.
Fall with me.
Fall freely.
Fall for the love
found in the waves.
Found within me.
Found within you.
Found, never to be lost
as we ride our waves of love.

 

With Meet the bar with Chant poetry at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn asks us to write a poem in the form of a chant, with the use of extreme repetition.

Kansas

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 20 Comments

Kansas

Kansasas in not in
anymore
but you are

barely in
KC BBQ
a reminder

wheels rolling
across plains
not so plain

hills rolling
from flint to smoke
at 75 miles per

grasshoppers nod
among remnants of wheat
in fresh-cut fields

destination, family
where words roll
in stories told

heat in the air
nothing compared to
warmth in the tales

with bonds
stronger than the hills
deeper than the bottoms

bonds now stronger yet
make parting
no easy task

hills, once more
until, finally
not there, anymore
 

A weekend trip took us to Kansas, where we celebrated Independence Day at a family gathering.

There’s nothing massive about the Flint Hills and the Smoky Hills of Kansas, but they still provide terrain with a striking view.

(Kansas City straddles the Missouri River and the Kansas-Missouri border.)

More travel for two weeks to visit family (starting Saturday) will means less time checking into WordPress.

Image: Library of Congress “a pumpjack, sometimes referred to as a ‘grasshopper’ oil pump because of its appearance”

Ultimate Destination

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 10 Comments

Ultimate Destination

Distance traveled
along this life,
true values held
and free from strife,
not all that great
as life runs late
while near my dear.

 

Thanks to Ron. Lavalette for introducing me to the Ha’Sonnet, a form of poetry that follows some of the sonnet rules within a short form of seven lines with four syllables each. “The first four lines set up the poem like the first two stanzas of a sonnet. The fifth and sixth line contain a little turn, or volta, preferably unexpected, like the third stanza of a sonnet. And the seventh line a resolution, or turn, like the final couplet of a sonnet.” Rhyming is optional, but one suggestion is “a b a b c c dd with the seventh line (dd) rhyming on the second and fourth syllable.” (as described by Stephen W. Buchanan on his website If You Haven’t Got A Sonnet).

keying the senses

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 4 Comments

keying the senses_wordlekeying the senses

no wicked pleasure,
your hand touching mine

my world rocked,
shocked, sounds & shots

of light shining through glass
crystals, a sugar high

with permanence, all
else a game, fleeting,

overshadowed by
the fantastic keying the senses

This poem is my response to The Sunday Whirl – Wordle #505. The key words are in bold, below.

keying the senses

keying the senses_wordle_ano wicked pleasure,
your hand touching mine

my world rocked,
shocked, sounds & shots

of light shining through glass
crystals, a sugar high

with permanence, all
else a game, fleeting,

overshadowed by
the fantastic keying the senses

Neither open road ~ American Sentence

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 39 Comments

Neither open road

Neither open road nor open door could lead this heart to leave your side.

This American Sentence (my first) is in response to Misky’s Twiglet #230, with the prompt of no rope. Read closely, and you will find “no rope.”

The American Sentence was created by Allen Ginsberg
~ loose American form of haiku, with 17 syllables
~ represented as a sentence
~ reference to a season is not required
~ similar to senryū
~ read more here & here

Image source: cullybarbosa at Pixabay

Shared with How’s your remodeling going? which is Open Link Night at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, hosted by Lillian.

What Is Nine Hundred Miles? ~ prosery

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 28 Comments

What Is Nine Hundred Miles?

What is nine hundred miles to a man when family is a short flight away, or a drive in a day? Is there separation when connection is as simple as a message, a call, or FaceTime? What is the separation when the difference is measured in split seconds?

The heart will guide where the mind cannot see. And so the man made the move. Both baggage and cartage. A relocation of nine hundred miles to be with the woman he loved, loves still, and to know happiness. He learned that nine hundred miles is actually eighteen hundred miles, for the heart must always return. He has traveled that distance many times over the years, so that he could know the two sides of happiness. So it is, and will always be, for crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

This is my response to Prosery: Finding Your Way, the prompt from Merril at dVerse ~ Poets Pub. With Prosery, the challenge is to write a piece of flash fiction with a 144-word limit. Included in the bit of prose is to be a complete line from a poem. For this prompt, the line to be included is from “Map to the Next World,” by Jo Harjo.

“Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end”
                                                                                                    – Jo Harjo

I’ve met the additional challenge of hitting the 144-word mark, exactly.

July will be nine years since I moved from New York to be with Bonnie. We were married three years ago, but there have been many trips back to Buffalo to visit family.