Magic of the Oracle
The light in a breeze.
The perfume of the stars.
With her many voices,
breathing her soft laugh,
she dazzles as she celebrates.
Always, if we listen.
With help from The Oracle at Magnetic Poetry, this poem
is inspired by Merril Smith’s All the Questions.
If you want to try magnetic poetry, you can do it online, here.
Background image: Wikimedia Commons
Consulting the Oracle, by John William Waterhouse
Determination
Do not draw the gate on this life,
standing firm still in the winds
of change, lives passing by, unknowing.
Pride and determination build
inner strength, the scars of time
the sign of their healing.
The image above is by Sue Vincent, from Tenacity #midnighthaiku at Daily Echo.
Both the haiga and her prose inspired this poem.
Acquisition
I hold aloft what holds me down,
My sense of self, as yet unsound.
No sense of where my mind should be,
My troubles named, within me found.
And yet this weight that’s placed on me
Need not be what the world should see.
Acknowledging that I’m not bound
May offer possibilities.
All month, I held off from attempting to write a rubaiyat, finding no interest in the form. I guess I just needed something to write about. I found that in Kerfe Roig’s Inquisition. I left this as a comment, and I’m just under the wire for Frank Hubeny’s month-long prompt at dVerse, Poetry Forms: Rubaiyat. This is written in iambic tetrameter, with a rhyme scheme of AABA BBAB.
Image source: pngtree.com
A Poem Has Its Way
Free from any association
with its writer’s state of mind,
this poem lives through the will
of a poem that held its own
writer captive for hours.
I lay no blame on Ben,
himself a victim of verses
determined to be heard,
or rather discovered by
this unsuspecting reader.
And with that discovery
was planted a germ, so that you,
dear reader, would know
its fruits, a missive announcing
little more than its arrival.
Inspired by Poems Lead Poets by Ben Naga.
Kristjaan, at Carpe Diem, is an oncology nurse, and he holds out hope that efforts for re-organization of his hospital prove successful:
peeking through dark clouds
she … the moon … sends her light
towards earth
© Chèvrefeuille
I’ve responded:
shadows seem less
silent gift from the moon
closer to dawn
scattered light
truths that elude
our eyes live in dreams
waiting for the mind
to recognize them
on waking
My response to Merril Smith’s poem Blue Pony Dreams.
I’m posting this for Open Link Night at dVerse.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Blue Horses by Franz Marc)
Letter to Okaji on the Past Not So Perfect
Dear Bob: I often think that things are just as they should be. The house is just right. My car is running fine, on it’s way to 200,000 miles. The young are healthy, the elders nearly so. And then the lawn dies under another heat wave, after it’s third planting, and the throttle body on the car sucks more water than air as it chokes and dies during a 700 mile drive to a funeral in the dead of winter. But I limp home after a major repair with engine flush and decide not to tell the local shop they cracked the oil filler cap when they changed my oil. I learn to live with weeds and balance water consumption with a scraggly lawn. I also remind myself that a sore knee when I make that mid-nightly trip to the bathroom doesn’t mean I won’t wake up in the morning. Life goes on, sometimes smoothly. Sometimes we limp on, but we don’t let that spoil our view out the window, or even down the road. All my best. Ken.
A reply to Robert Okaji’s Letter to Gierke from the Future’s Past.
(I think this may be my first prose poem.)
