12/09/2014

Carpe Diem Tan Renga Squared, Björn Rudberg's "Loon is calling"

The task in this Tan Renga challenge is to turn a haiku into four stanzas. In this case here an atmospheric haiku by Bjorn Rudberg that really reaches and tugs in a moody feeling. Accordingly the stanzas are added in order to form a cooperative Tan Renga.

evening mist
memories are fading
loon is calling

I am far from the river
but the river is not far from me

what is it 
that this haunting sound wants from me
when I am so lost?

my hands tremble, I raise my gun
for a shot must be fired for a kill



07/09/2014

Carpe Diem: Cemetery



That unforgettable opening...






under a full moon
black silhouette caws on a cross
what, no worms for you raven?






03/09/2014

Carpe Diem Special, Francis of Assisi's first quote


the trees give the shade
the rock gives a seat
the sun fills my Lappland cup


Friday Fictioneers: Huh, Aah, Uh Uh

"Uh"
"Aiiia," she said, pointing at the flames, still crackling, still going strong, and cackled a laugh: "aha, aha, a, ha ha!"
She clapped her paws, her hands, together, echoing around the cave.
"Heh!" said her partner. He turned around and bent over, singing his backside at the top of the flames. "Aiii!" he said, setting off another cackle from his partner.

They sat and stared.

She took a stick and thread some large intestines of the recently slain mammoth through it, and plunged it into the fire, watching it cook rapidly, in spits and sighs.
"Mmmm!" she said, rubbing her belly and sniffing the air, "Ho' dug!"
Not to be outdone, her partner dipped a stick into a hole filled with a mass of gooey leftover and real spit.
"Mmmash!" he grunted happily: "mmmashma'lluh," he said. "Mmaan."


For the one and only... at Friday Fictioneers, picture by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Carpe Diem, "Honour the Little Creatures"


Ah if only you knew the hard work that goes into maintaining a forest! Except that it is not a one-way system, of course, the forest also maintains the little creatures in return, and in fact, they are the forest, too, as is the wind, brushing the leaves.

All that work, day in, day out, as for night, well, the bees may rest after the sun goes down but there are others, plenty others who take over, silently, diligently, the ants that clean the paths of leaves, living in their giant mounds of pine needles, and the wasps, who start early and keep the bugs at bay, for not all work to conserve; some seem to exist only so that many work to conserve. And all for free! Not one cent exchanges hands.

Perhaps, there is another hidden currency, in their diligence and duty, a mystery we have not yet learnt enough about.

the peaceful forest-
more busy than a hectic city
yet so quiet to my ears




22/08/2014

Carpe Diem Special, Jim Kacian's "city morning"

A tanka in the same tone, sense and spirit as Jim Kacian's haiku found on the Carpe Diem website here


leaves fall one by one
until even shadows disappear
and memories too
and one day the whole of summer
is swept down the drains in rain

27/07/2014

Carpe Diem, Issa, "New Year's Writing"

on the canvas, brush strokes
tall grasses grow quick, and tall
onto a dark cloud
when raindrops land on the picture 
I know I am in sync with nature





dversepoets










20/07/2014

dVerse - My Pub

every time the bar fills up
smoke-filled memories drift away
like vacant lots emptied of tots
as the years, they roll on by

but the bastards, the knee-cappers
and whores
return for their dose, lipstick on rims
determined to drink themselves dry

an ex nazi, once talk of the town
real drunken anti Fred Astaire declares
"that through drink we learn who we despise!"

and someone's bloodshot eyes turn blue
a beer glass sails by, a tray, too, with no waitor
like parts of a yacht suspended in motion
till everything hits land and bruises are scattered
and the tray swipes a table with a clatter
while the glass connects the two braincells left
in the man holding onto the floor

just another night of many in my youth
in the bar where I served the ale
where I kissed the Swedish au pair
who came there to be admired
and I surely did
laying her bare on barrels of beer

where I found out a knife in the stomach does not hurt
when stuck into someone else's than mine
and opening a door repeatedly into a head to stop a fight dead
works only if he is not sodden with wine

and I'd wake up at dawn face on the floor
bar door still open, barmaid Tina by my side
shoulder shaken by the old Spanish deckhand
who came to clean up the morning's beer

and clean out the guests we'd invited for the night
the drunkards, fighters, survivors and fools
jesters, drug dealers, torturers, and those whores
of which I was one, the biggest whore of them all

in the pub of my past that never quite lets go
a bar like a boomerang thrown, spinning round and round
where the anti Fred Astair could not dance but only rant
like they used to do in those Munich beer halls



Not dedicated to the Pickwick Pub in Geneva, where much more than described happened most nights.