Our World Burns

Over at dVerse Björn is musing over a poetic form I’ve been wanting to play with for a while. The form of chant, possibly the most ancient form of poetry with roots before language itself. Go read Björn’s description of chants, as well as the chants of the other participants.

On to my chant. It’s not often I write poetry incorporating my faith, perhaps that is a failing on my part. Some of my uni readings bled into this (not too surprising as it was written whilst studying). I believe we are called to be stewards of a land we were given as a gift. We’re doing a crap job of it. This chant is hopefully a call to wake up from our numbness and self imposed blindness, it is hopefully a call to something better.

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Look around
Blood soaked hills
Blood soaked skies
Blood soaked seas
Not our fault
Our world burns

Head in sand
Life in hand
Life in doubt
Life in fear
Not our fault
Our world burns

Look around
We are numb
We are blind
We are deaf
Not our fault
Our world burns

Forgive our sins
Blood on hands
Blood on side
Blood on feet
This our fault
Our world burns

Help us bring
Life in hand
Life in hope
Life in joy
This our fault
Our world burns

Look around
We must feel
We must see
We must hear
This our fault
Our world burns

Our world burns
This our fault
Stand up
Stand up
Not too late
Our world burns
This our fault
There is time
If we stand
If we stand.

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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment
The Lonely Recluse

Garden Of Our Desire

Hello after a slightly prolonged absence. Life is busy at the moment, but let’s hope I find time to scribble words from time to time. Anyway, Claudia at dVerse has invited folk to write a poem about a garden or gardening, whether real or imaginary.

I chose to take the imaginary route. I had the line “rose tinted days” in my mind before reading the prompt, and ran with it. It became a bit more melancholy than expected, but I like the hope at the end of the tunnel. Go check out the other fantastic poets who have written garden poems this week

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I begged your pardon
Sat in the garden
Of our desire
When found a liar
Your heart did harden

We lived in a haze
Of rose tinted days
Our love was too great
We realised too late
Our hearts were ablaze

From fire comes ash
Burning love did flash
Our passion consumed
We were always doomed
We were far too rash

We planted the seed
In mutual need
Watching our love grow
But it came to show
That seed was a weed

Rooted in your lies
Blooming with my lies
Rose forming night-shade
Our hearts were betrayed
By each others cries

Yet ash gives new life
Despite all the strife
From desolation
Comes consolation
Despite our past strife

I hope that you know
Both our gardens grow
The mess that we made
Fertilised the glade
That each of us sow

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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment
The Lonely Recluse

Flower Moon

Frank at dVerse was considering May’s full moon, the Flower Moon. With his considerations, he invited folk to write a haibun referencing the flower moon

Typically a haibun consists of one or more paragraphs of prose – typically non-fictional or autobiographical – followed by one or more haiku. I’ve decided to be different in my prose (unless something has happened I’m unaware of). Go check out the other fantastic haibuns that have been entered.

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They say it was barren once. Yet now it blossoms. I am the last gardener in this place called Eden. I look up and see the barren one above, full of beauty. I go back to my chores, “No lollygagging” Pa would have said. I smile at the memory of Pa, old age took him a long time ago, but his words remain, “there’s work to be done girly, none of your lollygagging now, git to.”

I “git to” as I tend the gardens. I suppose it’s pointless now. I’m the last one left, the last of the moon’s childs. Our parents came up to plant a new Eden. The earth was becoming less inhabitable by the day, so finally they planned to colonise the moon. Then the bombs started dropping. The earth became barren in days. Lifeless. Dust strewn. The lunar gardeners survived, thrived even, for a time. The gardens grew, flowered, flourished.

But our mother soil was meant to be barren. So few children were born from that first generation. None were born after that. The gardens blossomed, the moon flowered, but we did not flower with it.

Now I am the last. I am old. The gardens will outlive me, plants will find their way where humans could not. The flowering moon will smile down on the dead earth as the worlds heal from the disease of humanity. I will not see it, for it is my time to feed the plants I have watered for so long. Yet it shall be, because it must be. So I go in peace.

Dead, wind blasted earth
Too sick from Atom to fruit
Under flowering Moon

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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment
The Lonely Recluse

Two Left Feet

So today Björn was thinking about waltzes, the classic “one, two, three” beat. He invited us to write a poem in trimeter to echo that beat.
Reading the prompt reminded me of a few old poems that I wrote a decade ago (according to the timestamps), if you’re interested in some of my old dabbling in waltzing poetry click for “The Dance Of Death”, “Totentanz”, and “Shall We Dance”. While you’re clicking links, go check out the other fantastic waltzes over at dVerse.

On to today’s, poem. I have two left feet, and I cannot keep a rhythm to save my life. I think that about sums up all I need to add.

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One, two, three, one, two, three
Hold my breath, count my step
Do not trip, do not slip
As we dance, as we dance
Stillness falls, vision comes
Spinning round, standing proud
And then it comes, and then it comes
One misstep, two misstep
Three misstep
Then you fall, then you fall

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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment
The Lonely Recluse

Wound

Another week, another prompt from the wonderful folk at dVerse. This week Lillian is hosting and we are due another quadrille. Lillian was musing on homographs – words with one spelling and multiple meanings, so we might lead someone to a lead weight if we were feeling so inclined. The homograph Lillian chose to challenge the good folk with is “wound”.

For those who don’t know, a quadrille is a 44 word poem of any form that has the prompt word around in some form so, for example wound, or wind, or wounded. As an extra challenge Lillian suggested weaving both meanings of this homograph into one poem, of course I had to take the challenge. Go check out the other wonderful responses to the prompt, why don’t you join in too?

My inspiration for this piece comes from why I started writing poetry in the first place. Poetry was always a way for me to deal with emotions I didn’t really know what to do with. Having to put the words in a form felt like a puzzle, and I enjoy solving puzzles, so it allowed me to grasp at emotions and feelings that I hadn’t been taught to deal with in other healthy, creative ways. So does that make the one who left my childhood innocence? I suppose that’s one way of reading it, but isn’t poetry wonderful for not having a single fixed interpretation?

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I wound my art
Round the wound you left
When you ripped my heart
From out my chest

In ink I bled
My healing I penned
Blood clot words I shed
For days on end

I wound my art
Round the wound you left

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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment,
The Lonely Recluse

For The Nest

So it’s prosery day at dVerse. If you don’t know, that means the good folk are writing 144 word stories with a line from a poem as the prompt and a necessary line. Sanaa has invited us to use the opening words of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Heartbeat “Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?”
Go read the other amazing pieces of prosery submitted for this prompt

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We rend the flesh. One mind for the nest. Back and to, back and to, back and to. The mother compels. The soldiers kill. We harvest. Others feast. Only mouths are we.
Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things? Who grows fat on the work of our jaws? Who is the mother who compels this orgy of blood? We have never seen her. We only hear the voice of loving command.
What is the safety of the nest if we starve with her feast in our teeth? What is the strength of the compulsion that forces our slavery? What is the price of freedom? What is the cost of rebellion?
But no. Mother compels. One mind for the nest. We rend the flesh. So it was. So it is. And so it shall be. Mother knows best.

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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment
The Lonely Recluse

The Seeds of the Day

So today Merril prompted the folk at dVerse to write a quadrille with the word seed in it. If you haven’t read this form before, it is a poem of exactly 44 words, generally with a prompt word in there somewhere. I’m back to my old old style of darker poetry with my take on today’s prompt, but go check out the other fantastic takes on today’s prompt

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The seeds of the day were sown
In smoke, ash, and bone
The cry of a dying crone
Baby’s boot, alone
The hearts of the men were stone
Deaf, to plea, to moan
The seeds of the day were sown
In blood soaked loam

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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment
The Lonely Recluse

Bridges

I’m on fire this week, two poems in two days. Over at dVerse Merril was musing about bidges, and invited folk to either write a poem with the word bridge, or to write a puente (Spanish for bridge), a puente has two matching stanzas with a middle line – a bridge between the two that links with each (sorry if my explanation is poor, go read Merril’s, and the fantastic poets who have written their bridges).

I had the dual ideas of building/burning bridges between people, particularly the bridges that are made and lost over the interwebs, the idea seemed to fit nicely with my understanding of the puente, so I thought I would write a bridge poem about bridges (although not about Bridge, I’m not good at cards).

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I build bridges in the sky
Hope connecting you and I
Edifices soaring high
Vain Gravity to defy
Building bridges in the sky

~ I light a match, watch it flare ~

I burn bridges in the sky
Ending hope twixt you and I
See the smoke soaring high
Vain, Gravity to defy
Burning bridges in the sky

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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment (it makes my day)
The Lonely Recluse

The Present

Frank over at dVerse has laid down the challenge to write a haibun about the present. I’ve got to admit this is the first time I’ve written anything in this style, so I hope that I haven’t taken too many liberties with what a haibun is supposed to be. Go check out the other awesome entries over at dVerse

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Here we stand, at the intersection of past and future. We stand eternally on a tipping point, all of possibility stretches out before and behind. Every heartbeat has led up to it. Every hope and dream coalesce around it. The infinite and the fleeting.

So proud stands the oak
Breathe in deep, the sun soaked skies
Know the here and now

The present, now, here. See it, feel it, touch it. Taste the possibility. The conjunction of all probabilities past, the explosion of all probabilities as they refract ever onwards. Watch as all we have been, all we will ever be, meets in a grain of sand. A toss of a coin. A turn of phrase.

Fast flows the river
The hope of future laughter
Silver glint of fish

Ever slipping away, never to be held. We cannot grasp the moment. Just touch, just kiss, just savour the present that is never present long. Forever joining, forever parting. Forever wondering when when became now, when now became then.

The warmth of hot brick
Moon shadows dancing in grass
The taste of your love

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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment
The Lonely Recluse

Bothersome Bibliographies

And I’m back from the dead yet again, I really should get a hold of my perpetual Lazarus syndrome. Sorry, I’ve been mad busy in real life (still am mad busy truth be told), but I’ve missed creative writing, so here is a little.

This piece is from dVerse’s Quadrille Monday with the prompt “Bother”. If I can bother you some more, go read the fantastic submissions now

Why do I bother seeking for words
Hunting, peering, searching, fearing,
Long days lost in dusty books
Penning lexemes to be locked in dusty books
Parched paragraphs perplexing pointlessly
I could be free
Flying, rhyming, dancing, climbing
Breathing fresh air
Away from bothersome bibliographies

Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment