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Tag: poems

A Springtime Walk

Cardinal singing for spring

Every tree along the trail to the pond wears its own cardinal, each claiming territory and attracting mates, filling the air with song. Gnatcatchers and kinglets hop through the branches with the chickadees. Blue Jays build a nest by the pond where the ducks had been until yesterday when they got the migration call and departed for points north. With all the birds alive and calling attention to themselves, the deer skeleton was quite a shock.

on a bed of leaves,
a deer skeleton picked clean,
save one furry hoof

South Austin Chili

Black beans, fresh rinsed
obsidian jewels,
drop through fingers
feeling for stones.

Pasilla chiles, toasting,
warm the air. Later,
ground and simmered in oil,
they seethe in a mild lava.

Chocolate softens,
flows into the chili—
an ebony swirl
rippling on a midnight sea.

This is for Read Write Poem’s What’s Eating You?.

One of my favorite things to cook is The Soup Peddler’s South Austin Chili recipe in his Slow and Difficult Soups. I like the end result, but I love the process of making this chili. The time spent in the kitchen working the ingredients and listening to music while enjoying a beer as the pasillas toast in the oven is sheer joy.

The chili itself is wonderfully rich with a slow chipotle burn, and with the chocolate added it comes off almost like a mole.

My Other Blog: a gnarled oak

I started another blog about a month ago, but kept it under my hat until I had a name for it. The name came this week: a gnarled oak.

It’s from this haiku I wrote last week:

I watched and listened—
a gnarled oak full of stories,
birds turned into words

a gnarled oak is a microblog where I’ll be posting short observational poem-like things mostly about birds and nature.

This started from my experiments with Twitter (you can follow me on Twitter where the gnarled oak stuff is automatically be cross-posted). The notion of posting every moment of one’s life is kind of silly so I just twittered short little poem-things and haiku. I discovered there are a lot of people who do this. Many quite well. I wanted a more personal and simpler space for these besides Twitter, and I discovered Tumblr, a microblogging platform that works nicely for this.

The things I post there are the things that often got written and lost in my paper journals, but after being inspired by a small stone, a handful of stones, The Morning Porch, TWITTERKU, Open Micro, Paiku, Haiku Habits, Full Moon of November, Oversouled and numerous others whose RSS feeds and tweets I’ve been enjoying, I decided to have a go at this style of blogging. Many of these sites are powered by Tumblr and that’s how I found it, so thanks to all of those for inspiring me.

Coyote Mercury is still my main joint, but you’ll find these other bits of writing that seem too small for a “full-size” blog laid out for large images at a gnarled oak where they won’t be overwhelmed and can kind of live by themselves in a simpler region of the blogosphere that lacks sidebars, comments, spam, and upgrades.

Check out a gnarled oak and have a look around. There’s even an rss feed for those who use readers.

Friday Hound Blogging: NaisaiKu III

Phoebe Barks

can you call it fun
if no one ever gets hurt?
RED CUTS ON WHITE FUR
if no one ever gets hurt,
can you call it fun?

This is for my rough-and-tumble greyhound Phoebe. She’s always got a cut or a scrape or a bloody appendage. It’s all fun and games even when she gets hurt. We’re pretty sure she thinks that’s half the fun.

If you’re interested in the form of the poem, it’s a NaisaiKu and it was written for Week 3 of the NaisaiKu… Challenge.

[saveagrey]

Nycticorax

A nycticorax nycticorax brouhahas behind my back,
Monkey swings a question: axes if I’ll take a hack.
Banging fall against my led racks one up for me.
On a wire, freezing fire, spinning tire, unicycle riders flee.
A liar pulls his pants up higher.
Typewriter, scared-of-spiders, aims a little higher:
Could the cold of clouds combine?
Do the roses know the thyme?
This is strange—her thin I thought; you thought it
Too. You know it’s true.

This is for read write prompt #68: meaning is optional. Surprisingly enough, it was fun. I tried to write something that sounded interesting and would be fun to read out loud yet with as little meaning as possible. Despite my initial attitude indicated by the words in bold, it was more difficult than I imagined it would be. It also required more thought than I anticipated. Who knew it would take so much time to write something that doesn’t mean anything?

Nycticorax nycticorax is the Latin name for the Black-crowned Night Heron. The literal translation is “night raven.”

Can you find the line from a Cure song that snuck in here slightly altered?

The Journey off the Path

In the dusky woods behind the lighthouse,
legends flourish and tangle, thick as weeds.
Liars, poets and pranksters all espouse
fair warnings they know you’ll never heed.
You’ll wish your sword weren’t now a plow
if you should dare proceed.

She warns you not to leave the path
or wander into dark and mossy woods.

In nightmares, ignored warnings bloom like flares;
branches claw the clouds; darkness settles round.
Wandering till trees repeat and even prayers
unheard are lost, and rising, make no sound.
Faint steps—wolf or bear? Turn, but nothing there.
Each steps’ crunch—bones rattling underground.
Each step deals a lonely solitaire
against your faith in being found.

She warns you not to leave the path
or wander into dark and mossy woods.

Desperate, you forsake the trail.
Without a map, you seek a fairer route.
When after darkest days, you find a vale,
a bright respite from fear and pain and doubt,
you discover, then, that only when you’ve strayed
you find your truest way.

She lies about leaving the path
to trap you in the dark and mossy woods.

This is a bop style poem written for Read Write Poem’s share the bop prompt. Participants were asked to donate two lines of poetry, and then pick someone else’s lines to serve as the refrain in their own poems. The refrain in this one was donated by Christine Swint who writes at balanced on the edge. I loved the mystery of the “dark and mossy woods” and wondered what was off the path.

I didn’t know where it would go (neither the path nor the poem), but it was fun using someone else’s idea as a jumping off point. As I wrote, I found the poem wanting to rhyme, which I don’t usually do, but this is all about experimenting so I followed that path and wound up using a sonnet-like rhyme.

And, for those who may be interested, Deb at Stoney Moss wrote a very cool poem with the lines that I donated. Her poem is called “A Vulture’s Love Is True.”

Update: Angie at The Space Between Words also used my lines. Her poem is “cathartes aura bop.” Go read it.

Friday Cat Blogging: NaisaiKu

Simon Waits

piercing eyes scan all
he measures my weight in meat
jaguar on the couch
PIERCING EYES SCAN ALL
jaguar on the couch
he measures my weight in meat
piercing eyes scan all

piercing eyes scan all
he measures my weight in meat
jaguar on the couch
HE MEASURES MY WEIGHT IN MEAT
jaguar on the couch
he measures my weight in meat
piercing eyes scan all

piercing eyes scan all
he measures my weight in meat
jaguar on the couch
JAGUAR ON THE COUCH
jaguar on the couch
he measures my weight in meat
piercing eyes scan all

This is for The NaisaiKu Challenge. What is a NaisaiKu? The explanation is here, but mainly it’s a way to play with words and phrases using a 5-7-5 haiku as a starting point. Clever blogger that I am, I decided to combine this with some good old fashioned Friday Cat Blogging.

I attempted all 3 varieties of NaisaiKu, and like how they work together increasing the paranoia.

And, yes, I realize that the picture doesn’t match the words, but that’s only because Simon prefers to keep his eyes closed. But he is awake. Waiting.