Monday, December 23, 2024

1344 - The Laneway

 

Image by ChatGPT

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

earth, herbs, cobbled, vines, thread, spark, heart, whispers, witches, shifts, pearls, words



The Laneway

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; 
but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin

Life is like a winding cobbled laneway,
Bumpy, twisted, and somewhat random.
Aromatic herbs grow in corners, in cracks,
Where earth has gathered over ages.
Vines twist and thread their way up fences,
Some houses present their faces to the path
Opening their heart and hearth to the traveller,
Others present their back—not wrong, just different.

Coloured gateways, fences of all sorts,
Line the traveller’s path, guiding and repelling.
Whispers, words heard behind these walls
Indistinct but emphatic, spark thoughts
That, like the laneway, weave and shift.

The mind of the walker of this cobbled path
Hears the gems, the pearls, but also the doubting
Thoughts of the witches, demons and goblins
Perched on fences, chattering, incanting, laughing…
“Turn back, Dick Wittington! Turn back!”
But there is no turning back.
The laneway closes behind you.




Sunday, December 15, 2024

1343 - Allegro Non Troppo

 


The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

remote, misty, scrape, slippery, candles, fresh, dust, magic, minor, strum, string, follow

Written with love for my daughter, Lydia.



Allegro non troppo.

We are stringed instruments
That the god of fortune strums.
The double helix sets the tune
Life then sets the harmony and drums.

The past can be slippery, obscure,
Misty, distant and remote,
But scrape off the years of dust
You will find it fresh beneath that coat.

The helix leaves a clear tune to follow,
The past is gone, so best move on.
The helix twists, a thing of magic.
No minor chords in its sweet song.

So many candles have gone unseen
Birthdays, first and in between, are stacked
So many thoughts of what might have been.
Now is the time for the second act.


Monday, December 09, 2024

1342 - Wombats Don't Eat lettuce

 



Wombats don’t eat lettuce.

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” 
– Aesop

It was a simple act,
Done on an impulse.
The outer leaves of a lettuce
Were presented, as an offering.
Nothing.  Marsupial indifference.


But life’s like that, isn’t it?
Or, at least, it should be.
Little acts of kindness
Thrown like bottles
Into the tumbling sea of life.
Maybe they are found.
Maybe not.
Sometimes the message arrives.
Sometimes not.
But that’s not the point—
Just keep throwing.


Monday, November 25, 2024

1341 - Not in the spirit.

 

Image by ChatGPT

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

hungers until garden frayed tattered belonging spirits body salvage history walk stories


Not in the spirit.

"Until the lions have their historians, 
tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter,"  
-- African proverb.

History is a succession of stories.
Agincourt belonging to England;
Caesar a tattered body in the forum;
The garden of Eden, snake and apple;
Moses walked the desert for forty years,
A trip Google says should take six hours.
In a society that hungers for glory
The fabric of truth is frayed but protective.
Until we have a way to verify the stories
There is no way to salvage the truth.
But we don’t want the truth,
We want the triumphant, the glorious
And so the stories live on.
Somewhere, ancient spirits 
watch and weep.


Saturday, November 23, 2024

1340 - To all in tents...

 



Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

To all in tents...

There was an old bugger named Jim
Who headed to the coast on a whim.
With three ladies in tow
There was no way to know
What the Fates had in store for him!


See you in a fortnight.  Perhaps.

Friday, November 22, 2024

1339 - Einstein's Sauna

 

Image by ChatGPT - no idea where ºA comes from.

Poets and Storytellers United has the prompt "Opposites".
I take the view that a lot of what we consider opposites
are not really opposite at all.

Background note: 
34ºC = 93ºF,   55ºC = 131ºF


Einstein's Sauna

You surely cannot be serious?
You'll be certified: mad & delirious.
The day's getting warmer
And your having a sauna?
It's all relative, says Albert, politely.

It's fifty five inside, let us say,
So when you leave to continue your day
The thirty four's a relief
(Though it is rather brief)
It's all relative, says Albert, quite rightly.


I tried this and it really does feel nice to step into 34ºC from 55ºC.

Monday, November 18, 2024

1338 - The Sea Within

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 
stirs, scents, unrelenting, nudged, magic, stretch, face, words, space, edge, sense, end



The Sea Within

Currents.
Currently flowing.
Waves. Beating, unrelenting,
Wash over me, through me.
Words, emotions, senses, 
Stir, nudge, jostle me
Fight for space in me
Tumble through my mind.
Sounds, tastes, even scents,
Toss and turn, end on end.
It is both magic and scorcery.
But I must wear it, face it.
It takes me to the edge,
Teeters and then re-centres,
Stretches me, contracts me,
Creates me.
Deserts me.


Friday, November 15, 2024

1337 - My Favourite Things

 

The Poet's and Storyteller's prompt is "what delights us".


My favourite Things
(Apologies to Rodgers & Hammerstein.)

All types of cheese and sesame snaps,
Red wine in glasses and crispy lamb flaps.
The ability to silence a telephone's ring—
These are a few of my favourite things

Watching a cat walk, eating cream slices
Uncomplicated electronic devices
Magpies that chortle and choirs that sing—
These are a few of my favourite things

Home made spaghetti and parmesan cheese
A day without pain in either of my knees
Breasts that bounce like jelly on springs—
These are a few of my favourite things

When the soup burns
What the cat brings
When I'm writing bizarre
I simply remember my favourite things—

And pour a glass of Pinot Noir.


Wednesday, November 13, 2024

1336 - Tapestry, Unstitched.

 


The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 
Cloaked, ruins, ancient, lace, communes, stitched, spirits, wind, drive, curling, icy, ground


Tapestry, Unstitched.

In the tapestry of life, we're all connected. 
Each one of us is a gift to those around us 
helping each other be who we are, 
weaving a perfect picture together.

-- Anita Moorjani


Communes in the bush
Green tea, tofu and reflection.

Ancient ruins in the jungle
Cloaked in a fig-tree lace.

Spirits soar by the sea
The wind is driving, icy.

A fire on the ground.
Smoke curling, swirling, gone.

Are they all linked?
Yes and no.  But mostly.


Sunday, November 10, 2024

1335 - Details? You want details?

 


Details?  You want details?

Husband:
What's for dinner?
Oh, by the way, Betty's had a baby.

Wife:
A baby!  
Boy or girl?
What name did they give it?
How long was the labour?
How long was the baby?
How heavy was the baby?
Did she need painkillers?
Was it a Caesarian?
What hospital is she in?
What colour was the delivery room?
Was there music playing?

Husband:
Um...

Wife:
You didn't ask these questions?

Husband:
Um...
Betty's had a baby!


Friday, November 08, 2024

1334 - No News is Good News

 


The Poet's and Storyteller's prompt is "holding your breath".


No News is Good News.

Sort of to the tune of The Piano Man 

It's six o'clock and the news has come on,
The stories are alarming and grim.
There's chaos and mayhem
And world wars are about to begin.

The stories are dark and so fearful,
The main common factor is death.
Maybe there's a story of kindness and hope
But I wouldn't be holding your breath.

Chorus
Give us some news 
That will give us a lift,
The current would hardly be missed
There must be a good news story
That will stop us from slashing our wrists.

The news reader sits there quite calmly.
But the war in Ukraine is unending
And the Gaza affair brings only despair,
I ask could the world be now ending?

I can't help but sense it's unreal
There's no end to the stories of woe
I want to pack up and quietly depart
But I haven't got somewhere to go.

Chorus
Give us some news 
That will give us a lift,
The current  would hardly be missed
There must be a good news story
That will stop us from slashing our wrists.


Monday, November 04, 2024

1333 - On the other hand...

 


The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 
sighs, fire, flip, ravaged, blue, floor, emerge, mask, ashes, soak, skin, weave


 
On the other hand…

"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality"
-- Seneca
 

Objectively, we have emotions, feelings.
Subjectively, masks often emerge to hide them.

Objectively, when learning new things, we make mistakes.
Subjectively, we wish the floor to open up and swallow us.

Objectively, we have been soaked to the skin,
Subjectively, we respond with a flood of tears.

Objectively, we have been robbed.
Subjectively, we feel violated and ravaged.

Objectively, we tried but didn’t win.
Subjectively, second place, our mouth tastes of ashes.

Objectively, we are retrenched for economic reasons.
Subjectively, we have been fired and judged as wanting.

Objectively, we are left out of the team.
Subjectively, we are disappointed, we sigh, feel blue.

Objectively, someone tooted us on the road.
Subjectively, we flip the bird and disparage their parentage.

Objectively, life happens.
Subjectively, we weave meaning to it.

Friday, October 25, 2024

1332 - What a Wonderful(ly Cynical) World.

 


The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 
scratches, screeches, soothes, fringe, image, sighs, locks, shiny, rises, swarm, ghoulish, night
I ignored all of them.

Poets & Storytellers invited us to write about the moon
I ignored that too.


What a Wonderful(ly Cynical) World.

With apologies to Louis Armstrong.


I see trees of green, red roses too
But trees can also be red and silver and gold
In Texas the roses are yellow, or so I’m told.
I see them bloom for me and you
Well, technically they bloom to attract pollenators
Birds, bees, and insects.  Curiously not alligators.
And I think to myself
A point of order, if it’s alright with you,
There’s no-one else that you can really think to.
What a wonderful world
The climate’s shot, the fascists are coming,
The cruelty in Gaza is simply mind-numbing.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
But let’s not forget the sunsets of red
And the thundery clouds that rumble overhead.
The bright blessed days, the dark sacred nights
My days are lonely and extend beyond countin’,
Cue Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.
And I think to myself
We’ve already been here, I don’t wish to moan
But your thoughts remain thoughts, encased in some bone.
What a wonderful world
The rich are getting richer, the poor left behind
The news is getting faker, the planet over-mined.

The colors of the rainbow
So pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces
Of people going by
Violet, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red.
Not all thought to be healthy for the average passing head.
I see friends shaking hands, saying, "How do you do?"
“How do you do?” sounds posh, like the words of a car-yard con,
Best check your wrist, your watch may be gone.
They're really saying, "I love you"
Essential words for a husband to wife
But said to others can land you in strife.  
I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
In fairness to the babies, before they get older
They laugh, they burble, and they throw up on your shoulder.
They'll learn much more
Than I'll ever know
A debatable point Louis, education is now largely dismissed,
If it’s not on TikTok, it doesn’t exist.
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself
What a wonderful world
As far as I can tell that’s just a load of hooey.
Keep your thoughts to yourself, if you don’t mind Louis.







Monday, October 14, 2024

1331 - Metamorphosis

 


The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 
witchcraft, metamorphosis, garden, whirl, woods, fly, siren, sign, breath, stone, circle, why
Poets & Storytellers prompt is "The joy of walking away".
In this case it is "The joy of flying away".


Metamorphosis

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.
-- The Odyssey

Why? is the wrong question.
How? Is more to the point.
There is magic afoot in my garden.
How a pudgy, multi-legged sausage,
Full of the half-digested greenery
Of my well-loved garden,
Encases itself in a circle, a case, of gossamer
A change booth, a most private retreat 
Only to re-emerge as a butterfly?
What witchcraft is this?

I hold my breath as it takes its first,
Before launching off, flying off,
More a wobble than a whirl 
Twisting and turning
Moving from plants to flowers to woods.
How can this melting and remaking happen?
A clear sign of my ignorance.

What else is changing without witness?
Were the tangle of wire coat-hangers
Once my strangely missing ball-points?
What am I to believe?
Is there anything set in stone?
And if they are, can I trust the stones?  
The siren’s say ‘come Ulysses, come closer’.
Are they really stones?  
My toe says yes.

Saturday, October 12, 2024

1330 - Nature's Inadvertence

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 


crusty, scrub, limbs, vanish, bones, exist, space, glitter, still, hollow, below, sense



Nature’s Inadvertance

We should remember that even Nature's inadvertence 
has its own charm, its own attractiveness. 

-- Marcus Aurelius.

The random fissures on a crusty bread
The dew that glitters on a spider’s thread
The limbs that blossom on a favourite tree
A joy awaits you if you care to see.

Watch ferns, fishbones and maiden’s hair,
Plants that existed before we were there
Attach to trees in both hollow and nook
A joy awaits you if you care to look.

The kitchen’s scent of a fresh-baked cake
The liquid motion of a passing snake
The native birds and their mating dance
A joy awaits you if you can spare a glance.

Mushrooms grow and then vanish again,
The smell of the bush after a rain
The living space where seeds germinate
A joy awaits you if you care to wait.

The scrub is still there, out beyond the town,
But no need to leave home to track joy down
It’s in the branches, in the ground below,
A joy awaits everywhere you go.

Saturday, October 05, 2024

1329 - Glimpses of a Dream

 



The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

wet, jump, secret, dream, bed, breath, secrets, lashes, fire, plague, glimpses, lies



Glimpses of a Dream

There’s a green-eyed fellow idle, to the north of Kathmandu.
There’s a bus of eager punters, heading west.
There’s Ash Wednesday and the bushfire hullabaloo,
There’s the pulsing bilge pump at poor Gael’s breast.

There’s the random plague that completely shut the city
And closed the rest of the world as well.
There’s the ancient escritoire, full of all that’s pretty.
There’s the dinner call, with the old school bell.

There’s the ominous arrival of the mechanical bed  
There’s the lovely baby stilton sent out through the mail.
There’s the son that jumped out of a tiny plane
But only once he had done it, went on to tell the tale.

There’s the blushing yellow Peace rose, flowering in the garden
A living yearly memory of her dear departed mother.
There’s her ironclad determination, not to let harden
Any part of our ongoing love for one another.

There’s the intimate moment on a warm and secret beach,
There’s the shark plane doubling back.
There’s the son who drank all the medicines in reach,
There’s the spurtle, poised for quick attack.

There’s Primrose, later known as Prim, the most elegant of cats.
There’s the picnic in the park, to see the Bard’s Macbeth.
There’s the pipe that burst in the ceiling of the Dundee flat
There’s the pathos of that last exhaling breath.

There’s the castle on the Overland, where lashes were the norm.
There’s the weekly formal dinner, with cuddles, by the fire.
There’s the table set so beautifully, with decorations of some form,
There’s ball of belly-button fluff, stolen from the dryer.

There are the wet eyes of the one who silently recalls and weeps.
There’s the marching for The Voice, with the home-made sign.
There’s the The Prince of Puddings, a haggis, on a bed of neeps.
There’s the New Year’s fireworks and playing of Auld Lang Syne.

Friday, September 27, 2024

1329 - The Open Window (Repost)

 


Poets & Storytellers United have a prompt "Substitutions".
This is something I posted in 2012.  
It's theme is more that there are no substitutes.


The Open Window (Repost).


There is a sense of disbelief:

The window is wide open,
Your things are in disarray;

Drawers are open, 
Turned out on the floor.
Intimate items scattered.
Someone has been here, in your room, 
Past your defences.
And valuables are missing.

Money, money is nothing.  
Memories, how do you replace memories?
Pawned for $20 in a bar somewhere.

Days weeks months later you go looking for something —
And can’t find it.  Is it just lost?  Or was it stolen?

You will never fully realise everything that you have lost.

Death is like that, 
Like being burgled.

You never fully realise everything that you have lost.


Monday, September 23, 2024

1328 - Nighthawks

 


 The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

quivers, limbs, scattered, yellow, twirl, hearts, streak, faint, bags, three, howls, long


Nighthawks

Three customers.
Sitting in a yellow-lit fishbowl,
Behind a long glass window,
Unnaturally free of posters.
A single and a doublet.

A man, sitting solo—
Perhaps heading home.
Perhaps told to pack his bags.
Body language is reflective.
No quivers, no energy,
Just reflective.  Resigned.
Sits and twirls his coffee.

The couple, together—
Are they really, though?
They, too, are reflective.
Body language suggests 
They may be just companions,
Their hearts are not engaged.
She may be holding his hand,
Almost reluctantly. Furtively.
Perhaps the waiter is a dampener.
Perhaps going out on a limb
In such a public place is a risk.
But there they are.
Together.

The street is strangely clean,
No papers scattered around.
No howls of dogs here.
The lights throw streaky shadows,
Giving only the faintest hint
Of surrounding businesses.

That’s the way of things, I guess.
Life presented in a tableau.
So many questions.
So few answers.