Toadstool
I see a toadstool
and wonder: what in toad hall
has that toad eaten?
Toadstool (haiku)
2 Replies
Tag Archives: poet
Early Bird Special (quadrille with bonus haiku)
Early Bird Special
unlike the midnight special
there are no songs
to celebrate the early bird special
no IHOPian bard,
no poet laureate of the blue plate
no bargain basement Dylan
no cut price Cohen
to extol the digestive
and economic benefits
of getting an early start.
Inspired by the dVerse prompt to write a quadrille using the word “early”. Thanks to Kim for the prompt.
Bonus Haiku
dawn breaks, early shift
at the haiku factory
counting syllables.
Photo: Sunrise on Planet Cistern 2
An Open Letter to Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon
An Open Letter to Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon
Dear Anderson, Jake and Don
full disclosure, I’ve always been a fan
but lately I find (maybe it’s a phase, a stage)
I’m getting tired of outrage
could we just agree that some truths are self-evident
that yes, Donald Trump is a disastrous president
that yes, he’s a congenital liar
that yes, his pants are on fire
yes, he’s a fascist
yes, he’s a racist
yes, he “grabs pussy”, cheats on his wife
but, here’s the thing, he’s having the time of his life
he’s hosting the biggest reality show of all time
and you are playing your part, falling in line
it’s not that you are dupes, puppets, complicit
but do you have to analyse every tweet, every snippet
do you have to report every rally
every blundering sally
into global politics
every outburst of fustian rhetoric
why not talk about detention of children, the environment
deregulation, the threat to national monuments
why not talk about hope, democracy, activists, action
and ignore this preening prat, this abominable distraction.
Home (from Oscar Wilde to Bono, haiku’s)
Conversation (hibernoku)
a low Dublin sky
a sentence hangs suspended
cut off in its prime
interrupt or die.
‘Hibernia’ is the classical Latin name for Ireland. A hibernoku is a haiku (seventeen syllables, 5-7-5) with an additional 5 or 7 syllable line, because for the Irish, seventeen syllables is a cruel limitation. The poem must contain an Irish reference and must allude to the weather in some way. In most parts of Ireland, ‘hibernoku’ is pronounced ‘hi-bern-o-koo’, except in West Cork where it is pronounced ‘hiber-nok-oo’.
Photo: Statue of the eternally quotable Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square, Dublin.
Weather (abandoned haiku)
an easterly wind
clouds move in convoy ‘cross the blue dome of the sky.
This started off as a haiku, but I felt like letting the second line run.
Photo: A sunny mid September day in Sandy Cove, Dublin.
Family (haiku)
yep, had a few drinks
with my brother, my sisters
sibling ribaldry.
Photo: View looking south along the coast, from Vico Road. Dalkey, Co. Dublin. Bono owns a house nearby ……where all the streets have names….I checked.
Down and Out in Idabel
Down and Out in Idabel
How Myron found himself in the parking lot
of the Holiday Inn in Idabel, Oklahoma
looking out at the road
on a Saturday morning in April
– after a breakfast of brittle bacon,
sausages slick with grease,
dry fluorescent scrambled eggs –
is not important.
The road pauses, a skittish dog roams.
Myron’s eyes are drawn to a dead armadillo
upside down on the hard shoulder
an empty beer can in its claws:
Old Milwaukee, prehistoric drunk,
someone’s joke.
A pick up truck passes
a pick up truck passes
a pick up truck passes
over the fence a cow chews grass
and makes a meal of it.
Dogwoods bloom.
The cow moos like a reluctant foghorn.
Myron’s mood turns
he thinks about the cow,
Manifest Destiny,
the plight of the bison
our lust for red meat
while greenhouse gas
shimmies upwards
ice caps melt
glaciers retreat
and looking down
the road to Shreveport
buoyed by the prospect
of seeing Idabel
in his rear-view mirror
he quietly resolves
to recover what he was
before sadness lodged
like a wet sack
in the back
of his head.
This poem originally appeared in issue 38 of The SHOp poetry magazine (print) which was a fine magazine, unfortunately they closed up shop a few years ago.
Five Miles Outside of Austin (Rhymes and Tropes)
Listening to alt country on Spotify I begin to wonder….
who are all these country boys
with their cowboy hats, pickup trucks and beards
staring clint-eyed into the mythical distance
listening for the call of who knows what
a phantom cattle drive, perhaps,
anything at all to git them
back on the road again;
and who are all these country girls
left behind or waiting
and why the hell do they care
about these feckless drifters
who love their whiskey
as much as they dread commitment
and why does all this happen in Texas?
rhymes and tropes, folks
rhymes and tropes
and slowly through
a Spotify fog
a Spotify trance
in the distance
a song emerges…..
Five Miles Outside of Austin
I’m five miles outside of Austin
with a pounding in my head
full of yesterday’s whiskey
and wishing I was dead
I left a girl back there sleeping
as dawn began to break
I gave her all that I could give
and I took all I could take
and I wish I had done better
that I hadn’t stayed so long
now I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
II
Down the road, a girl is waiting,
drinking beer and playing pool
waiting for deliverance
waiting for another fool
and I’ll dust the road off of my coat
and walk through that door
she’ll say “howdy stranger,
I ain’t seen you before”
but now my head is beating like a bass drum
there’s stubble on my tongue
I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song
Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
Photo (by Marie Feeney) of Lukas Nelson and Neil Young at Desert Trip
Of Statues and Limitations
Of Statues and Limitations
As we round Lee’s Circle in New Orleans
talk turns to statues
and the topless monument;
the shuttle bus driver tells us
that Robert E. Lee’s statue was removed
under the cover of darkness
by a crew dressed like ninjas,
to avoid recognition.
People woke up the next day
to find the statue had disappeared.
A photograph on Wikipedia
shows the statue being removed
in broad daylight by a crane;
reality is nearly always more prosaic.
She also tells us that she grew up in the neighbourhood;
as kids, they just called the monument,
“The Statue”, they did not know or care
who Robert E. Lee was.
In 1966, the IRA blew the statue of Horatio Nelson
off its pedestal on top of Nelson’s Pillar
in the middle of O’Connell Street, Dublin.
To my parents’ generation
Nelson’s Pillar was known simply as “The Pillar”.
(Dubliners are very fond of the definite article:
“How’s the head?”
“Are you still playing the soccer?”)
To them, The Pillar was a landmark
a place to meet your date
en route to one of the cinemas
on O’Connell Street to catch a film (2 syllables)
and perhaps a humid snog
in the back seat when the lights went out.
To the IRA it was a symbol of British Imperialism
of British oppression,
an insult to our patriot dead;
blah, blah, blah, boom!
The IRA was a particularly unsubtle organisation.
Is all this just facile juxtaposition,
chopped up prose
masquerading as a poem,
or is there a point?
Yes, yes and yes:
see what I think is
there are people who look up at statues
there are people who believe
statues are looking down on them
and there are people
who look straight ahead
and keep moving forward
into the future,
leaving the past
to its state of disrepair.
Top photo taken at the Takashi Murakami exhibition (The octopus eats its own leg) at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Bottom Photo taken in Medellin, Colombia, statues by Fernando Botero.
If a Relationship is a Bus (Poem)
…the task of the day over at dVerse is to create unique metaphors and incorporate them into a poem…I think this post from a little while back fits…thanks to Bjorn for the prompt
If a Relationship is a Bus
if a relationship is a bus
why then sometimes
does the bus leave the paved road,
the beaten track,
the path most trodden,
and bump off across
a corrugated desert
complete with tumble weeds
and plural cacti
(the wind is howling
at least, it sounds like the wind)
and that bus keeps bumping along
until it coughs, sputters to a stop,
and the occupants reluctantly step out
onto the desert floor
which is really an ancient ocean bed
strewn with the fossils
of forgotten fish
like the back lot
of some prehistoric sushi bar
they step out
breathe the bone dry air
and ask themselves how,
how the hell
did we end up
in this fucking bus metaphor?
.
Heavy Metal Heaven
Heavy Metal Heaven
Slim plugs in his guitar
sets the dial on his amp
to “heavy metal”
hits an E minor seven
walks out of the room
makes a cup of coffee
drinks a cup of coffee
checks the football results
texts his brother in England:
what’s up, mate?
his brother doesn’t answer
he starts writing a novel:
The sun –
a red ball of anger on the horizon –
shouts through the brown chemical haze:
“that’s it, I’m outta here”.
Then, and only then, they hear a baby cry.
That’s all he’s got
He returns to the room
that E minor seven
is still going
but faint now
like a rustle of paper
like the distant chatter
of dead drummers
in heavy metal heaven
he picks up his guitar
hits an A minor seven
walks out of the room
starts his taxes……
taking part in Open Link Night over at dVerse
Yosemite the Haiku
Yosemite
stunned in the meadow
channelling Ansel Adams
lens like a cannon.
Photos by Marie Feeney
Rooster Gallery / Living Off The Grid.
Living Off the Grid
The sun with rare generosity
beats down on the solar panels
on the roof of Vincent’s log cabin.
The first sentence of his organic novel
–The abattoir, for once, was silent –
sits alone on his laptop screen.
This is the seed from which will spring
plot, character, content.
He gets up, walks out through the kitchen door
through the tortured arch of his driftwood arbor
and into the vegetable garden
where he urinates in a jagged arc
sprinkling life-giving nutrients
on the unsuspecting butter lettuce.
Returning to his desk
he taps out another sentence:
With his mother’s mop, he wipes
the blood from the kitchen floor.
Why so morbid?
It’s warm, he’s feeling drowsy,
he detects a faint signal from a long-dormant source
like the distant ping from a submarine
at the bottom of the ocean.
He should invite someone for dinner,
the lady who sells jam at the Saturday market, perhaps,
or the angry sculptress – she of the tangled hair,
the scrap metal raptors, the acetylene scent.
The jam lady it is.
Bottle of wine from the retired lawyer’s vineyard,
salmon from the gnarled fishermen down at the dock,
try a little humor,
ask her if raspberry jam is a male preserve,
make a nice salad. What’s the worst that could happen?
This poem first appeared a little while back in “The Basil O’Flaherty”.
So Distracted / Smart Phone (with apologies to Dickens and Darwin)
So Distracted
Snapchat
WhatsApp
Instagram
Facebook
What?
……..I’m so distracted
Text message
Twitter feed
I’ll follow you
if you follow me
What?
……..I’m so distracted
Spotify
Pokémon
I just got a like
from Pakistan
What?
……..I’m so distracted
So distracted
So distracted
did I walk that back?
did I retract it?
So distracted
So distracted
did I walk that back?
did I retract it?
What?
Smart Phone (with apologies to Dickens and Darwin)
’twas the best invention
’twas the worst invention
’twas communication’s new dawn
’twas the end of communication
’twas a pain in the neck
’twas incipient myopia
’twas why we evolved
with opposable thumbs.
The Eve Of Hallow’s Eve
The Eve Of Hallow’s Eve
no more séances
these days it’s hard to find a
happy medium
Gravity, Don’t Fail Me Now.. (gym gnostic 1)
And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through….Bob Dylan
Know your gym……Slim Volume
gym gnostic 1
two geezers
pink and steaming
towelling down
after a shower
discussing gravity
how it is not fixed
how it decreases
with distance from the earth’s core
how, if one was to climb to the top of Everest,
since weight is the product of mass and gravity
one would weigh less at the top of Everest
and Slim’s thinking
this is one fucking erudite conversation
and he wants a piece of it
so he points out that
one would regain that weight
on returning to sea level
and one of the geezers replies
yeah but you’d probably burn 10,000 calories
climbing up and down the fucking mountain
and a nearby jock encased in breathable fabric
says shit, I’d burn that in 40 minutes on the rowing machine
and Slim fires back wryly
keep telling yourself that
and the locker room erupts in laughter
and in that moment
basking in the unbearable lightness of banter
Slim defies gravity and levitates
above the bacterial swamp
that is the locker room floor.
Drive
Drive
On a strange day
in a life that’s becoming stranger
Myron is driving north of Kona
on a road bisecting the black lava landscape
when Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
comes on the radio,
and in no time at all he’s picturing himself
on a boat on a river
and marvelling for the first time
at that rhyme between
marmalade skies and kaleidoscope eyes;
not the skies and eyes
but the lade and leid
and just when his head
is filling with technicolor,
the black cloud, that’s sitting
on the mountains to the right,
moves across the sun
that’s shining on the blue ocean to the left
and the jumbled chunks of frozen black lava
that cover the landscape,
and suddenly the remaining light is sucked from the air
leaving everywhere
a dull monochrome.
This poem was published in The Galway Review a little while back but I thought it was worth bringing out again because of the recent anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper. The photos above are of the Beatles’ single featuring Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. My family got it’s first record player in the early sixties just when the Beatles and the rest of the British groups that formed the British Invasion were emerging. The first single we bought was “Needles and Pins” by The Searchers, a remake of a Jackie De Shannon song. My mom, older sister, older brother and myself would take turns every week to buy a record to build our collection. When I was back in Dublin a few years back for my dad’s funeral, I picked out the record shown above and a few others from our collection. The sleeve has a picture on the front and on the back which was not typical at that time. Both songs were originally intended for the Sgt. Pepper album but were released early because they needed a single.
I can still remember hearing Strawberry Fields for the first time on the radio. The Beatles were busy spawning genres at the time but this was the strangest piece of music I had ever heard. It was and still is undefinable. Penny Lane wasn’t bad either.
Stopdraggingthepanda 