If Robert Mueller Wrote a Tanka
Why the long face, Bob?
always that same damn question
since I was a boy,
and always the same answer:
it is long because it’s long.
Couldn’t resist reposting that one. Okay, just one more……
Mr’s Mueller’s Haiku
You’re disappointed
you don’t know disappointment
you don’t know damp squibs
Photo: English Bay, Vancouver, A-MAZE-ING LAUGHTER, by Yue Minjun.
There’s Nothing Like Being
There’s nothing like being
in a crowded bar
in a foreign city
on a Friday evening
just after five
and you don’t know anyone
but it doesn’t matter
and you can’t speak the language
but it doesn’t matter
it’s enough to be there
to breathe in the relief
to share the belief
that Monday morning
is a life time away.
The prompt over at dVerse is to write a poem about movement, where am I going, where have I been.
The challenge from Sarah over at dVerse is to write a piece of prosery, of flash fiction (limit 144 words) incorporating the phrase “I dreamt I was the moon” from a poem by Alice Oswald.
So here goes:
Speaking as the Moon
I dreamt I was the moon, a cheddar searchlight in the sky waiting for the arrival of man with his small steps and giant leaps, his garbage can machines, his religion, his culture, his competing ideologies, his self-aggrandizements, his bragging rights, his racism, his greed, his pomposity, his self-importance, his astronauts named “Buzz”. I tell you, colonization never works out for the colonized. Speaking as the moon, I have no desire to be turned into a destination for space tourists or a land fill or, more accurately, a moon fill, then to be compensated, to be re-moonerated (a bit of lunar humour) some hundred years later by some conscience-stricken liberal prime minister of Canada. They say that nature abhors a vacuum, well, speaking as the moon, I can handle a vacuum quite nicely, it’s vacuity, I abhor.
The other day, I was looking back on the number of Donald Trump related posts on this blog and a pattern emerged. In 2015, there were 3 posts; in 2016, 10 posts; in 2017, 23 posts; in 2018, 19 posts; in 2019, 2 posts so far.
That’s when I thought of T.S. Eliot:
“And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned wriggling on a wall”
It seems, looking at the above stats, that in my mind, at least, Donald has been formulated and there is little more to be said creatively, even the outrage has become stale. He has the approval of over 40% of American voters and maybe now that is the subject, the man himself has been defined and will not change.
These are the Trump posts I had most fun writing , they rely a bit more (I think) on language rather than straight polemic. They are arranged somewhat in chronological sequence
“Agent Orange has a dark Moment” was published in Rat’s Ass Review” ,and “Donald Trump – On Reflection” was published in “Oddball Magazine“. “Trumputin” was published in Anti-Heroin Chic .
it
does
not
augur
well.
Donald’s Early Days
A farrago of fiascos,
banishments and bans;
weekends at Mar-a-Lago
the world in his hands.
Agent Orange has a Dark Moment
Do you know who I miss? Jeb Bush. I miss Jeb Bush. He was my first. When I hit him with that low energy jibe and he fell apart and all the Bush family could not put Humpty together again, I knew I was on to something. Then Little Marco and Lyin’ Ted, I miss them too. But most of all, I miss Hillary, Crooked Hillary. Man, she was tough, had me on the ropes. It took Comey and Vlad, that pointy headed villain, to get me back on my feet. I was nearly out for the count, which might not have been a bad thing. Who needs this shit! I should give Vlad a call, I’m a bit worried -there’s no such thing as a free hack.
Reince Priebus – what kind of fucking name is that? It sounds like bad news from the doctor. “I’m sorry, Donald, you have a Reince Priebus on your rectum and it doesn’t look good”. Ha, I just made myself laugh. And Bannon, I’ve seen sofas on the side of the road in better shape than that rumpled fucker. Spice Box? Hardest job in the world – explaining the unexplainable. That Melissa Mc.Carthy just slays me. How come all the cool people are on the other side? Who have I got? Ryan and Pence? Bland and Blander? Where did Pence come from anyway with his brush cut and his antediluvian politics? The best surgeons in the world couldn’t remove the poker from that guy’s ass. Antediluvian, you didn’t expect that did you?
Talking of cool, I should give Barack a call, ask him down to Florida for a game of golf; check his birth certificate again (Joking! How I miss those days). Man, I hate this fucking White House furniture, is it Friday yet?
Haiku for Donald
petulant pillock
postcranial curmudgeon
bombastic buffoon.
On Reflection…. Donald Trump
America has given birth
to a giant orange child
a zaftig infant Gulliver
striding the ravaged earth
of his own imagination
trampling whole villages
swallowing villagers whole.
Trumputin (a romance)
Don loves Vlad
Vlad loves Don
Love as big as
A nuclear bomb.
Front door, back door,
Kremlin, tower
Nuclear love
Nuclear power.
The Toddler King (excerpt)
5 am. in America
the toddler king
checks his Twitter feed
in the empty parking lot
of a big box store
a plastic bag pirouettes
on the halitotic breeze
national monuments
fear for their lives
the adjectives – good, bad, great-
drop in value again
the toddler king
picks a fight with himself.
Blood orange
smoke-filtered
a Beijing
Mumbai sun.
The Water Taxi Arrives (Caye Caulker Chronicles Take 2)
like Sherpas in search of an expedition
the backpackers tumble onto the dock
clutching Lonely Planet guidebooks
it’s nowhere near as lonely here
as their guidebooks promise
but it is part of the planet
they got that right
it is part of the planet.
(in the café below
Bob Marley is still jammin’
the locals talk of paradise lost
of Eve and apples bitten.)
This is a rewrite of a previous post.
and truth is
a ball of
white gas, glimpsed
through the trees.
let it be
the answer
lies in the
wondering
A Slow Day (tanka 2)
the sky did not fall
the winds of change did not blow
the boat was not rocked
the cat ignored the pigeons
the chickens did not come home.
Hornby Island Tanka
wave-sculpted sandstone
distant sandbar dune buggies
tie-dyed hippie ghosts
eagles, thermals, glaucous gulls
sand dollars , querulous seals.
Participating on Open Link Night over at dVerse.
Children held in camps at the US border…
the sultan of spin
in all his orange glory
can’t polish this one.
This was first posted a year ago, I guess I was wrong.
haiku tortured night
surplus syllable flop sweat
cherry blossom hell.
The Poet Steps Out with Uncharacteristic Resolve
No free verse today
I’m taking my doggerel
for a long, long walk.
This haiku, by my good friend, Slim Volume, was short-listed in the non-starter category at the Mountmellick Haiku festival. Well done, Slim!
Exhibitionist
San Diego Zoo
a pink-arsed baboon presents
it’s late afternoon
Rooster
still dark, the rooster
starts his moronic complaint
damn pre-emptive cock
Fracking Song
You’re standing on the corner
Watching the trucks roll past
Pumping out their diesel fumes
Pumping out that carbon gas
And it’s the middle of winter
And it’s twenty below
And that gas just sits there
With nowhere to go
There’s something wrong in the valley
Babies stillborn
Ten in one year
And they call that the norm
There’s something wrong in the valley
Poison in the ground
Something wrong in the valley
Since the frackers came to town.
The challenge over at dVerse is to write a poem consisting of 4 quatrains. This is a song lyric adapted to that form.
Retired Mathematicians at a Party (tanka)
there in the corner
reeking of stale calculus
old derivatives
life’s equation, the hard one,
still not balanced, still unsolved.
Participating in Open Link Night over at dVerse.
A Ghazal about Everlasting Love (and a rabbit)
like that rabbit on TV
our love will last
you know, the pink one with the drum
(our love will last)
and the dark sunglasses
(our love will last)
who sometimes hits a wall
(our love will last)
and sometimes stalls
(our love will last)
but he keeps banging that drum
(our love will last)
the rabbit keeps banging the drum
(our love will last)
but unlike our love
alkaline batteries are not everlasting
and eventually the rabbit falls
breathes his last
and we need another simile
one that lasts
like plastic in a landfill
our love will last
like craters on the moon
our love will last
like the power of the sun
our love will last
like the winds out on the ocean
our love will last.
In my previous ghazal , “Bucket List” I vowed to write a ghazal about everlasting love for the dVerse ghazal challenge. So there you have it, my first love poem, a big challenge – I’m the kind of person whose usual response to the words “I love you” is “right back at ya”.
Listening to Carlos Santana in Kitsilano Gym.
listening to Carlos Santana
in Kitsilano Gym,
his guitar solos
leading always
to that existential wail
on the top fret
above the cutaway
takes me back to Asbury Park
walking along the boardwalk
having watched Woodstock
my head an unsustainable mix
of idealism, hedonism.
This is a response to Quadrille #82 – Fretboard of Poetry, the prompt from Kim at dVerse, which is to use the word fret in a 44-word poem that does not require meter or rhyme.
Landline (for Dad)
Sometimes, I think
I should text my dad
give him an update
tell him where I’m at.
Not that he would answer
he’s been gone a few years now
and even if he were alive
texting would hardly be his thing;
at the turn of the century
he was still approaching
what we now call a ‘landline’
with some trepidation.
Landline: a rope
uncoiling towards the shore.
He once told me
that when we have children
of our own
we begin to understand
our own parents better
so I think my text
would be an attempt
to let him know
that, yes, dad
I have found this
to be true.
Slim’s Other Dream
3 a.m.
Slim returns to his dream
of pipes bursting in the attic
even though he knows
there are no pipes in the attic.
4 a.m.
Slim wakes
to the remains of a poem
crackling on the antic air.
A re-post, the weather is too good today to be indoors writing!
Stock Market
a bear is on the loose
the once priapic market
losing altitude
false hopes and false dreams for sale
nothing tangible.
This is response to the dVerse prompt to write about markets. It’s a haiku that I have upgraded (?) to a tanka, check out the poetry over at dVerse, some excellent market poems.
The photo is of an actual market in Sicily.
Foraging with Farage
In his new television series
Foraging with Farage
coming soon to The Bollocks Network
Nigel discusses
the influx of foreign fungi
to the hallowed fields and forests
of the Kingdom By The Sea
and the subsequent decline
of the Great English Mushroom.
In the final episode,
under the influence of psilocybin
Nigel takes a walk in the forest
and encounters a naked Boris Johnson
sitting on a giant toad stool
in a sunlit glade.
Boris, Nigel exclaims,
full of chagrin
and psilocybin,
I thought you were a natural blonde!
Has it all been a lie?
This is dream sequence, you fool,
Boris replies
The writers have run out of ideas.
He then tumbles off the toad stool
and bounds on all fours into the forest.
I tell you folks
if you miss one television series this year
make sure it’s this one!
This was originally posted for Open Link Night over at dVerse.
I have just read an intriguing prompt over at “Imaginary Garden with Toads” to do with unreliable narrators in poetry and prose, I thought this poem might fit that category.
Bucket List (a ghazal)
mountain climbing in County Meath
put it on my bucket list
fly fishing in the Sahara
put it on my bucket list
snow shoeing in the Serengeti
put it on my bucket list
surfing in Saskatchewan
put it on my bucket list
stop hiding behind a shield of sarcasm
Really? Put that on my bucket list?
write a ghazal about everlasting love
aw fuck it, put it on my bucket list
stop peppering my poems with profanity
that’s a prohibition, it has no place on the list
and furthermore, call me James, Jimmy, Jimbo, Jim
but don’t fuck with my bucket list!
It’s ghazal time again over at dverse, so here’s another attempt. By the way, in a classical ghazal (which this is not!), it is customary to insert one’s name in the final couplet.
Sorry about the language, I’ll do anything for a rhyme!
