vernal vespers
hush, ‘tis evensong
day’s fiery dénouement
sol’s final glisk
~kat
NaPoWriMo2022 - Day 2 Prompt: write a poem based on a word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account devoted to obscure and interesting English words. My word of choice: Glisk.
A GLISK is a brief glimpse of warm sunshine.
For NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 19 Prompt: write a paragraph that briefly recounts a story, describes the scene outside your window, or even give directions from your house to the grocery store. Now try erasing words from this paragraph to create a poem or, alternatively, use the words of your paragraph to build a new poem. I used bold text to show you which words I lifted from the prose to create the poem that follows.
This prompt plays out like a deconstructed haibun, using free verse rather than a tanka or haiku/senryu. It also reminds me of doing “black/white out” poetry. At any rate it is a fun way to create a poem. This is my day in day out. Wrote this little break out on my lunch break…back to the grind in 3-2-1.
I spend my daylight hours in a cubicle under a dropped ceiling fitted with fluorescent lights. There is a vent above my head that grinds and blows intermittently throughout the day. I believe that the stale air blasting is laced with dust and black mold from the shadowy crawl spaces in the upper mezzanine partly because I burst into coughing and sneezing fits when the HVAC system kicks in. I heard that the company decided not to do a mold sweep of the building because it didn’t fit in with their ever shrinking budget. Such is life in corporate America where the shareholders and executives are king and the workers are paupers, slaving day in and day out, pinching pennies from the company’s bulging profits. I would likely go crazy, perhaps I’m already a bit mad, if it were not for the floor to ceiling picture windows that flank the outer wall of my cube. At least I can glance out briefly, when my nose is not buried in a spreadsheet and watch the world drift by. It’s a small perk that makes coming to work at dawn and leaving at dusk, bearable. Sometimes, when I dream at night, I dream of dusty gray cubicles but sometimes I dream in color.
daylight in a cubicle fitted
with fluorescent lights,
stale air laced with dust and
black mold burst, coughing,
sneezing mold sweep,
ever shrinking is life, where workers
slaving day in and day out, pinching
pennies, go crazy. windows flank
the outer wall. I glance out
briefly, watch the world drift;
sometimes, when I dream
I dream in color.
~kat
I am a windy city, mid-westerner transplanted in this land of giants, a southern city nestled between looming blue mountain peaks. My home sits under a giant star on a century-old plot steps away from the site of World War victory gardens that have sprouted rows of two-storied townhouses.
I will likely breathe my last here in this place of contradictions; of backwoods red-neckers and modern progressive high-risers, old-timers and Gen Z’s. It’s ironic that I moved here to be closer to my children and grandchildren. I rarely see them, life and busyness nipping at their heels, but I love it here just the same. This strange place, with its lilac-honeysuckle infused breezes, evergreen spaces, magnolia trees and mist-draped hollows, is growing on me. My Chicago twang has noticeably tempered to a smooth southern drawl. Y’all come see me sometime.
pause with me a spell
where sunlight bleeds through pine trees
and mourning doves coo
we’ll sip sweetened tea
and talk about the weather
while nor’easterns swell
~kat
A Haibun/with 2 Senryu for NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 12 Challenge Prompt: write a haibun that takes in the natural landscape of the place you live. It may be the high sierra, dusty plains, lush rainforest, or a suburbia of tiny, identical houses – but wherever you live, here’s your chance to bring it to life through the charming mix-and-match methodology of haibun.
I imagine words that become poems are like fireflies, floating in my head; flying embers, glowing amber-red, ever so briefly, lost forever if I don’t snatch them up, singeing my fingertips ink black.
shush, can you hear it?
the flicker of a new thought
becoming a word
~kat
An “Extreme Haibun” (55 words maximum for the whole poem) for Jane Dougherty’s Daily Poem Prompt.
Today’s word of the day is phub. Dictionary.com defines phub as a slang word that means to ignore (a person or one’s surroundings) when in a social situation by busying oneself with a phone or other mobile device: hey, are you phubbing me?
Wiktionary tells us it’s a word that was created by combining the words phone and snub sometime between 2010-2014. But we’ve probably been phubbing for a bit longer, even though there was not a word for it yet. Phub, they explain, was coined by Adrian Mills at the McCann advertising agency as part of a campaign to promote the Macquarie Dictionary by creating a new word.
Have you been phubbed? It’s certainly a thing. We are attached to our phones these days, what with tweets and posts and texts that bombard us on a minute by moment basis. And by game apps; those addictive,mindless diversions that divert our attention from everything around us into a strobing screen…just one more round…a win, at-long-last. I’m must come clean. I have probably been a phubber. I may not have intentionally phubbed anyone, but I’m most certain I have done it. Not that I can recount a clear example. It’s all a blur.
I think it’s a good practice to establish rules of etiquette in this age of pocket media devices by setting up situational “no mobile device zones”. For example meal times, forcing everyone around the table to engage in conversation. Remember conversation? You don’t? When I finish this post I’ll send you a text link to Wikipedia so you can learn about it. 🤪 better yet, here’s the link…CONVERSATION. Sorry…didn’t mean to shout at you. 😊
you know, we should talk
true friends don’t let friends flubber
texting is for bots
~kat
like mercury colliding... 