Poem 30: EndStart

Words float out to sea
Is this is the river's end?
Sun makes new rain start


huh

Poem 29: Icing Sugar

Minima
Unspoke
We call boiling plasma, yellow and glutinous
Florence rolls her daisy
The nightengale machine roars its
Music box trivia
Ataturk reigns this pierced moment
Platitudes bleach forth with merriment
And flowered hands dance the shake bells
As sticks strike the hour
Ringing across these green and pleasant valleys
Stone church reaping the sunny warmth of early Autumn
Musty rubbermetal smell of old bicycle
Open universes collapsing infinitely on themselves
Wound ever tighter like a bobbin on an old Singer sewing machine
That scent of salty air sharp and ozonous
Bare dried groyne wood
There is nothing to cling to on this hot beach day
But random memories
Sieved through a brain like a light dusting of icing sugar

Poem 28: Murder in the Garden

A lady who's from Pasadena
Wanted her thumb to be greener
If she wasn't allergic to alliums
Or jinxed by geraniums
Then maybe she would've been keener

She simply found gardening a chore
Hated all types of hellebore
Among roses she dozes
Peonies she opposes
While fuschias just make her snore

She took an instant dislike to wisteria
And was scared of compost's bacteria
She found primulas prim
And gerberas grim
While hyacinths gave her hysteria

While she was out in the garden
Her attitudes began to harden
She was hostile to a hosta
Killed a clematis who crossed her
Now she's on death row with no pardon

Poem 27: Will and Phil mash up

To bleep, perchance to gleam
Ay, there's the robot
For in those electric sheep what dreams may come
When we have solenoid this relay coil

Poem 26: Periscope

I
See you 
At the back
Standing behind the
Hacky sack
Crowd

Hand
Raised high
Index finger up
Embedded optic fibre
Relaying images
Back

You
Are shorter
Than most here
But no-one else
Matters at
All


_____________________________
A belated hay(na)ku: wordcount: 1 2 3 tweaked to be 1 2 3 3 2 1

Poem 25: Ode to a Toad

You shelter from the mid-day heat
Under the sweltering flagstones
Dead flies are your little treat
You suck their tiny bones

After a prolonged dry spell
I worry you're too dry
So I reach for my water spray

Deep in the cool dark by day you dwell
Emerging into the night sky
To prowl the terrace for your prey

_____________________________
English Ode form:

abab
cde
cde

Poem 24: Meteorite

Watching the imaginary numbers
Chasing the cloudburst at 100 mil an hour
Do not adjust your internal set

Adjusting inflation
Infinity precent elation
I don't want you to leave yet

Unknown metal numbers
Isotopes from the sky
You've made an impact
On the applesauce of my mind's eye

We see meteorite showers
With both our eyes shut
Fifteen point thirty seven

Railing number 31 green
We're unmaking a scene
Geometric progression

Unknown metal numbers
Isotopes from the sky
You've made an impact
On the applesauce of my mind's eye

Poem 23: Eeyore Furore

We are downhill freewheeling
Everything is going right
The universe is happy feeling
We're pushing an open door tonight

Effortless like a tiger's jump
We are coming up trumps
Right until the moment when
It all comes crashing down again

Poem 22: The One

Finality banality
Achingly yellow
Artificial banana smell

Your ignorant eyes
Staring cheekily
In the opposite direction

Smear of mallow chew
On the smile-wrinkled corner of your mouth


You knew a long time ago
But aren't letting on now

Poem 21: Density

Ruffle stuffle
The winchat rummages
Keenly deployed among the
Stonechat rubble

With crimbling cloys
The kastrulating claws
Snivel and slobber
With bakingly clobber

Wild! Get shot of this
Your preening displays
Are nothing obsidian
Faintly darwinian

Finchly and cru
Darkly through glass
Waltzing acutely
Pomade remade

In crept an inkling
True yet devoid of perception
Blessed are the noctorous
Shapely are the wibloe

Just off Cape Askance
Pewter skies and roiling seas
Distant headland ignores our pleas
Forging on without a backwards glance

Off the edge of flatworld
Into the uncharts
Precipitous heartmouthing
The final plunge to density

Poem 20: Chiptune

I've been watching you
Jaw of a prehistoric fish
Ichthyoid tricky
Gawping wide
Words bubbling like a silver river

Let's float away out of here
Double diamond ambulating
Vinegar soaked and inky fingered
Battered and bruised
Yesterday's news

Under the neon blue
Synthetic green-ness in a dish
Metal hot and sticky
Pull you to one side
Bits together, no time to dither

Let's float away out of here
Double diamond ambulating
Vinegar soaked and inky fingered
Battered and bruised
Yesterday's news

Poem 19: liquorice hurricane

generations of sparkle melody
boomerang my fresian entity
rapslideling out of an enormous hunger
abseiling tumultuous wonder

evershard mung-ruth
fiercely winsome-toothed
against the platitudes of insead time
flushed with triumphant failure

floundering and twitching
in a cementitious porridge
cracked breeze block pepper
corny like a cob pipe

the flow has transformed her
from delicant to wishbore
garments flapping wildly
in the liquorice hurricane

Poem 18: Inbox Tanka

The inbox of life
Is never truly empty
Learn to transcend it
Or it will smother your mind
With endless endless spamming



_____________________________
Tanka: 5 7 5 7 7

Poem 17: Sunray

You took your time
Eight minutes and nineteen seconds
I guess that's a pretty long way
If you're a photon

Still, I'm awfully glad you made the trip
And weren't tempted to stop off
In Venus' beguiling atmosphere
Or Mercury's boils and bubbles

You've hit this rock with a
Barely perceptible bang
Transforming some air into
A very very very slightly hotter state

Thanks for coming anyway
I was a bit too chilly before you got here


_________________________

Written (with apologies!) in the style of www.expendablefriend.com

Poem 16: rock

i'm sure i've been on that rock
looking out with formaldehyde hands
spinning the lead floss un-candy clouds into a
coarse thread dyed with salt tears
interwoven with damp kelp into a
harris tweed tunic

i wear it sometimes even now
its phosphorescent glow illuminates
the darker corners of my existence




____________________
today's lowercaseness is inspired by the lovely http://disappearingbeast.tumblr.com/

Poem 15: Lisbon Wall

Your shoulder touching mine
As you peer over at my scrawl
While I write this poem showing
How we have been apart
Yet have always been together
Even before we met
Like hidden gardens in an ancient city
Divided by a high slate-topped wall
Covered in lichens
Lutyensian leopard spots unchanging
Lobular, langourous and lenticular
Camouflage ineffective against our love

Poem 14: Destiny's Sonnet

Life is just practice for a greater stage
A dress rehearsal  for glories to come
Our paths written out upon a page
From which no divergence can be won

Thus our destinies are writ in stone
Our will is merely  pretending to be free
Achievements cannot be claimed as our own
Failures just inevitability

Each day's toil another stroke of ink
In the great ledger of infinite time
A plan that requires us not think
To keep each step upwards on the climb

Only what our passion holds most dear
Can break the chains that hold us in our fear

Poem 13: Dart

Dipper shimmers in the slate flow
Clawing forward against the press of water
Then surfaces, darting over the tumbling flows
A flitting glimmer
With a mouthful of fish

Poem 12: Pad 39a

Firebricks shrug off the Florida sun
More used to the inferno of launch
Yet even here weeds peek out
Through the cracks in
Kennedy's concrete

Poem 11: You Poem

You poem
You're so self-centred
Dolled up in clever words
And poignant pauses

You poem
With your clever repetition
Drawing us in, rhymeless and guileless
Abstract yet familiar

You poem
Either nature, glamourified
Or love, cloyingly sweet
A cliché for all reasons

You poem
So hyper-well-observed
Over-stuffed with quirky details
And plaintive tugs at the heartstrings

You poem
Like a terrorist
You only need to get lucky once
To resonate in someone's mind

You poem
Opening up spaces
Lighting up faces
Scattering graces

You poem
I wish you were mine

Poem 10: Growth comes as a shock

Growth comes as a shock
Jarring the senses as
Newness unfolds
Crackling like spent lightning bolts

A sudden glimpse into the Other Mind
Just as the door slides shut
As if awakening, half-remembered, from a dream

The aperture of the mind
Collapses in on itself
Pure creation arcs out through and
Jolts us back to realism
In the briefest moment
Before it closes off again

Faceless
Like smooth inscrutable stone
As if nothing had ever happened

Poem 9: Santicroy

Brimsbrow leeve
Tetchnat brare
Clampest veau
Falching skrare

Falmbecam sut
Benchnar flos
Getgraur slembowed
Kempvan ros

Chewdow slempfit
Sackard blore
Tumbed dempfard
Semblo quaw

Tileding rotfort
Yeckfed troye
Beltoy heldrin
Santicroy

Poem 8: Empacher

Training for the worlds
Eating to fuel a machine
Hours on the water

Ten miles still to go
Energy burns from within
Purpose in the rain

Downstream in the cold
Empty river full and fast
False speed but feels good

Upstream back to base
Lactic burns in every joint
Spent yet invested




 ---------Just trying some haikus

These ones are on today's theme of inhabiting a persona -- a rower preparing for the single sculls world championships ....

Poem 7: Wall

Laying the prefect brick
Mortar applied with a casual flick
One part cement to four parts sand
It's setting soon, you need to be quick

Levelled up with a steady hand
Horizontal even on sloping land
Perpendiculars buttered right
Each course follows what was planned

Beds even, perps not too tight
Soon we have a decent height
The final one a satisfying click
A simple wall brings such delight

================

An exercise today, trying a new format:
"This Persian form of poetry is a series of rhymed quatrains. In each quatrain, all lines rhyme except the third. An "Interlocking Rubáiyát" is a Rubáiyát where the subsequent stanza rhymes its 1st, 2nd, and 4th lines with the sound at the end of the 3rd line in the stanza (Rubá'íyah) before it.
In this form, the 3rd line of the final stanza is also rhymed with the 3 rhymed lines in the first stanza.

a -NEW
a -2nd line rhymes with the 1st.
b -NEW
a -4th line rhymes with the 1st and 2nd.

b -1st line rhymes with the 3rd in the 1st stanza.
b -2nd line rhymes with the 1st.
c -NEW
b -4th line rhymes with the 1st and 2nd.

c -1st line rhymes with the third in the 2nd stanza.
c -2nd line rhymes with the 1st.
a -3rd line rhymes with the 1st in the 1st stanza.
c -4th line rhymes with the 1st and 2nd.
 "

Poem 6: Blackbird

Finding the lost leaves
Of our hidden harmony
That misplaced reign of madness
Falls, tumbling like a sycamore's seed
Scything the air, purposeful
Yet landing at random
Spinning our wheels
Like a blackbird attacks a mirror

Poem 5: Wayside

Arcs of light etch into the leafy trans-metal canopy
There is deep space beyond this orbit's homely tug
Crew are silent, droids all
The picture windows eyeless, unlooking
Empty room after empty room
Creep ever onwards, kilometers round
No up, no down

Yet details emerge here and there
One room reveals Persian carpet, holo-fireplace
Flickering logs and Robert Adam mantle
Half-finished glass of port
Leaving a faint ring on the Thomas Chippendale

Years would pass before I finally meet
My gracious host

Poem 4: Easy As ...

granular

go
grimy grumbles
gush
greek granola grepped
girly gretchen gawkers go gallantly
garbled?
graciously, gingerly
gables' god's grandson
gaunt gobsmack!

Poem 3: Camber

Go moving fast downstream by the sea
Ball of foot sharp toe sand running free
Mutant shells sharp groaning foam debris
Crying wind sears mould heart scars empty

Concrete bluff arcs high beam verti-straight
Salty tang breathes damp cloys chest in spate
Flapping wind tugs fabric interstate
Render nears full promise never made

Aching on the dryslope
Sleeting over groynes
Burning of manila rope
Constancy of noise

Slicky creeping weed sings Jury’s Gut
Helming to the breeze shipwrecked and stuck
Rusting to the core doors welded shut
Longing for acetylene oxy-cut

Aching on the dryslope
Sleeting over groynes
Burning of manila rope
Constancy of noise

Poem 2: Black Pebble White Pebble

Black pebble white pebble
Cautiously pessismistic
Awkwardly atavistic
Minerally analogue

Black pebble white pebble
Sneers in your mind
Baking it blind
Forward rewind

Black pebble white pebble
Nothing is free
Voting prima facie
The well and the sea

Black pebble white pebble
Ocean frontage
Flatwheel bluntage
Camden to Wantage

Black pebble white pebble
Moths in a jar
Dark fading star
La Brea tar

Black pebble white pebble
Changing the choose
Chancing the lose
Who can refuse?

Poem 1: Starling

Deep jet black
Shy deep blue
Overtaken by a handful of dust

Spare white flint
Bluff bleak slate
Glinting emerald and yew-like

Wind on face
Wings’ applause
Starlings murmurate below