Poem 8 (Hour 8) Qundeel
Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright
Under the trees and falling night
Who I am? Rising with questioning eyes
By moving forward and back to get sigh!
2020 Hour #9 Inertia Haiku
2020 Hour #9 Inertia Haiku
Fear infects my hand
Weakness strangles these small words
Erasing this page.
Firefly
I lunge for the window
Suffocating under the panic of the cottage that flooded and the school that burned
Exhausted by lessons only half learned
Studying again.by the dim light of a firefly.
Insufficient to bring relief to the eye
Even now as you grow weary
And lethargy sets in
You understand a little more clearly
That though their light may be dim
It has an agenda – to attract mates or prey
Something you should try to remember –
And you knew not which because neither did they.
The courage for a decision appeared to be Dutch
Hidden in the bottle now in their clutch
A strange heat rises under the gaze of their eye
And you learn once again to fear the firefly.
Ten Tiny Fairies – Prompt #9 – kjKidder
Lethargic and drunk, the strange old man
with bottle in hand, meandered across the field.
Staring ahead as best he could, held onto his hat
With vision zooming this way and that.
There stood a cottage at the edge of the treeline,
“Shelter from this scorching heat, and just in time.”
The man guzzled down what remained of his Rye,
Delirious and deranged, strange lights did he spy.
On further inspection he claimed them to be
“Ten tiny fairies, belonging to me.”
Swiftly he trapped them in that not-quite-empty bottle
He demanded they dance or threatened to throttle
They flew, and they flew, growing rapidly dimmer
In all that heat they simply did simmer
Till all of a sudden, his ‘fairies’ were drunk
Poor little fireflies, to the bottom they sunk.
Firelfy
To the future that is distant,
But fast approaching, Hi.
I hope I can catch my dreams like fireflies,
Bottle them in a jar labeled mine and hope.
Hope that my future will be as bright as the jar with fireflies.
Hope to find love that builds,
Like a wooden cottage hidden underneath the treeline.
Take my son on boat rides on the river in the morning.
To the future that is distant,
But fast approaching, Hi.
I hope you illuminate the rest of my life,
Casting a shadow on the not so bright moments.
Having me seated around a bonfire with my family and friends,
Sharing memories like old war stories.
Feel your presence even when you are not around,
And create a future where we are finally united.
So to the future that is distant,
But fast approaching,
I hope our ending is like that Avicci song,
Where that boy releases the fireflies and the music drowns the words.
Quick Snack
Angela skipped along the forest path chasing another firefly to put in her bottle blue
She thought it strange when she spied smoke coming from the treeline she thought she knew
With her binoculars, she could zoom and spied a humble cottage belching blackless over the hill.
So she followed the smoke until she found the hut. A scary black mask hung over the door gave her a chill.
Inside she found a table with three bowls of porridge still steaming with heat
She was so hungry, it’d been hours since she’d had something good to eat.
She cleaned the bowls and found herself overcome with lethargy so strong.
That she didn’t notice three beers returning to check out what was wrong.
With a roar, they grabbed the sleepy brat and with a gulp had a quick snack.
So next time, turn away when you see a cottage puffing from its smoke stack.
Staycation
Staycation
Lounge by the pool.
Mystery novel, glass of
cold sauvignon blanc
on the table.
Elongated banana leaves
wave in the breeze.
Wispy white clouds drift
in powder blue sky.
Colorful, talkative songbirds
flit from tree to tree.
Hummingbirds buzz the feeder.
Grape and honeysuckle vines
extend their tendrils
along the fence and arbor.
Imagine the sound
of lapping waves,
roaring surf,
just beyond the yard.
Ignore the sound of
the neighbor’s Weed Eater.
Imagine hearing melodious
languages, not American English.
Ignore the barking of the
Labrador puppy next door.
Caribbean island paradise.
Secluded oasis on the Mexican coast.
Monastic hideaway in Southern France.
View of the Tasman sea.
All the places I’m not allowed to go.
Spectator Sport
Watching from our cottage of angst,
and sipping from a bottle of beer,
we discover the treeline is changing
with the rising of the earth’s heat
right before our eyes
that even the denier’s cannot mask over.
What to root for?
Our dawdling, a kind of lethargy
like after having a big bowl of porridge,
seems strange given the marching of trees.
When we become more active,
we zoom helter skelter like a firefly
trapped in a glass jar with no way out
Hour 9: Fireflies
Each morning in Thomasville, the air smelled of varnish from the furniture factory
Sun like I’d never seen woke me, warming the air, begging me to go outside
The heat meant I could smell every tree, every blade of grass
At night the air rang with the chirping of crickets, like a Hollywood film, I thought
And then out came the fireflies, sparking in strange yellow-green
Stalking from the screened porch, with its faded green paint
We ran to the treeline to bottle them – easy to do, it turned out
But they couldn’t stay in the jar for long – they’d lose their glow
At night, back in my bed, I’d watch them bumble past my window
Hour 9; Prompt 9: The Terror of Bottled Lightning
Firefly’s scared me when I was a kid
Unless they were in a bottle
I could mask my fear then, but barely
Blood flowed like that second bowl, still
My heart a zooming pace car
I would suddenly feel lethargic
And my legs trembled like a treeline awaiting the saw
The heat of dread washed over my face
My cousin looking at me strange
“You okay, cuz?”
That jar was the cottage
That firefly
A bear