A new page on Writer’s Co-op is a biweekly show case of short pieces submitted in response to prompts. Submissions from anybody with a serious interest in writing are welcome. I needed only 12 pages to print all seven pieces from Show Case #1 in a large font, and I am glad to have read them.
~ Mortality #1 ~ \ Emergent \ from dancing atoms, \ life is short. ~ Mortality #2 ~ \ Let’s live life \ with defiant joy, \ all the way. Carpe Diem Haiku Kai … #1850 dried grass “Dried grass” in the challenge comes from Basho’s last haiku, written as he was dying. My response imagines him rallying to console his […]
Smooth outer layer. We see rough inner layer when the light changes. ~ ~ ~ ~ Layers nest like Russian dolls, when science shows us atoms. Layers ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #283 – Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, –– above post (on phone) or beside it (on […]
While Freud’s quarrelsome trio was speculative and oversimplified, he was onto something: “the” mind may be a loose association of multiple partial minds (I’ll call them “miniminds”) that jostle for conscious attention and sometimes squabble. Here is a comic misadventure due to one of my own miniminds that segues to another minimind’s way to treat toenail fungus. BTW, it’s all true.
While defending the US Capitol on 2021-01-06, police officer Mike Fanone was dragged down its steps, beaten, zapped with a taser, and nearly killed. Apologists for mob rule (provided the mob is white) were soon rebranding the rioters as tourists who were merely rowdy. Now Fanone is defending the truth at great personal cost.
The grass in my lawn is eager to grow into a shaggy mess, so I cannot always postpone mowing until some other plants in the lawn have set seed. But I can do the next best thing and get almost another week from some blooms, plus photos and a 3-5-3 haiku.
Photographing wildflowers in my yard inspired new lyrics for a song about a couple “too young” to be in love. While the original sweet lyrics came true for some couples, I did not marry young. I still like that song’s lovely music and calm questioning of what “they” say, so I am glad to have lyrics that fit my situation. Wish I could sing.
Being rooted makes plants easier to photograph than animals, but plants do twitch with the breeze and ruin careful compositions. Cautiously optimistic, I shoot repeatedly and hope a few images catch the air’s calm moments. Sometimes optimists win, with a haiku as well as images.
One of the few nineteenth century poems that move me is *Invictus* by William Ernest Henley. The poem’s spirit of unflinching defiance can be expressed in more contemporary ways. (Henley’s way is still good.) After one very contemporary way inspired by trees, we end with a quick riff on forms and freedom in poetry.
Ronald Reagan’s remark about arms control is not an oxymoron, as I learned while coping with the discovery that my phone-friendly blog was not so friendly after all. Able to handle mobile calls with a simple flip phone (and unable to type with my thumbs), I had seen no reason to have a smartphone and had trusted the WordPress previewer to warn me if a blog post would look bad there. But then I bought a smartphone.
While I have never visited the Galapagos Islands, I treasure a framed print of a photo taken there by Laura Zito, who captured a bright red crab against glistening wet black rock. What chance have I to see something close to home that looks much like that? Very slim. But still …
Slow shutter needed.Daffodil and tulip shareearly morning light.~ ~ ~ ~There is enough for us all,if we take less than we want. I considered posting my photo wordlessly, with the post’s title as a hint that I have something beyond a nice image in mind. Too subtle. Compulsively explicit, I wrote a haiku. […]
Geometry began with practical measurements over moderate distances. Boundaries of Egyptian farmers’ fields had to be restored after the Nile’s annual floods. A taut rope between two posts marked where an edge of the base of a pyramid would be laid. And so on. This prosaic technology inspired ancient Greeks to create something weird and wonderful.
Calling 90 degrees a “right” angle is a little misleading. Yes, spatial coordinates should usually be based on perpendicular lines. But 90 degrees is often just one angle among many, and perpendicular may not be right for the job.
Haiku poems commonly deal with events on short time scales. In a split second, the frog jumps into the pond. In minutes, the sunset fades. In days, the cherry blossoms fall. How about decades? How about millenia? They can show up too, along with the split second that a camera’s shutter is open.
«Because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick someone else’s cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States Senator.»
~ Raphael Warnock (newly elected US Senator from Georgia) in his victory speech on 2021-01-05
Mellow Curmudgeon 