Live or Memorex?

For Hedge’s 55. I have harkened back to a long gone ad campaign in which music was taped and replayed.  The question was, Is it live or is it Memorex?  Well….nuff said.  Here is my response:  real people doing art among real people on the street, with a message:  

 

Live or Memorex?
Is anything real anymore?
Holographic representations of women
screech and dance on a “stage”
moving like JarJar Binks in drag,
The sun is a hologram in the sky –
Who cuts it off during the night?
Facebook friends never meet you for coffee.
Total strangers (especially widowed men)
want to become friends.
The lonely is real.

Hatsune Miku – a holographic “singer”

Blue birds

For the Wednesday prompt at Real Toads, unhappy refrain. A gogyoshi. A gogyoshi is the most simple of Japanese forms – five lines. that is it. No syllable count, created by Taro Aizu. Unlike other Japanese forms, the poem is given a title.  As a rule, I do not care for music prompts as I find people tend to rewrite the lyrics. Not always, but mostly. I did not listen to the song linked to this prompt.

Blue birds
Hot summer solstice day –
the bluebird nest is empty –
the fledglings have flown.
Blue skies absorb the bluebirds,
my backyard is lonely without them.

 

Like Humans

For Poets United, Midweek Motif – Human.

Like Humans
I love.
I weep.
I feel pain
both in my soul
and in my body.
I get cold.
I get hot.
I get thirsty.
I get hungry.
I walk among the trees
and look up at the stars.
I howl when the moon is full
just like the humans do.
It is amazing how much like us
these humans are.

A Year

A quadrille for Kim’s prompt using the word cycle.  What is a quadrille?  It is a poem of exactly 44 words using the prompted word.  The title is not included in the word count. Exacty a year ago today, my mother died.

A Year
The year cycles through its paces
Summer, fall, winter, spring.
A full year has passed since you died.
Today dawns as it did last year –
warm and sunny,
deceptive in its kindness.
I sit on the back porch
listening to birds singing your name.

mama as a baby

The Doe

For Karin’s prompt at Real Toads, What is? I don’t know if I met the bar but….here is my poem. I don’t use metaphors. I only write what I see and feel.  Also visiting dVerse Poets Pub open link night with this.

The Doe
“And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
Luckier”. Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass
Now that we speak of dying, And should I have the right to smile:” T.S. Eliot Portrait of a Lady III

I don’t know why I have been thinking of death,
sitting up here in my tree.
Maybe it is the suicide of Tony Bourdain or of a friend a year ago
or maybe it is the death of my mother,
almost a year ago.

The tree bark is warm and rough behind my back.
Green shadows dance about my head
while birds sing and fly and fluff
and squirrels chase each other,
some of them coming perilously close to my head.
I had dropped down some withered apples from
my pantry for the forest folk to forage.
I heard the faint crack of a branch and looked down
to see a doe nibbling on the apples.
She looked up and for just a moment
almost fled.
But then she resumed her eating.
Perhaps she had seen me sitting
on the back porch as she wandered through our yard.
Her eyes reminded me of my mother,
large and pansy brown
looking up with innocence,
looking up with knowledge of her dying.
looking into my eyes with sorrow
at leaving me behind.
I’ve been thinking a lot about death.
I wonder what it is.
I don’t know what death is.
I only know what it isn’t.
Today it isn’t the blue sky and green trees
and the doe eating apples
at the foot of the tree.

New Moon

I have done a Bussokusekika, a Japanese poetic form that follows the rules of tanka, except there are three seven syllable lines that end the poem for a 5-7-5-7-7-7. Bussokusekika is an ancient form of poetry, older than Tanka or haiku. It translates to footprints of Buddha.

New Moon
crescent thin against
the black night – overpowered
by the stars she sings
a faint song of undappled
water and hunting owls – she
is lonely in the darkness

After

For Marian’s challenge at Real Toads. We are to write a tetractys poem – 1-2-3-4-10 Syllable count per line.  I am deeply saddened by the suicide of Anthony Bourdain.

“As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks — on your body or on your heart — are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.” Anthony Bourdain

After
I.
An
empty
place setting
at the table.
Pour the wine. Free spirit drinks with a smile.

II.
Knives
are still.
Dust settles.
Pans are empty.
The kitchen is silent and still, waiting

Suicide happens when a person’s emotional pain exceeds their ability to cope with that pain. But there is help. If you are in trouble, pick up that ten ton phone–tomorrow can be better, even if you don’t believe it right now. National Suicide Prevention Help Line: 1-800-273-TALK.