My Poems

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

1. Fan jue ju [for the Holmes Minor poetry page prompt: fans]

Dyed silk stretched over thin bone
Catching breath, releasing moan
Trickling sweat eroding stone
Flames fanned, heat rising to groan

2. Bath Tyburn [for Good Omens PWP Soak, for Dick or Treat, slashficlets, and Gen Prompt Bingo]

Steaming
Seething
Deeming
Wreathing
When beset by steaming seething wrath,
try Love's redeeming, enwreathing bath.

3. Nightmares on the Night Train - triolet - Inspired by this photo of a people sleeping on the Tokyo night train, 1964, and a book I finished reading Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edogawa Rampo.

asleep, the weary souls, on the night train

aboard, the ghoulish dreads, in slack, slumped heads

one dreams of a fiend in a chair frame, the pain

asleep, the weary souls, on the night train,

one dreams of confession, one of cold gain

one dreams of obsession, rag picture deads,

asleep, the weary souls, on the night train

aboard, the ghoulish dreads, in slack, slumped heads

4. Trine [which is a French poetic form and also three planets 120 degrees adjacent to each other forming an equilateral triangle]

 

Where do I put these three? This anger, fear, and lust.

They orbit in this space. They spin, as planets must.

Lust is a little moon. Its glow ever eclipsed.

Fear extends its pull. Its gloom with all is mixt.

Anger flares, it froths. Its surface always hot.

They sit at wide angles. They gawp, more oft than not.

No missions to explore. No study, core to crust.  

Their energies made strengths. To love’s Polaris fixed.

Re-routed and reforged, a firmament re-shot.

Comments

[smallhobbit]

I like the triolet - it does sum up those travellers. And I particularly like the trine - it's very expressive.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you for reading them. I liked that photo and I liked the book of Japanese short stories. I thought it mashed well.

I don't often write directly about feelings but I spent a couple of days pondering the whole 3 planets at 120 degrees in a triangle and this is what I came up with. I dunno. I'm not crazy about it but it's supposed to be alexandrines and I like my alexandrines to have a real caesura in the middle so they sounds sort of chopped.

[ancientreader]

I find all of these impressive but especially like the first and the fourth. "To love's Polaris fixed" is fucking brilliant.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you! I liked the fan one, too.

I fulfilled my science requirement in undergraduate with astronomy. We had a little observatory on campus. It was nice. Stars, plants.

See, when I was writing the fourth one, I felt slightly uncomfortable because I felt like I was touching on my own philosophy of life, and I don't like to do that directly.

[firecat]

I really like the trine. It has this pent-up energy...

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Oh, interesting. The pent-up energy sort of like the forces between the planets! I don't remember writing one of these before.