stonepicnicking_okapi

Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem by Maya Angelou

Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.

Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.
( Read more... )

Watch on YouTube

I wrote a rondeau today. Here is one I like by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

Posting this today because my spiritual teacher spoke of it in a video I watched today and mentioned that former Indian Prime Minister Nehru had the final stanza on his desk. Interesting.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I actually have written quite a few poems this month from participation in the

fandom_empire challenge.

1. better to be alone than wish you were [original, villanelle]
2. the blade runner's secret [English sonnet + 1, Blade Runner (1982)]
3. Rachael paints [quatern, Blade Runner (1982)]
4. ghost dance [Ghost in the Shell (1995)]
5. noble harts [original, ottava rima]

1. This is actually based on something I found on a post-it note stuck to my father's computer. This was after my mother had died and he had moved to a different town & state from the one I grew up in (but before he got remarried).

better to be alone than wish you were by okapi

scratched on a scrap, a proverb amateur
carelessly scrawled, blue ink on yellow square
‘better to be alone than wish you were’

what are you choosing, what do you prefer,
‘company kept is company earned,’ there,
scratch that on a scrap, a proverb amateur!

at ‘solo expedition,’ daydreams stir,
scaled peaks, breaths of singularly fresh air
‘better to be alone than wish you were’
( Read more... )

I don't suppose it's unusual to be 'fannish' about the moon. After all, it's where the word 'lunatic' comes from.

Last night in North America, it was a blue supermoon, meaning the brightest full moon and the second full moon of a calendar month. Ours was kind of smudgy with clouds, but I made a point of looking at it (and being very disappointed when at first the cloud cover was too thick to see it). One of my week 1 fandom empire powerball prompts is Moon so I wrote a poem (a rondeau). Also, in the chat room of my BTS In the Seom phone game, I am meeting a lot of Indonesian ARMY (BTS fans are called ARMY) and we chatted about the supermoon (I don't even know if it was supermoon in Indonesia) and she spontaneously composed a poem in Bahasa Indonesian. I quickly copied it down and give the google translate underneath. I was really touched. She said the poem was for me.

There are plenty of great songs about moons in all genres. I've ficced with moon themes a lot (especially werewolf AUs but 3 years ago

story_works did a moon theme flash challenge).

that moon by okapi

like every poet in ewe’s clothing before me
soft sheepish eyes draw up to twilight’s skies and see;
like tender, wooly souls, those, before and after,
who dare to be inspired by craft, this crude crafter
attempts, like all the rest, to word-weave faithfully

that moon. since first silver leaf of primeval sea
stirred elemental yen to pen first lunacy,
so I sink to commonplace, the hackneyed drafter,
like every poet

pale tuft set against dark nap, what words could ever be
enough? I try, I sigh, I strain poetically,
not ‘bright’ not ‘round’ not ‘full.’ skeins of scornful laughter
unravel. these words, they’re not enough. sought-after
stitch drops but I knit on, knit worn inanity,
like every poet

moon poem by pio

bulan melihat mu adalah anugrah menyapaikan rasa tenang di malam hari

bulat mu indah di kejauhan sinar terang mu indah di kegelapan

[the moon seeing you is a gift conveying a sense of calm at night /
your round is beautiful in the distance, your bright light is beautiful in the darkness]

( Fannish 50 list )

Title: bangle
Rating: Gen
Length: 101
Poetic form: English sonnet
Notes: This is based on one of my spiritual guru's metaphors. The idea that self-will (ego) over times creates shackles which prevent the spiritual aspirant from moving along the spiritual path.

these bangles round the wrists were forge of much
indulgence, blows of self-will repeated.
these rings clamped tight round swollen limbs, of such
constriction; freedom, blood flow impeded

their jingle, reminder of choices made,
their jangle, life’s companion sound, and yet
they won’t go, they won’t be shattered or frayed,
these lovely shackles coaxed on and then set

restraint, denial of will, the only cure,
to think not of oneself, but others’ needs
then little by little, forbearing lure,
engorged ego deflates and bloat recedes.

then bangles can be slipped off, cast away,
and limbs, unfettered, spread to greet new day

This is the poem I used as inspiration for my BTS RM/Jimin PWP: exposed on the cliffs of the heart.

exposed on the cliffs of the heart by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell--my favourite of Rilke's translators)

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Look, how tiny down there,
look: the last village of words and, higher,
(but how tiny) still one last
farmhouse of feeling. Can you see it?
Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.
While, with their full awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
or linger. And the great sheltered bird flies, slowly
circling, around the peak’s pure denial.—But
without a shelter, here on the cliffs of the heart . . . .

minutia_r is hosting a poetry prompt fest (click banner above). I have written 3 poems today! Two were Sherlock Holmes and one fill for the prompt fest.

-a quatern for

holmes_minor poetry page

‘revolver in a collar drawer,
the weapon used,’ inspector said,
and Mrs. Butte of daily chore
sat mute before the Colonel, dead.

‘but all once-upon soldiers keep
revolver in a collar drawer;
it’s not a cunning gap to leap,’
the sleuth rebuked. ‘it’s village lore.’

‘a neighbor with a grudge, or four,
could have slipped in, easily found
revolver in a collar drawer,
and got revenge’s fleshy pound’

while inspector considered this,
the sleuth’s companion’s brow did score
as he made a plan to move his
revolver in a collar drawer.

-an English sonnet for today's Watson's Woes July prompt

on leaving behind village streets and signs
for Sussex countryside and rural charms,
near the southern slope of the downs, on lines
of sleepy wooded roads by tumbling farms

lost wanderers are liable to report
the sight of figures in the distant mist
a pair of riders on horseback purport
to roam and on their right of way insist

round there, another pair are often spied
in search of footprints and cigarette ash
ill-defined, modern provenance belied
by deerstalker, lens, revolver drawn, moustache

on that rustic path, one feels London soot,
hears a cab’s clop and knows the game’s afoot!

-and an original senryu for the prompt fest

summer nocturne played
as the snow falls is a ghost
haunted and haunting

Title: encroaching, exploring
Poetic form: rispetto
Rating: Gen
No. of lines: 8
For: GYWO Yahtzee Roll #3 prompt:

the dune gave in to envy of
the sea and swept by doors and walls
in tidal waves of sand, the wish
to flood begetting claiming squalls

like swarm which strays beyond the dale
upon a wish to swim and sail
in search of nectar on the brine
for honeycomb of salt and shine

I was inspired also by this chocolate wrapper and used it for a collage. I even purchased the bee stickers today to make it. I haven't actually ate the chocolate yet. I am waiting for summer to settle in.

I like bees and honey. Of course, from an ecological perspective, bees are very important. I rarely eat honey directly from the jar, but I like the flavour in things. The boys' father loves honey and local honey best. He eats it for breakfast everyday and whenever I'm somewhere with local honey, I buy some for him. I like bees and honey as a motif for writing, crafting, puzzles, etc. and given it's cannonical that Sherlock Holmes kept bees in retirement, I've written tons of fic and poems about Holmes' bee-keeping.

Who else liked bees? Emily Dickinson.

To make a praire by Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

( Fannish 50 list )

I wrote a bit of blank verse for the Singer Sargent painting.

fleeing scandal, retreat to English countryside
lanterns hang among the trees, pale lilies still bloom
little girls in white dresses light more paper globes
light, light, light, so fleeting, nevertheless, it must
be captured, en plein air, mere minutes, moments,
dusk after dusk, a mad tempest in a paint pot,
purple tint of evening, it must be seized, caught, won,
autumn comes, silk flowers take the place of true ones
pastoral ode, ‘a wreath around her head she wore,’
sweet song plays on, along the water, along banks
until it reaches its colourful conclusion,
garden canvas, ‘carnation, lily, lily rose.’

---

Also I have been listening to Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and was inspired to write a lanturne, which is a form I wanted to do last month. So here's a poem about the murder weapon in that work.

a
fine sharp
Tunisian
blade sunk to the
hilt

The whole poem is available here.

from The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith by Gwendolyn Brooks

Inamoratas, with an approbation,
Bestowed his title. Blessed his inclination.

He wakes, unwinds, elaborately: a cat
Tawny, reluctant, royal. He is fat
And fine this morning. Definite. Reimbursed.

He waits a moment, he designs his reign,
That no performance may be plain or vain.
Then rises in a clear delirium.

He sheds, with his pajamas, shabby days.
And his desertedness, his intricate fear, the
Postponed resentments and the prim precautions.

( Read more... )

Let us proceed. Let us inspect, together
With his meticulous and serious love,
The innards of this closet. Which is a vault
Whose glory is not diamonds, not pearls,
Not silver plate with just enough dull shine.
But wonder-suits in yellow and in wine,
Sarcastic green and zebra-striped cobalt.
With shoulder padding that is wide
And cocky and determined as his pride;
Ballooning pants that taper off to ends
Scheduled to choke precisely.
Here are hats
Like bright umbrellas; and hysterical ties
Like narrow banners for some gathering war.

People are so in need, in need of help.
People want so much that they do not know.

Below the tinkling trade of little coins
The gold impulse not possible to show
Or spend. Promise piled over and betrayed.

These kneaded limbs receive the kiss of silk.
Then they receive the brave and beautiful
Embrace of some of that equivocal wool.
He looks into his mirror, loves himself—
The neat curve here; the angularity
That is appropriate at just its place;
The technique of a variegated grace.

Here is all his sculpture and his art
And all his architectural design.
Perhaps you would prefer to this a fine
Value of marble, complicated stone.
Would have him think with horror of baroque,
Rococo. You forget and you forget.

I am reading Together in Sudden Strangeness: American's Poets Respond to the Pandemic edited by Alice Quinn. This poem is from that collection.

Men Waiting for a Train by David Biespiel

At first they stand, orphaned, like a line of birds,
First on one foot, then the other, in unison,
Like any other unnamed someones, as if poised
For a firing line, until someone thinks he knows
A train is coming in the sparrow-morning light,
And someone else taps a pack of cigarettes
Against his gloved hand, not exotic,
But it’s as if he’s slipped into captivity. One
Of those corner-of-the-eye, white-sky
Days, late winter a hammer against the
Platform, and gathered above the grave-
Line of the gap enough snow
To consider the blue clouds floating,
Like forgiveness, above us all. Only two
Are cresting at this moment, one a show
Of hands, an explosion of clapping, the
Other a mask of a baptismal face
Failing behind the city’s blood-brown
Skyline. Whoever screamed just then,
Then quieted, then shouted, high, like a crow,
Leaves me filled with absence, listening
For silences, cupping my ears. For
A moment, nothing is being celebrated,
Nothing undone, or measured, nothing
Moves, or rings, in the air, and in the next
Moment sirens are continually dying in
The distance. In the time it takes the train’s
Doors to open, and close, and for the train
To swirl us all off, half in, half out, of
Our own wills, underground, something
Like joy pours out of the cloudburst heart,
And whatever feelings each one of us has had
Goes off into the daylight without us.

Inspired by

dr_zook's recent post of haikus.

the second of March
warm, then cold, then dry, then wet
snake eyes open, shut

I had the idea (from a children's book of acrostic alphabet poems about autumn) to do an Advent series of acrostic poems, so I have been brainstorming words appropriate to each letter. So, look for that starting 1 Dec.

November Day by Eleanor Averitt

Old haggard wind has
plucked the trees
Like pheasants, held
between her knees.
In rows she hangs them
bare and neat,
Their brilliant plumage at
her feet.

I neglected to post some Poe during October. That shall be remedied!

Ulalume by Edgar Allan Poe

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

( as usual, there's a dead lady involved )

Title: a being ill-defined
Rating: Gen
Length: 143
Notes: I used the same metre and pattern as Yeats' "The Swans at Coole" which I posted last Thursday. I also used this prompt from GYWO tumblr: A character who can only exist in mist and fog, dissipating into an obscure pocket in reality when it clears, until they are summoned again.

existing only vague and blurred
in shrouding fog and mist
in pauses near insensible
in gaps, it must exist
composed of liminal reality
and dim locality

alive in smudged, distorting, hazy
miasma, in-between
the ‘there’ and ‘not there,’ discernable
just barely, but not seen,
on the page yet unlettered and unlined,
this being ill-defined

in the moment just before waking,
which fades swifter than dew,
evading and eluding the grasping
of faculty and through
the glass so darkly, never face-to-face
subsists this muddled lace

when everything can be distinguished,
when everything is clear,
it dissipates and lingers, biding
in a plane, in a sphere,
‘til summoned, when a place and time
present a murky clime

anathema, the sharp silhouette,
the profile known outright,
it thrives on nebulosity,
opaque, oblique, and slight
and only when inscrutable its where,
will it be known it’s there

Wind and Silver by Amy Lowell

Greatly shining,
The Autumn moon floats in the thin sky;
And the fish-ponds shake their backs and flash their dragon scales
As she passes over them.

Title: the dragon fly
Poetic form: quatern
Rating: gen
Notes: photo of the bridge below

the dragon fly which guided me
across the bridge appeared without
any warning or forewarning
one fine day in early autumn

accompanied by shadow was
the dragon fly which guided me
across the bridge, they made a fleet
of two, a wingèd formation

in contrast to autumn’s palette
electric green, the body of
the dragon fly which guided me
across the bridge, over water

more leaves have fallen, a carpet
on the ground, on the path, and there,
on the water, on the bridge of
the dragon fly which guided me

Inspired by this amazing photograph of a South Dakota sky (the green is apparently hail reflecting light)

above the meadow
choppy, churning emerald sea
Dakota hailstorm

Title: I bought a Monkey's Paw at CVS
Poetic form: villanelle
Length: 151
Rating: Gen
Notes: Reference to short story The Moneky's Paw by W. W. Jacobs. Photo of the item in question below :)

I bought a Monkey’s Paw at CVS
for fifty cents, a scratcher for the back
or so they say, but I’ll just wish, I guess

I found it in an overstocked recess
a bucket of them hanging on a rack
I bought a Monkey’s Paw at CVS

a metal hand, its fingers curled possess
sharp claws designed for expert itch attack
or so they say, but I’ll just wish, I guess

there’s so much that I want, I must confess,
and so, like fabled, greedy maniac,
I bought a Monkey’s Paw at CVS

I’ll wish for money, fame, prestige, success.
best not to think so much of what you lack,
or so they say, but I’ll just wish, I guess

the twisted means to ends, I’ll just suppress,
the grant by way of bloody awful hack
I bought a Monkey’s Paw at CVS,
or so they say…but I’ll just wish…I guess?

Profile

stonepicnicking_okapi

Navigation

May 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Active Entries

1: Crafting: Becorn
2: Collage Journal: rsc
3: Poet's Corner: Adlestrop by Edward Thomas
4: Music Monday: The Duck Song
5: Views & News
6: Sherlock Sunday: The Naval Treaty
7: Collage Journaling: Agatha journal
8: 3 Weeks 4 Dreamwidth (2025) Day 21 - the end
9: 3 Weeks 4 Dreamwidth (2025):Day 20
10: Puzzles!

Style Credit

Style: Caturday - Orange Tabby for Heads Up by momijizuakmori

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated May. 24th, 2025 09:09 pm

Entries tagged with thursday is verse day

Advent Day 21: Wishes and Wonders

Poet's Corner: We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Poet's Corner: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

My poems

Fannish 50 #31: Moon

My poem: the bangle: gen

Poet's Corner: exposed on the cliffs of the heart by Rilke

Poetry fest

My poem: encroaching, exploring

My poems

Poet's Corner: from The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith by Gwendolyn Brooks

Poet's Corner: Men Waiting for a Train by David Biespiel

My poem: 2 March: Gen

Poet's Corner: November Day by Eleanor Averitt

Poet's Corner: Ulalume by Edgar Allan Poe

My poem: a being ill-defined: gen

Poet's Corner: Wind and Silver by Amy Lowell

My poem: the dragon fly: Gen

My poem: Dakota hail storm: Haiku: Gen

My poem: I bought a Monkey's Paw at CVS: Gen