Occasional writings
Here’s a contribution to Ronovan’s Decima Challenge #50 with Dance as the prompt word on the D rhyme line.
Let's Dance
The Tango from the Argentine,
the Salsa with it's Cuban thrall,
the Cha Cha, Rumba, Samba all
pervaded with their Latin shine
as minds and bodies intertwine.
The Waltz, the Quickstep, Foxtrot too,
are more sedate, yet couples glue
their lower trunks intact, perchance
to move as one throughout the dance.
Enrapturement! Love's rendezvous!
Machineries of Hope
We've marched so many times against it's excesses;
for miners, their futures' black as coal dust;
for printers removed from their pungent presses;
for the pickers of fruit, the decaying must
of strawberries, sweet as nostalgia.
We broke our innocence on picket lines,
those working class machineries of hope,
and played the game of seeing better times.
But in the bramble patch of Capital,
it's anarchistic growth a tangled path
of easily commissioned cruelties,
we foundered. Yet still we feel, like Chartists
and the Communards, we fought for love.
Listen, over the horizon, hear our songs.
With Chirp and Twilight as the prompt words.
Astronomical dusk full of final chirrups our night birds settling
Each New Day
What do I bring to each new day?
A trail of notes and books
I keep for comfort;
a rarely played guitar
filled with unsung songs;
an angry sadness
at each cruelty
so easily committed
and dismissed;
but, most of all,
the love I have for you,
your bright laughter
filling each day with light.
A St. Patrick’s Day contribution to Ronovan’s decima challenge No.49 with Shock as the prompt word on the C rhyme line.
St. Patrick's Day 1850
Eight hundred years and Irish folk
will still endure the iron fist,
will still find courage to resist
violation by England's yoke.
With savagery it's tried to choke
the lifeblood from the Irish flock;
in famine days arranged to block
the shipment of much needed wheat;
ensured the genocide complete,
St. Patrick weeping, feigning shock.
For St. Patrick's Day and my ancestors who made the long trip from Ireland to New Zealand in the 19th century.
Diaspora
However tall your ships were, how long
they took to reach your chosen shores,
could they contain intact your beating hearts,
swollen with leaving, aching with imminent
arrival; the slow salt haul on following seas?
Were prayers said daily, attempting to appease
those catholic saints, their shapes reminiscent
of wet lands you left in colder parts
particularising rain? Did you pack your laws,
clutch them closely, like an Irish song?
How do we feel the sorrow leaving brings
but by a return in our imaginings.
Where has winter gone? Of which winter do you speak? All the winters gone..... One tree blossoming petals pink as perfection promise promises
A contribution to Ronovan's Decima Challenge #48 with Fortune being the prompt word on the B rhyme line.
The Fortune Teller
A brisk wind rifled through the tent,
chilling the teller of fortunes.
She was rummaging through the runes,
deciphering if what they meant
would pay her heating bill and rent.
Business was slow, a winter's day
unlikely to produce the pay
she needed to survive the storm
of lockdown's irritating norm.
What she foresaw, she would not say.
A Shi Rensa contribution to the ronvanwrites Haiku Challenge 348; paired prompt words, Fool and Head.
Birthday Fool
Birthday Fool,
passed years in your head,
share this cake.
Share this cake,
love with which it's made;
children's gift.
Children's gift
is all that is life,
health and love,
health and love
you have gifted this
Birthday Fool.
A contribution to ronovanwrites Decima Challenge #47 with Start as the prompt word on the A rhyme line.
Progress
As Capital tears us apart
and profits from labourers' toil,
we seek, in the tillage of soil,
a flowering, welcoming heart.
So let me suggest, as a start,
production, now owned by the few,
is freed from the oligarch's screw,
communalised, structured and planned,
with redistribution of land.
Society reborn anew.
Poems, Polemicks and Licks 