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.
Birthday Fool
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.
Progress
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.
Hazards
Hazards It's fourteen years since we stopped smoking in the pub; ripping out a Rizla, folding in Old Holborn, liquorice papers the favourite, with a fibrous roach, the air grey as a smoker's lung, like a descending fog, bar lights filtering through this self-imposed fug. Yet the wonderousness of rolling a perfect, cylindrical fag, with the correct compaction for a satisfying drag, whilst caressing a pint of cider, an Ambrosian delight, a draught between each toke of carbon monoxide death, is a smoky reminiscence of a joyous freedom from an engine conditioner's workshop, where trichloroethylene induced psycho-dramas and a high-stepping gait were hazards to avoid; a far more noxious environment than the public bar of The Ferryman's smoke smothered walls. So every night at ten o'clock, the five of us would meet, Darren, Ady, Roger, Mark and me in that bar, a raucous drunken reprisal of the night before; Strongbow, Stella Artois, Irish Stout, combustible conversation, rollies flying off the fingers for the final hour and on into the lock-in; years before the lock-down, smiles our only masks. It's fourteen years since then and I've cast off the coughing, revivified the lungs, moved Up North, the air a pristine Pennine flavour now the mills are gone, a butchered working class wandering the estates and the soot blackened pubs, but smoking now outside of the freshly painted tap rooms, in the dog-end littered street. My hands are free of grease, my lungs purged of tar; perhaps a pint of light mild slips down better for that. But now the hazard to be rid of are the neo-liberal thugs who blight we workers lives with their oligarchic cant; that is, until the red flag flies from all town halls.
Memoriam
Memoriam For Arthur Wesney 1915-1941 If I could, I'd come to visit you, where your bones have lain these eighty years. In Libya's dangerous soil you are interred beneath the ground you died on as a youth, so many dreams unfulfilled and gone. My father, who fought with you, is now gone too, but died an old man, lying in his bed still thinking of the way you died in battle, your sacrificial blood drained in the sand. What would be gained by coming to your grave is indefinable. I cannot tell you of the millions subsequently slain and feel your sorrow heave beneath the earth, but only kneel to give you back your name.
A Happy Life
A Happy Life I've grown bewildered, loving life as much and often as I do; pleasures, such as I have known, seeded, watered, carefully grown have nurtured love, the love of you, my happy, caring, loving wife. Bewilderment's a happy way, a moist condition lightly borne, defining not a fuddled mind but clearly knowing to be kind, despite those things we find forlorn, cherishing that which makes us stay. So we grow older, as we must; we settle in each others skin, sampling all the pleasures we have cultivated in the tree of life; and know that, deep within, is rooted care and love and trust.
The Gordian Knot
The Gordian Knot Intractable, opaque, complex, too hard for mortals to unpick, a plethora of twining tricks designed to confuse and perplex. Theorem that ungently wrecks the notion of our self-esteem. A problematic lurid dream where resolution is forgot. Yet Alexander sliced the knot of Gordius; fulfilled his scheme.
Made for the Ronovan Writes Decima Challenge #46 with Knot as the prompt word on the D rhyme line.
beating, reaching, running
beating, reaching, running heading south into the southerly mains'l and jib sheeted tight sucked into the wind spray like white fire scalding our skin as we tack and tack ready about! (mind the boom) onto a broad reach heeling deep astride the gunwale keel exposed raising the genoa relaxing the sheets like flying fish ecstatic in speed a force five flushing us easterly turning north it's as if the wind dies as we run with it spinnaker like cumulonimbus blocking the sun we relax back into the cockpit tiller untaut seemingly at standstill but doubling our knots beer in hand heading for home
The Metaphysics of Doubt
The Metaphysics of Doubt
In metaphysics it's the rage
to conjure images of god,
like building bricks or light'ning rod,
a piece of wisdom, every page
a homily, insightful, sage.
The mind's a cauldron where a whirl-
ing witch's brew invokes a curl-
ing lip, an empathetic grin,
profound misgivings held within;
the grit which manufactures pearl.
Stolen
A decima for Ronovan’s Challenge #44. Steal is the prompt word on rhyme line B.
Stolen Every creed forbids such sins. We're taught compassion, not to steal; provide each other with a meal; how heartbreak ends when love begins. Behind the background violins reality is held in check. This mote of dust, this tiny speck of carbon matter tries it's best to do no harm. But, like the rest, we steal illusions, cash the cheque.
