Take Five

Headphones and downbeats: Dave Brubeck in five four as Paul Demond rhymes through a solo, singing, for all time

for #openwrite (syllable poem) https://www.ethicalela.com/making-it-count-syllabic-verse/

(A) Composition (of Anagrams)

in sonic topics (with) moon potions (add) soot spit pots on top/stop/ oops: omit – omit – omit - moot point position

for #openwrite https://www.ethicalela.com/anagram-poems/

This world's awash in a music, if we listen to what we're hearing

birds dogs wind leaves engines electronics imagination

Pluck the string to make it sing; the melody's a memory in the open key of us

for #openwrite https://www.ethicalela.com/word-association-poem/

Things You Might Do With a Single Match

Ignite it, for sure, with scratching friction that scorches wood and bone and earth

or turn it into an imaginary friend, with a phosphorous head and single-footed body, dancing on the table top

or hold it up at deepest night, a firefly levitating in darkness off outstretched finger, painting ink-light on air

or place it back, gentle, into the book from which it came, where fellow stories wait at rest for the chapter to close

for #openwrite and #mastoprompt (inspired by https://www.ethicalela.com/things-you-can-do-with-an-orange/)

If only he'd let me keep looking for peepers and frogs

instead of home, I'd stay, peeking beneath forgotten logs

but no, it's time, he tells me, it's time for us to go

I wave goodbye to the woods and stories I'll never know

— for #openwrite about shifting to a different perspective https://www.ethicalela.com/perspective-poem/

Sometimes I am judge, and sometimes I am jury, and sometimes, I stand accused, madly dashing down notes for my defense of a scribbled-out poem or song or story, written in a rush and posted before I took the time to consider each line as evidence to be used later in trials of a writer's revisionist history.

—inspired by #openwrite and the prompt of a One Sentence Poem https://www.ethicalela.com/one-sentence-poem/

If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn — Charlie Parker (attributed)

What exactly am I living when I am playing music out of my horn, just the way Bird told it, according to some, while according to others, maybe the words of Bird I carry around with me were never his to begin with, and ain't that just like a bebopper like Charlie Parker to lift something from someone else and riff it into your own as a bit of theft, and all I'm left with here to play with is the possibility that we need to live our days like stories like song like improvisational poetry

— for #openwrite

Come grab your chair I'm over here These days we write won't disappear

We sit to watch the stories grow

I've traveled your stories You rest in my poems We share the shade of leaning, home

We sit to watch the stories grow

When you're the leaves and I'm the stem, we root together and wait for Spring

We sit to watch the stories grow

And next year's harvest starts with this year's seeds We gather our words on this fragile belief

We sit to watch the stories grow

• A golden shovel for #openwrite with line from collaborative NWP poem https://www.ethicalela.com/composing-from-compost/

I wonder if the world dreams of me

and if it dreams of me,

what might the dreaming world see of me?

Am I a thorn or a source of pride?

A knitter's hook or a singer's smile?

or maybe the world doesn't dream at all of me

maybe the world can't fall asleep;

a restless spirit, all because of the likes of me

for #openwrite https://www.ethicalela.com/i-dream-a-world/

Short Thoughts About Writing

Ink gone dry; poems still flow

Write of spaces between the stones

Stories don't exist until we speak

Leaving off letters makes new words

Sometimes writing rules break, become bent

Memory becomes filter for remembering nothing

Pages closed, the book remains unwritten

for #openwrite using Hay(na)ku Poetry Style https://www.ethicalela.com/haynaku/