Achoo! blew the haik – u God bless you – here is a tiss – ue Clean up these broken – rules

for #verselove

gif: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52803365637_44cb5782e1_o.gif

Something you should know ...

is late night boredom on the third shift at the gas station garage fed my desire to learn the acoustic guitar

and know that, that guitar was my brother's guitar, kept in the case with broken clasps after the crash of his car

His handwritten notes helped me learn a few things, like where to place fingers on strings, strumming beneath moon and star

I'd lean back in my chair, past midnight when no one cares where you are, writing soft songs on my brother's guitar

for #verselove https://play.soundslides.com/mdRfyg5Z

Write me, if you will, in a minor key, so that I may forever be a song lingering on your mind

the kind of melody you can only shake loose from time to time;

I'll forever be singing in discordant signatures and off-kilter rhymes

for #verselove

A young bud just arriving after winter a flourish of coloring from the stretching, but now bent from playfulness; we nurture it anyway

a sijo poem via #verselove https://www.ethicalela.com/sijo-korean-poem-with-a-twist/ for #mastoprompt

It makes me want to take a scraper to your hull, the way your home peels away, in transition from what it was to what it is, and you, inside, barely noticing the rest of us, but we all worry about you, still, and what it means when structures become too dilapidated to provide support and shelter in the most fragile of times

for #mastoprompt and #verselove

Thelonius Sounds

When he piano-ed, he'd key the plunk of string to let sing fingers noting rectangular gaps of the missing, jagged art forms angular as freebop

for #verselove

An ethereal act of such creativity begs our attention

It's the invention of something entirely new: for me – for you -

for us to consider, this alignment of planets in the night sky

signals something odd but alluring, but even planetary lights

follow some ancient path, their orbits visible by night

for #verselove https://lumen5.com/user/dogtrax/ethereal-mblyi/ https://www.ethicalela.com/15437-2/

How many mornings have I sat here, paused with purpose, wondering where a poem might come?

Both dogs napping just a few feet away, light snoozing after a wander through night's slow fade

Kitchen machinery hums, its engines a soundtrack to otherwise silence, the clock tick reminding me: time's running on

My coffee settles in a mug, fuel for a jungle of ideas, the edge of an inkling touching on lips and tongue

My mind, spinning words, and then, from nothing comes the something: the writing of this piece has just begun ...

for #verselove and #mastoprompt https://www.ethicalela.com/weekend-coffee-share-poem/ Digital Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZ3Oc5taWg

Quarter note staccato sounds, his bass rumbles in the basement beneath the attic of the horns – here we sit, an audience in rapture at this place where mystery abounds – then the woman next to me erupts in applause before the solo's even over, and I find myself following suit, snare drum to her cymbal crash, then others adding in, too, our skin and hands becoming one rolling thunder in a night of wonder ...

and in a shared quiet of a single moment, pause; shut-eye listening

*Haibun poem, remembering a moment from Christian McBride's New Jawn concert at Bombyx Center on March 29, 2023

for #verselove https://www.ethicalela.com/rest-resist-composing-a-haibun-poem/ Visual: https://flic.kr/p/2oqoyFF

If these words were food, I'd steal a snack with each poem I'd ever read

I'd be caught nibbling pages from the counter or leaving letter traces on dog-eared paper beds

I'd be munching rhymes, false or otherwise, but then maybe, just maybe, what I'd do, instead:

I'd share this meal of intangibles, a morsel of string, a resonance, a shared experience, here, where we are, inside the writers' thread

for #verselove (last day appreciation) https://www.ethicalela.com/13614/ audio: https://vocaroo.com/1deOZabaUY8t