Author: Tim (Page 7 of 11)

Just a moment in the woods.

No Answer...

The rain falls quietly in the trees
The woods carry a scent of life 
and decay lingers in the breeze
Leaves,  scattered and rotting...

There where the hornets nest hung
Is now a bare branch collecting raindrops
And the tree that held the squirrel family
Is fallen across the path leading up the hill

I stop and look to the sky
Clouds are passing quickly now
Droplets grow bigger and 
Fall faster upon my eyelids.

Where else would I rather be
But here, in this place, 
Enjoying the stark beauty
Of a gray winter day?

Cheers!

©2020, Tim Geoghegan. All Rights Reserved.

There are moments in life when pressing on seems like a real waste of time.

The Tanka form. A haiku… but not.

The gin speaks its mind
and paints a blurry picture
Of my secret world;
Where the tonic flows freely
and you squeeze all the ripe limes.

Cheers!

©2020, Tim Geoghegan. All rights reserved.

The Kimo is an Israeli version of the Haiku… today it’s what you get. I am tired.

Writing

A glass of bourbon on the side table
waits while he empties his mind
onto the blank white page. 

Cheers!

©2020, Tim Geoghegan. All Rights Reserved

Oh my goodness… when you work through the process of writing a poem based on a form, like the Blitz, which you will see below, the result can be surprising and maybe a little disconcerting. (That was a weird first sentence…)

Again, I don’t want people to start thinking that I am in a bad way. I am writing poems and this one went down a path. I simply followed and let it be what it became. I was going to spend some time editing and working through the rough patches to make it “better”. What is better though? Sometimes I think the initial run, unadulterated, is ok and should stand as it is.

That being said, I also just wanted to get done so I can do some reading. Maybe I’m artsy, or maybe I’m lazy, OR MMAAYYBE I am really excited about the book I am reading. Whatever the case, here’s a poem like object for your consideration.

Peace from care

Keep your distance
Keep the peace
Peace is rare
Peace within
Within your reach
Within certain limits
Limits to what can be endured
Limits to my patience
Patience fails 
Patience and love
Love to walk around
Love to get to know you
You are my friend
You know me so well
Well enough to know better
Well, at least that’s what I thought
Thought about running away
Thought about meeting you in the dark
Dark is my favorite 
Dark is my soul
Soul sister can I be your mister
Soul searching makes me weary
Weary and weak
Weary of what others say
Say what you need to say
Say anything
Anything you want
Anything you need
Need to find a new way to live
Need to know I’m heard
Heard telling stories
Heard through all the noise
Noise and confusion
Noise and calamity
Calamity and chaos
Calamity and fear
Fear of the dark
Fear of being alone
Alone and in the cold
Alone is how we exist
Exist and contemplate life
Exist and shrink to nothing
Nothing of importance
Nothing to anyone
Anyone who will listen
Anyone who will care
Care who lives or dies
Care for a wretched man
Man
Dies

Cheers!

©2020, Tim Geoghegan. All rights reserved.

Ok, so perhaps the title of this post is a little off the hook. It will be ok. I tried writing a nonet. I think you will get the drift as you read it.

Today I was asked if the poems I am writing are “autobiographical” in nature. I would say that, while the poems do indeed come from my experience, they are not necessarily about me personally. I look around for things that interest me and I jot in my little notebooks. This particular poem comes from my own front yard.

Pacific Sunset

So the maple tree withers away
Its branches curling on themselves
New leaves never budding out
Moss and lichen growing
Returning to dust
Weakened by time
and weather...
Cut down
gone.

Cheers!

©2020, Tim Geoghegan. All rights reserved.

Well, I’m going to admit… I got desperate, late in the day, and went searching for something. I found the Dodoitsu.

From the WikiPedia regarding Dodoitsu – “Often concerning love or work, and usually comical, Dodoitsu poems consist of four lines with the moraic structure 7-7-7-5 and no rhyme for a total of 26 morae, making it one of the longer Japanese forms. The form, tone and structure of Dodoitsu derive from Japanese folk song traditions.” I see nothing about whether they should have titles so they are simply called “Work” and “Love”.

It’s probably up to you, reader, if these are comical. I also wonder if you will consider irony as a form of humor. I chuckled when I wrote them sooo… you can decide for yourself. Here you go:

Work - 

He’s showing up everyday
Playing the game oh so well
and making no difference
In his happiness.

Love - 

She wonders all too often
How she missed the telltale signs
That she was falling for him
And then she awakes.

Cheers.

©2020, Tim Geoghegan, All rights reserved.

The luck of the Irish often seems to be with me. For that I am grateful. As I was rather more stuck than usual this evening, a fortunate discovery has helped me out. Months ago I was thumbing through a copy of The Shapes of Our Singing by Robin Skelton (which I can’t afford to buy) and came across an entry for the Treochair. This is a Celtic form that incorporates syllabic counts, alliteration and a specific rhyme scheme. It was interesting enough that I made a note in my Field Notes notebook. Tonight, I have again proved it is beneficial to keep a notebook.

I went back to my jottings in the notebook and found a topic I could manage to work into a Treochair. I present it to you now.

My Old Man

This body,
Falling apart it would seem.
The construction feels shoddy.

And this mind,
is mostly meandering, 
melancholy, and maligned.

Then this heart...
Holding onto hopes and dreams,
Is losing his will to start.

This old man-
Makes meaning out of mole hills... 
and moves on without a plan.  

In some ways I have succeeded and in some I have failed with regard to the Treochair form. This is but a general idea and a decent start.

If you have a copy of Robin Skelton’s book you’d like to send my way, I would not refuse it. One more thing… those links, up there ^^^, are to Amazon and I am an affiliate, so I could receive compensation if you were to use them… fair warning.

Cheers!

©2020, Tim Geoghegan, All rights reserved.

Sometimes I get these ideas in my head and I can’t shake them. Tonight I was going to write a variation on a haiku that incorporates the form into a string of thematic verses to make a longer unified poem, but I also wasn’t terribly interested in writing a bunch of haikus that would be mediocre at best, just to finish something. (It could still happen, but not tonight).

So, I decided to futz around with the pantoum form to address my internal desire to avoid writing haiku style poems tonight. This is what came out of it…

No Haiku and I'm Stuck. 

Evening writing at a fever pitch 
There's always something new coming to mind
a lot of things I let slip right on by
but this one got my brain to twitch

Always something new forms in my mind
Tonight the muse desires a poem  or two
yep this one got my brain to twitch
But now that I've begun I wonder why

My fickle muse desires a poem or two
the topic is "stuck" and she wants no haiku
And now that I've begun I wonder why
because I'm stuck and just about to cry.

Evening writing  at a fever pitch
a lot of things I let slip right on by
the topic is "stuck", she eschews haiku
so I am stuck yet I shall give it a try.

I played a little bit with the meter and the rhyme, but ultimately it all came down to the repetition that I really enjoy about the Pantoum. Hope you enjoy it as well.

Cheers!

©2020, Tim Geoghegan, All rights reserved.

So there is this thing that happens every year. I get home and think, yeah, I’m gonna write for an hour and get something workable down… and then I get an invite to do something else… something… not writing.

It happened tonight, but despite that I tackled a poem… This is a haibun. The form is basically a prose poem followed by a haiku to form a unified poem.

He wakes from a dream, drenched and trembling. Sitting alone in the dark, composing his thoughts and gathering his nerves. He gazes out the window into a full moon night. 

She is there with him
Across moon soaked winter miles...
Her eyes haunt his thoughts.

I have found that this challenge often takes a few days to get into the flow. I am not there yet. The words are not flowing and the ideas feel jammed up. It is a result of getting out of practice, I know. The more I write the easier (maybe not easier, but quicker) the ideas will begin to flow.

If you are reading I invite you to share a response to any of these poems using the same style or a style of your own in the comments. I dare you to write something.

Cheers.