The Oldest Human Need

How far removed are you from loneliness?       

Would it be two relationships or three,

or is it one that holds your homeliness;

just one, thin soul to form the boundary?

Like spinning yarn our family and friends

become entwined, their lives enriching ours,

but when a strand unravels from, or rends

the whole we find ourselves with empty hours.

What insulates you from the vast alone

that tears through thoughts like clawing arctic wind,

its piercing cold, its heartless, raking  moan

that shakes and isolates the thickest skinned?

We don’t all need a child or a mate,

just someone who will wonder if we’re late.

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.  -Margaret Mead  

Here is a sonnet, of sorts, for the final day of 30 days of poetry for the month of April. Woo Hoo!  

Pending

I ask you if your love is true

but your response is pending.

I use my phone and email too

in asking if your love is true.

Unlikely reasons saunter through

my mind - excuses never ending.

I ask you if your love is true,

but your response is pending.

The triolet is a short poem of eight lines with only two rhymes used throughout. The requirements are straightforward: the first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh lines; the second line is repeated in the final line; and only the first two end-words are used to complete the tight rhyme scheme. Thus, the poet writes only five original lines, giving the triolet a deceptively simple appearance: ABaAabAB, where capital letters indicate repeated lines.  Also, ideally the lines should be iambic tetrameter, but  I am rather rusty at this form,  and played a bit loose with this. :o)

Regina

    Mitzi by Mary Bach

I am cat.

I am queen.

That silly dog is just a bitch.

You may approach and pet me now.

NO! Not there!

Yes, that’s better.

Purrrrrrhaps now

I will allow you to scratch my ears.

You’re welcome.

We were asked talk to the animals by Helen over at IGRT.  Instead I have listened, and this is what my son Mike's cat, Mitz,i had to say.  By the way, you might not be able to tell from this picture, but Mitzi got her name because she has 6 toes on each foot, and it made her little paws look like mittens.  And of course, female cats are called queens, while female dogs are known as bitches - which is why, if I come back, in my next life I would like to be a cat rather than a dog. :o)

Tomorrow

     Public Domain Image

Tomorrow

I

will write something

so

achingly lovely

it will make you weep, scorch your socks off,

this piece

I will write tomorrow.

Big thank you to Karen, who writes the blog 21 Wits, for introducing me to a new form.  It's called Piku, and this is how it works:

Piku is a form of poetry much like haiku,  with a prescribed number of syllables per line.  But instead of 5-7-5 like Haiku, Piku uses pi as its base.  The number of syllables in each line corresponds to the numbers of pi.  So the first line of Piku contains three syllables, one syllable for the second line and four syllables for the third line, and so on, just like pi: 3.14159265358979323846…  

In my piece the syllables in the lines are 3-1-4-1-5-9-2-6.

This is linked to IGRT for their Open Link Monday, and is also for April 

Southern Still Life

    Image: Public Domain, yesteryearsnews.wordpress.com

Hey Mrs. Sippy

how ‘bout a lil’ sip

a’ that

shinin’ moon?

This is a quickie for PAD and NaPoWriMo.  Just a little fun with words.  I'm catching up!

Random Sighting

Outside the window

a ginger girl stands

in two different socks,

grey and neon,

with her floaty blue dress

dissolving into the sky.

Her phone

is the focus  

of her attention.

And across the street

a long, crane arm   

arcs a wrecking ball

toward the inevitable

block wall.

This is just what the title says, though I feel a bit like I am taking part in a public bird count or something.  For PAD and NaPoWriMo, and you.

Coffee Clutch

     Public Domain Image

The business man at 

the table behind me

tries, through his phone,

to logic someone 

into not to cutting her hair.

At first I cannot tell 

if it is a daughter or a lover,

but it becomes evident

as he pleads for her 

to forget boys,

go back to school.

He offers advice, favors, sugary bribes.

Then, in a worried-father voice

he says he loves her.

But I cannot hear 

if she loves him back.

This is based loosely on a converstaion I shamelessly eavesdropped on today at the coffee shop, and it's for PAD and NaPoWriMo.