Category Archives: Poets & Storytellers United
Four Aphorisms for a Time of Plague
1
Unforeseen disasters wait
Just outside the garden gate
2
Pity those who lose their smiles
On the heartless COVID miles.
3
Comfort for tormented eyes
Is what doctors all advise.
4
If you let your lungs get wet,
You may drown in deep regret.
Rhyming couplets © 2020 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More The Whirligig #277
More Writers’ Pantry #31 at Poets and Storytellers United
Jump-Rope Rhymes
Fiction, grammar, prose, and mood—
Keep on jumping, don’t be rude!
Edit, conflict, stanza, plot—
This old rope is getting hot!
Punctuation helps the pace—
Jump up higher, jump with grace!
Rhythm makes good poetry—
Keep on jumping, and you’ll see!
© 2020 by Magical Mystical Teacher
Dementia: A Haibun
Tonight my longtime friend will try to explain to me why her dementia (still in the early stages) sometimes makes her incoherent. She’s tried this before. She knows that halfway through her explanation she will find words getting harder to form, and she will quit in mid-sentence. She doesn’t want me to give advice. She just wants someone to listen, someone like me.
Midsummer mishap—
I stumble on the pathway
leading to the gate.
More The Whirligig #276
More Writers’ Pantry #30 at Poets and Storytellers United
Food for Thought
Here’s a little food for thought:
What I have, dear, you have not.
If you did, I’d be bereft—
Even now there’s not much left!
Maybe we could share a crumb.
Of my store, I’ll give you some.
Surely you’ll reciprocate;
Thus our hunger we will sate.
Poem © 2020 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Weekly Scribblings #29 at Poets and Storytellers United
Intimations of Mortality
What you’ve stolen fades away,
Nothing made of gold can stay;
All your silver turns to brass,
All your diamonds into glass.
Look at your reflection fair
In the mirror hanging there;
Peer again, though, and you’ll see
You’re laced with mortality.
Cruel payment’s coming due;
You will have to pay it, too.
All the games you like to play?
Death will snatch them clean away!
Until then, however, know
That you’re free to come and go,
Doing what you like to do—
But on Judgment Day, you’re through!
More The Whirligig #275
More Writers’ Pantry #29 at Poets and Storytellers United
Blue Monday & Ruby Tuesday Too: Jazz Guitar
A jazz guitarist in pre-pandemic days rocks an outdoor concert in Yuma, Arizona. One photo, two memes.
“Am I seeing things?” said she.
“Does he play songs just for me?”
“No,” I answered, “not at all.
Everyone, the short, the tall,
Loves the music he can play—
Now let’s dance the night away!”
More Weekly Scribblings #28 at Poets and Storytellers United
Please visit other participants and leave a comment.
Photo and poem © by Magical Mystical Teacher
To share your Blue Monday shot, click on the Mister Linky icon below:
To share your ruby shot, click on the Mister Linky icon below:
In This Sizzling Heat: A Haibun
In this sizzling heat we feel as though we’re descending into hell. The river has shrunk into a thin sliver thread. Our grapes are turning brown. They need water. I cannot tell you how eagerly we look for a cloud—one cloud!—to bear even a few drops of rain to the grapes. The neighbor boy flies his kite. It casts a shadow over the dying grapes. But I’ve had enough of watching for clouds that never come. I dig out our passports. “Come on,” I say to my beloved, “we’re going to Norway where it’s cool and it rains. Oh, wait! Americans aren’t welcome in Europe these days. What a clusterf*ck!”
I can’t remember
the last time I quenched my thirst
from a mountain stream.
More The Whirligig #274
More Writers’ Pantry #28 at Poets and Storytellers United
Then and Now
Once my hair was Bible-black,
Now it’s grey, both front and back.
Once my teeth were gleaming white,
Now they’re dull—it must be blight.
Once I ran a race, and won,
Now I sit and soak up sun.
Once my fist was hard as rock,
Now it’s limper than a sock.
Once I slept the whole night through,
Now I cannot sleep past two.
That was then, and this is now—
How’d I get here, anyhow?
Finding Bliss in Change
Let’s make a parade, and march through the gate;
These times are trying, but we cannot wait.
Grace has gone swimming, and things are amiss—
Who in her right mind would argue with this?
See how old prejudice rears up its head?
Cut it off quickly! Make sure that it’s dead.
There’s beauty in yellow, red, white, and black;
Joy’s in the middle, the front and the back.
It’s simple, my friend, to bring a new day.
Old braids of hatred? Just snip them away!
More The Whirligig #273
More Writers’ Pantry #27 at Poets and Storytellers United
Say Yes
Say yes to everything:
the moldy bread, the empty kettle, the dying fire;
yes to the anvil on which your life was forged;
yes to what you have wanted, but not gotten;
yes to what you have waited for, but not seen;
yes to the tattered edges of your cloak,
and your belly bloated with hunger,
while swallows feast on insects near the temple gates.
To everything say yes.
More The Whirligig #272
More Writers’ Pantry #26 at Poets and Storytellers United
