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Four Couplets in Plague Time
Everything stirs up my blood:
Leaves and grass, and squishy mud.
Dancers in the field don’t need
Anything but chicken feed.
Don’t give garbage to your cow!
Stop this nonsense, stop it now!
I wish I could see the light;
Hear bees whisper, “It’s all right.”
Rhyming couplets © 2020 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More The Whirligig #263
More Writers’ Pantry #17 at Poets and Storytellers United
More The Whirligig #263
More Writers’ Pantry #17 at Poets and Storytellers United
Keep on Singing
Sing of poems, sing of bleach,
Sing of games played on the beach.
Everything may be to blame,
But keep singing, just the same.
Sing humiliation down!
Sing to blur the monarch’s crown!
Wait not for the clown who smokes—
Make your own outrageous jokes!
Dizzy though you be with fear,
Keep on singing! Sing, my dear!
Poem © 2019 by Magical Mystical Teacher
Eat Some Beef, Throw a Stone
~~ ~~ 1 ~~ ~~
Eat some beef, throw a stone,
Carry hay, gnaw a bone;
Something good will soon appear—
Isn’t everything quite clear?
~~ ~~ 2 ~~ ~~
Apricots are turning ripe,
Whiskey’s in the water pipe,
Running cold and fast and free—
Will you have a drink with me?
~~ ~~ 3 ~~ ~~
Pipers piped and dancers danced,
Horses horsed and prancers pranced;
Sensors sensed that all was clear—
It was just that time of year.
~~ ~~ 4 ~~ ~~
Archaic is the padlock,
Archaic is the key,
Archaic is the gate post,
Archaic just like me!
~~ ~~ 5 ~~ ~~
Shoulders, fingers, knees and toes—
What’s that tattoo on your nose?
Why’s it there, for pity’s sake?
It looks like a rattlesnake!
Poems © 2018 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Sunday’s Whirligig #172
More Poetry Pantry #413 at Poets United
Tales of This and That
Section of a well-weathered wooden wagon wheel, Yuma Conservation Garden, Yuma, Arizona
~~ 1 ~~
on a well-worn plank
peppers waiting to be sliced
with a keen-edge knife
~~ 2 ~~
As winter deepens,
her loneliness grows longer
in the waning light.
~~ 3 ~~
From a broken plate
the homeless man is scraping
just enough to taste.
~~ 4 ~~
Everything depends
on music she composes
while making mistakes.
~~ 5 ~~
Death by cliff or snare—
she imagines her revenge
on him who harmed her.
~~ 6 ~~
Artists young and old,
create out of this darkness
new and dazzling light.
Haiku © 2017 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Macro Monday 2
More Sunday’s Whirligig #95
More Poetry Pantry #337 at Poets United
Tattered Tales
~~ 1 ~~
discarded boxes
sheltering homeless people
down by the river
~~ 2 ~~
journey into night—
your heart at the beginning
fluttering wildly
~~ 3 ~~
In a perfect world
there would be no mosquitoes,
neither rats nor lice.
~~ 4 ~~
an autumn morning—
walking a misty pathway
wet leaves underfoot
~~ 5 ~~
Everything depends
on rain, a red wheelbarrow
and some white chickens.
~~ 6 ~~
a long journey to
nowhere in particular
and then back again
~~ 7 ~~
Beyond the back fence
a world I have never seen
is waiting for me.
~~ 8 ~~
a short siesta
in the silence of her room—
insomniac’s dream
~~ 9 ~~
coffee for the guests
pouring again and again
until the last drop
~~ 10 ~~
rainy afternoon—
finding a place of refuge
in the library
~~ 11 ~~
finding a table
where we can talk till midnight
nursing our whisky
~~ 12 ~~
summer afternoon
the head of one sunflower
drooping toward the earth
© 2015 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Poetry Pantry #259
More Sunday’s Whirligig #14
Everything
Three friends at the koi pond, Japanese Friendship Garden, Phoenix, Arizona
grasping for one koi
then taking it in her hand—
everything changes
Text and photo © 2015 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Blue Monday
More Our World Tuesday
More Wednesday Waters
More Carpe Diem: “Basho’s ‘If Taken in My Hand'”
Burning Everything
burning everything—
how adept the old rhymester
at torching poems
~~ ~~ ~~
burning everything—
even edible fragments
snatched from the starving
~~ ~~ ~~
burning everything—
even the viscous liquid
seeping from her lips
© 2014 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Sunday Scribblings 2: “Burning Everything”
More Three Word Wednesday: “Adept, Edible, Viscous”
Photo Album
This week’s words: amalgam, gravel, trash, nothing, cheat, vacant, brick, mouth, tentacles, fence, notices, everything, balance
~~ 1 ~~
an old photograph
amalgam of sepias
staining the paper
~~ 2 ~~
Forties photograph—
we are planting apple trees
near the gravel pit.
~~ 3 ~~
She writes poetry
on the photograph’s edges—
two words rhyme with trash.
~~ 4 ~~
Her crushing losses—
nothing in the photograph,
but what is missing.
~~ 5 ~~
See this photograph?
Even though her bed’s on fire,
still you cheat on me!
~~ 6 ~~
From the photograph
she stares out with vacant eyes—
no one knows her name.
~~ 7 ~~
Frankfurt photograph—
graffiti stains a brick wall,
while old men play chess.
~~ 8 ~~
her mouth makes an O
staring at the photograph
of the one she loves
~~ 9 ~~
Grandma’s photograph—
apron strings in disarray
tentacles of grace
~~ 10 ~~
Old fence photograph—
cowboys will never forget
mustangs corralled there.
~~ 11 ~~
A faded photo—
she notices his squinting
eighty years ago.
~~ 12 ~~
everything but one
shows in the old photograph—
miser’s wizened heart
~~ 13 ~~
on a balance beam
the small child in the photo
smiles with confidence
© 2013 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Poetry Pantry #172
More The Sunday Whirl, Wordle 131
