Nothing Common

Nothing common in her tweets,
For she’s fortified with sweets!
What she tastes she somehow sees
Always tucked between her knees.
 
Autumn’s version of her face?
She knows just the perfect place:
In a corner of the zoo
With a peckish kangaroo!
There the campfire stories burn
And odd children come to learn
How to brand themselves with stars
That have slipped between the bars.
 
If you’ve suffered through this verse,
Don’t forget: It could be worse.
You could be among the dead,
Plunged in darkness, plagued by dread;
But you’re here, you’re having fun—
Keep it up, your life’s not done!

/

© 2021 by Magical Mystical Teacher
 
 
More The Whirligig #341
 
More Writers’ Pantry #93 at Poets and Storytellers United

 

Haibun: Pandemic

Last year was hard—it was brutal!—as the world endured the Covid-19 pandemic. Here a mother died, there a father, and somewhere else a whole family. Some of us lost our homes, because we couldn’t work. Some of us ended up sleeping under bridges, or in fields, or in other out-of-the-way places. We were desolate. We couldn’t reach out to each other for a hug or handshake because we were in lockdown, afraid for our lives. Nothing seemed to help. And then came harbingers of hope, bearing strange names: Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca—vaccines to vanquish the virus! We offered our arms for a jab, and started to look beyond our nightmare, daring to hope that our world might someday be normal again.
 

Hidden mountain stream—
see, a doe and her fawn come
for the day’s first drink!

Haibun © 2021 by Magical Mystical Teacher 

 
 
More The Whirligig #323
 
More Writers’ Pantry #75 at Poets and Storytellers United

Jim

Somewhere is better than nowhere, grinning is better than grim;
Bourbon is better than bibles, but nothing is better than Jim.
He’s the old guy with the bedroll, who’s had a hard knock or two;
He sleeps in a rusty wheelbarrow, parked every night at the zoo.
Jim hasn’t a care in the world, though ashes cover his beard,
And all the grownups who cross his path think he’s completely weird.
But children think Jim’s a wonder—he teaches them letters and sums,
And never asks for a penny, and lets them pound on his drums!
The children all think that Jim’s tale is something that ought to be told,
So here’s to all the Jims of the world, who cannot be bought or sold!

 
 
Poem © 2020 by Magical Mystical Teacher
 
 
More The Whirligig #290
 
More Writers’ Pantry #44 at Poets and Storytellers United

 

Bring Me a Poem

Bring me a poem from somewhere, bring me a poem well done.
I hope it’s about the woman, folding her shirt in the sun.
Let her be standing and watching the fox with the crooked grin,
While saying, “Nothing’s the matter that cannot be cured by sin.”
She hands her shirt to the vixen, still grinning there in the sun,
Wondering why she bothers to do work that is never done.
This is a poem from somewhere, perhaps from the watercourse,
A poem no person can sing right, only the spotted horse.

 
  
Poem © 2019 by Magical Mystical Teacher
 
 
More Sunday’s Whirligig #229