my own personal
flock of gold finches flitting
i’ll share them with you
.
haiku
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🙏clp for providing the image
Category Archives: Birds
look up complete
something familiar
too quick too complicated
to be cloud glimmer
.
a shadow passes
slow yet too quick to leave
shape
taste
awake
fleeting
.
swallow nests neat bowls
lined with mud birds dipping in
& out full of tweet
.
greedy for the sight
of people returning to
normal but not quite
.
my thoughts expand in
empty spaces multiply
in to silences
.
scent of a cloud sent
every day to confound sensée
raise my consciousness
.
look up to the sun
blushing wanting to be burnt
bitten kissed blinded
.
star in dark of mouth
after eons released north
guides my thoughts upwards
.
listen to the night
clear as no bell no moon sound
no thing else exists
.
moon’s pale it’s daytime
insubstantial birds flew past
midnight in to dawn
.
wind comes down to fill
open mouth sounds of petals
drifts lifted to cloud
look up xi
moon’s pale it’s daytime
insubstantial birds flew past
midnight into dawn
.
haiku
look up iii
swallow nests neat bowls
lined with mud birds dipping in
and out full of tweet
.
haiku
oh, yes!
you told me you were
bird
that’s weird
i chirp, a-flutter
perch here on this cloud
.
haiku
it comes in softly
i’ve heard that bird out
side my window my curtains
of melancholy
.
haiku
N.b
Response poem
for you-know-who-you-be
rhymes with soap
you know that thing with
feathers? you give it me with
flower in its beak
.
haiku
School Feeding Pts 1 & 2- un-formatted
SCHOOL FEEDING pt 1
England
The bell’s gone. We are wide-mouthed frogs, riveted like cracked open birds waiting for worms.
Stand in line. Wait your turn.
line
line
line
line
A boy’s socks fall down while standing upright.  It’s my itchy thick tights that go south. My mouth waters. We inch forward.
forward
forward
Will there be custard? Mysterious pudding lurks beneath. Make no sudden moves.
Being served from the hatch where the dinner ladies skulk takes its toll. More than one child this term has lost control of a bladder.
You wonder, will there be bread rolls today or squishy buttered Wonderloaf. Bread’s the best bit.
I hate gravy i hate gravy i hate gravy i hate gravy i hate gravy. Lumpy
Big boys pull my pigtails. They pick their own scabs and eat them. Big boys laughs. What does this mean?
mean
mean
mean
Hunger is constant, factually. Something pure in the strange world of the dinner hall. I am very small.
small
small
small
small
SCHOOL FEEDING pt 2
Australia
Change of continents entails change of lunch habits. It’s not even called dinner here.
Crack open a window, Let the heat out, matey. It won’t go. Lumpy
Hey you, pinkie, say sommat. ( pause for laughter) Are ya Pommie or sommat? Ya gotta be kiddin’.
Drones on. The teacher. The flies. The booming swells of air that’re as solid as the sweaty upper lips and arm pits of kids.
It’s clear I only remember summer dinners. They were perhaps the hottest. 1976 was the longest.
long
long
long
long
I’m shameless in my envy. Clots to the colour of thick meaty gravy.
How we stay friends when she gets her name scrawled on a greasy paper-bagged tuck-shop order, I’ll always wonder. She sinks her tiny teeth in. I get none. Hoarder
i must not swear. i must not swear i must not swear i must now swear
sook
sook
sook
pom
pom
pom
The smells of Balfour’s piespastiessausagerolls wafts in form the corridor. Enters the stifling classroom, bows, lift up out of the crates, breaks my heart, makes me levitate.
My package of sandwiches (fritz and sauce), sits limp, squashed, tepid at the bottom of my school bag. I hunt them out with foetid fingers when the bell goes off.
Released into the quadrangle, we squabble over frozen Farmer’s Union iced coffee. Vying for a lick, it is eaten granita stylie before my envious eyes and dried up lips.
Seagulls circle overhead, gawping, squarking, diving bins. My stomach gnaws.
April 9 2020
btw
P-s Why won’t WordPress accept my formatting!!!??? aargh!
Day 9.- Today’s resource is Kirsten Kaschock’s chapbook, Windowboxing. Kaschock, a dancer as well as a poet, titles her poems using neologisms or portmanteaus, and each one proceeds as a series of essay-like sentences. The poems are interspersed with drawings, and some are even formatted in the shapes of boxes, forcing the reader to turn the book (or their head) and engage with the poems as they move through space.
Our prompt for the day (optional as always) is inspired by Kaschock’s use of space to organize her poems. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a “concrete” poem – a poem in which the lines and words are organized to take a shape that reflects in some way the theme of the poem. This might seem like a very modernist idea, but poets have been writing concrete poems since the 1600s! Your poem can take a simple shape, like a box or ball, or maybe you’ll have fun trying something more elaborate, like this poem in the shape of a Christmas tree.
Unlike swans, i dance
Day 8:- asks you to peruse the work of one or more of these twitter bots, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem.
Today’s poetry resource is a series of twitter accounts that tweet phrases from different poets’ work. The Sylvia Plath Bot, as you might expect, tweets snippets of Plath.
Plath snippet :- Unlike swans,
Unlike swans,
i dance
what a lovely creature, a swan
quiet, sedate, white
what wings, so neat
folded, elegant
until they beat
water rhythmic
in an effort to lift
their bodies, but only just
listen, a swan
thrums,
thrum thrum thrum
if only i was one
aloof, untainted, unthirsty
untouched unless by chaste water
unmated, unruffled, undusted unless behind
cabinet glass, perhaps, an unwanted gift
a vision
what a fine thing, a mirror
smooth, unopinionated
divested of majestic longing
though learns to listen for the longings
of reflexions of others
unlike me
i dance before this
song of a swan
an ugly thing
lifting distance
only just
a drift of pale gray feathers
falling
April 8 2020
btw
bee
who am i for you?
i never knew
maybe a
moment a
bird a…….?
.
haiku
