Crack/ Unfiltered

I pull aside the curtain

the hallucinogenic dawn rushes in

a sporidium of colours splatter

against the Winnipeg Fog wall

a bacchanal, a squall

like the hormonal hysterics

of ‘The Notebook’.

• pic courtesy of pinterest

The Roofs of Queenstown

The Roofs of Queenstown.

I can look all day at the metal roofs of Queenstown

like Jacob, wearing coats of many colors:

this one matte black like my Cruize that beat

the  Monaro at the lights ; that one on the corner rust red,

the colour you see striated on the tin roofs of settler cottages,

the one just built, Tomahawk with its brash of burnt umber

and my favourites, Blue Balm, and Winnipeg Fog,

the two beside the park that calm and soothe;

I raise my hat to the metal roofs of Queenstown,

stylish and stately hats worn on the heads of houses.

Turning Purple

I am all alone

in my shorts and T

on the naked beach.

The sun goes in.

The temperature drops.

A cold breeze picks up.

I head off towards the distant jetty.

Even the gulls have deserted.

No kite boarders. No surfers.

Something is happening to my hands.

I look down

They are changing colour.

Turning purple.

The backs.

The palms.

I am both scared and fascinated.

I can’t take my eyes off them.

I look it up on Google later

when I get home

It has a name.

Peripheral Cyanosis.

• have you ever experienced it or something similar?

The Albino

So these pigeons wing in from the wild sky,

their coats a rainbow sheen, but when the sun goes in,

they’re all drab, all except one, a pretty little albino,,

white as the Taj Mahal, and when they descend

on the grass patch near the footbridge, and start pecking away,

happy as diners in a food court, you can just tell

these guys all hang out together, weekends, whenever,

them and their albino mate and I ask Daz, ‘cause he knows

everything, why we can’t do that, Daz, coloureds and whites,

one happy family and he says because we’re not pigeons, that’s why.

*pic courtesy of Rodolfo Clix on pexels.com

Green: a Prompt Poem

Green is gentle. Green is kind.

Green brings colour to the cheeks

of leaves and blades of grass.

In times of drought paddocks

dream of green.

Green is found in the fluoro vests

of rainbow lorikeets

and the glistening jade skins

of tree frogs.

Green is patient. Green is humble.

When colours line up for a group photograph

green is not pushy.

Green is content to stand in the middle.

You can always spot her

between flashy yellow and sombre blue

quietly smiling

fourth from the top.

• what is your favorite color? can you write some lines on it, say a miniature of 3 to 5 lines and post your poem in the comment section? would really love to see what you come up with;
• or if you prefer just leave a comment

Zen Sandwich

I am eating my zen sandwich by the side

            of a blue lake . I hear the sound of

                        two wings flapping .

A fawn falcon plunges down the side

            of the volcanic cone , its claws extended

like the landing gear of a plane .

As it skims across the surface — a sail-winged

             skater —- the talons lacerate the taut

                    skin of that lake . It bleeds blue .

Red

the prompt was to choose a color and make a three-line poem out of it:

 

There’s a traffic jam inside my head

thoughts blaring to be said

but the traffic light’s stuck on red

 

* can you choose a color and write a three-line poem, perhaps a haiku, on that color? have a go; post your poem in the comments section

Denim

He’d never noticed before

but since he was locked in

he looked up from his crimped

back yard

 

and saw it, the patch of blue

as a curtain of fleecy clouds parted:

cornflower blue, aqua blue

and later towards evening

a majestic midnight blue

 

& he looked up over the days

and week that followed,

noticing the interchanges:

teal blue, robin’s egg blue

& his favourite, denim blue

 

the colour of the stone-washed

jeans he wore as a young man

when he strode the byways

of the world, a king, & the sky

stayed denim all week

 

 

The Girl with Incarnadine Hair

“Sorry, you have to move.”

“What?”

“You don’t belong here. You’ll have to move.”

“But I was here first. You saw me walking up and down with my multitudinous strands of hair incarnadine.”

“That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“You can’t have ‘multitudinous strands of hair incarnadine’ in a poem about waiting for a poem to pull up like a bus.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too heavy, too overwritten. Too Shakespearean. It changes the tone of the poem totally. It’s like two colors that clash.”

“But …”

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to move. I can’t fit you in.”

“Okay”, she says, shaking her multitudinous strands in a flurry of petulance, “I’ll write a poem of my own and guess what?”

“What?”

“You won’t be in it.”

And with that she gets out her notebook from her backpack and begins writing, furiously as Lady Macbeth cleansing her blood-soaked hands in the basin.