Short Shorts

Breathe.

I watch the shirts

On the line

Breathe in and out





Letterboxes.

They line up along

The footpath mouths open

Hungry for mail.





Exercise.

That black bug

Stretching wings, legs

Doing tai chi on the page.





Trigger.

That rustling in the hedge

A short story

Stirring into life





Egg.

Bald and black

As an emu’s egg, the helmet’s hatched

A biker’s head.

Breviary

K’s fond of haiku,

Michael senryu, its jokey cousin;

Mia, ‘a struggling author’ writes tiny tales,

Richard American sentences,

put them together,

and what have you got?

a slim, selection

of shorts,

a breviary of brevities

a pocket book of poems

for the wee small hours

True Colours: the Story behind No Sympathy …

When people ask me, did you have any inkling in all that time you knew him, I say, not really, then I think of the incident in the restaurant,the one that slipped beneath my notice in what was meant to be a piece of devilish fluff in ‘No Sympathy ….’

It began in the third line: Hey! Is that a glass of water you threw over me? That’s when autobiography took over and followed us out onto the sidewalk where I was shoved to the ground when my back was turned and my mate who had turned rogue did a runner.

So did I know? Did I suspect? I sure did: in those moments he unleashed diminutive, haiku-sized bursts of anger, I could feel the embers of a conflagration 18 years before that the forensic squad, armed with new evidence and methods of detection, were sifting through and building a case.

His mate, Dale , who let him stay on his property at Second Valley in a caravan while he got his life together, fell victim to Adrian’s wrath.

All that time Adrian proclaimed his innocence, He was the only suspect. He lived at my place for a while, He rode a bike, did the gardening, spoke to the kids, Everyone loved him. A top bloke, they said. Then the night ….

Once my friend was charged with the cold case and sentenced, he finally admitted to us: Just think, he said, 15 years for five seconds of madness.

That little haiku of a revelation warned me that of all the affairs we have to manage in life, our temper comes first.

Red

799px-Miami_traffic_jam,_I-95_North_rush_hour

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