Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion
Games!
>
Haiku
message 351:
by
Caitlan
(new)
Dec 06, 2011 05:14PM

reply
|
flag

he was jabbed with a poker,
now hits the poke*, beat.
*'Poke' is a dialectic term for pouch or sack; sack is dialectic for 'bed' especially as regarded for sex. (Sorry, that was very obscure!)

was willin’, but after cold,
thick penicillin,
he was immune to
office flirts and full moons that
beckoned with short skirts.

I’ve started working on what may end up as a big writing project. For years, when I was in graduate school, I kept a diary. It’s several thousand pages long. The first few volumes are written in a sort of longhand version of IPA, and the rest in a phonetic shorthand I devised.
Several years ago, I got the idea of typing it up so Mom could see from the inside what my life was like when I was in school, but I never got very far. The task became overwhelming, and the diary, which is in narrative form, is so detailed that reading it is like stepping back in time, which can be an unsettling experience.
I started keeping the diary when I decided to track down a girl who had been expelled from college, and I was pretty sure I was going to wind up dead or in jail. Unfortunately, what happened wasn’t nearly that exciting. I wound up back in graduate school.


Al, that's how I feel about my poetry. I'm too impatient and bored with my life to just write about my day, or whatever in a diary, so I write poetry to express my feelings and beliefs.

and the buxom nurse. Now I
must pay for my sins!
Soon now the chaplain,
the casket, the hearse, and my
slow roasting begins.

I woke in the box,
a casket of knotty pine
full of smoke and me.
I began to cough,
the sound lost to the flames' roar
then wake up again.
I open my eyes
to the quiet of darkness
painted by bright flames.
I hear someone's laugh,
as the rumble of thunder,
through my bare soles' skin.

A long-ago love,
with a sigh, may ask the old
priest for direction.
He’ll kindly point, and
tell her I am buried in
the smoking section.

If she found the spot
she would puff her cigarette,
hike up her short skirt.
Then inhale once more
before gracefully squatting
to pee on my grave.
While I was alive
I thought I was a gals' guy.
Not so, says the grass.


and sickly indeed in the
spot where she had peed
snidely in the smok-
ing section. Soon she had
a bladder infection
incurable, but
not the worst thing with which she
might have been accurst.


on the graveyard, which a drunk
stumbled through, alone,
past graves overgrown
or rotted out, the ground sunk.
With a sudden groan,
he stopped to water
the grass, but, reading the sign,
aimed for my tombstone.

little lemonade!" said the
drunkard, his pants soiled.
The priest said, "What the
hell." He unzipped himself and
joined the happy soul.

One errant piece of doggerel and the world comes crashing down. Too funny!

orite spot for drunks and har-
lots alike to squat,
lined up to pray and
pay their dues, carefully mind-
ing their pees and queues.

A harlot, one day,
saw fresh blood on the grave stone
seeping from two cracks.
She screamed in delight
for she knew this smoker's grave
was now stigmata
and that unlike pee
would de-stigmatize their squat
to bring Facebook fame.
She took a picture
of the miracle in stone.
So a Saint was made.

from such a tawdry story
of how it befell
some blackguard to burn
in everlasting glory
as a saint in hell?
Old Scratch stamped his hoof,
trying every means to scorch
what protected me.
Pickled ninety proof,
I became a human torch,
blazing happily.

Pickled ninety proof,
I became a human torch,
blazing happily.
Seriously, how can this be followed? LoL.

This is off the subject, but here are the titles of the Harry Potter books in French (published by Gallimard):
Harry Potter a l’Ecole des Sorciers
Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets
Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d’Azkaban
Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu
Harry Potter et le Prince de Sang-Mele
Harry Potter et l’Ordre du Phenix
Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort

Imagine that fired spirit
blazing like a torch —
it sparks imagination.
Is Scratch to fear scotch?
The smell of a burning corpse
means conflagration
not a sanctification!
Rye is an evil
that is supposed to wreck lives.
This transformation
can only turn the good vile
and lose us our selves.

Though many erring
souls are saved, the sorry truth
of it all is this:
the road to perdi-
tion is paved with bar maids and
smiling waitresses,
who wreck straitlaced men’s
upright lives--these shy Lynelles
and sighing Sherries;
these stacked, affection-
starved housewives; long-lashed, long-waist-
ed secretaries.

..."
Yes, M, but are they actually enjoyable when read?! That I'm not so sure about. But, egads, M, you set the bar high!
Al, it would seem that secretaries hold the key to universal power!
I'll see what I can come up with this time.
Oh! You didn't comment on my having played perversely with the metrics.

Guy, I see now that you’ve slyly switched it around to an alternating 7/5/7, 5/7/5. You did such a smooth job of it, I didn’t notice that when I read it!

The experienced
steno had a pad that breached
stiff execs' shyness.
She gave a very stiff drink,
that helped them to think
they'd be blessed with her largesse.
Is that perdition?
They'd swear it was salvation,
and so generous.
They were free in the moment
found bliss sans torment
a hangover, serious.

I’m married to a
Vogue model. My children dress
in Calvin Klein. In
my desk drawer’s a
scotch bottle one girl knows of
and the stress that’s mine:
I watch her shoulders,
her deft hands that wipe up when
lunches are hectic,
that pull folders, that
type (as fast as she’s able)
on her Selectric.

I hope the season isn't wearing you down. Keep in mind that Santa isn't really real, and so you don't have to worry about him doing a B&E in the middle of the night.
M, again you've left me a tough act to follow.
Her inclination
is to finger the models
who want to go rogue.
Single malt selections
hasten warm fondles
and ease from each foot its brogue.
Her strong deft fingers
rub from over-stressed shoulders
their weight of fashion.
Over eyelids she lingers
her lip that smoulders
and trembles with cool passion.

But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps’ flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.
I’m trying to imagine Alex as a secretary and doing the routine, mind-numbing, piddling-detail-oriented tasks usually involved in a job like that. I think her Facebook posts would be mostly *headdesk*.
Though the classifieds
were few, Alex had landed
a job to suit her,
and, sharply dressed in
electric blue, typed memos
on a computer
in a suite with rich
decor, lavish with all the
corporate glories,
her boss, now standing
in the door, a mad doctor
from her short stories!
She yawned, glanced up, then
exclaimed, “Gah!” His eyes bright, he
smirked, “Mwahahaha . . .”




Still thinking about yours, Al. Still laughing!

would be rough. His glinty eyes
wandered from the girl.
He glanced down at his
pee-soaked cuff, startled, and shrieked,
“It’s that #@$% squirrel!”
Curses came fast and
thick. Alex’s printer spewed mem-
os from the platen.
The squirrel dodged a kick.
“Greetings,” he flicked his tail, “from
General Patton!”
There came a sudden
boom, like thunder, and plaster
fell from the ceiling.
Surveying the room,
Al dove under her desk. Frank
Putnam went reeling.
Then came a crash, and
from the mess: “I fight evil,
all who bamboozle!”
There, in super he-
ro dress, stood none other than
Miss Hanzle Woozle.


I'm working on Rose's HBH prompt — it has become a challenging write for me right now! And am working on my anti-economics course, so not sure when I will squeeze time to extend your great haiku chain.

Good luck with your anti-economics course. I’ll bet that’s a blast (for the students, at least)!
Books mentioned in this topic
Mugging the Muse (other topics)The Raj Quartet (other topics)
Marcovaldo (other topics)
Invisible Cities (other topics)
Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
David Payne (other topics)Thomas Merton (other topics)
Robert Payne (other topics)
Barbara Gowdy (other topics)
David K. Reynolds (other topics)