I dont need some fancy foreign name.
Call me a drip ~
To me it’s Coriander!
It doesn’t smell very gentle. It’s strong, persistent, invasive.
It’s the scent of a Magreb backstreet
When it’s mixed with olive and cedar.
It’s worth more than saffron and pearls
To me in my soupy kitchen.
To enter with dignity
I begin an adagio
Played in a dark minor key,
Serious and sombre,
A step to the side of my natural presence.
It attracts your straying attention.
Then a plaintive air played without pity
Lures you to sleep
with lavender scent on your pillow.
Mellow with sadness you dream of the hills
And wish you were free to wander.
Swiftly switching we play an expanded cantata
In brisk and rippling allegro
Shifting to pizzicato
Through gladness and frenzy
to uncontrolled magical madness
where, without looking back,
I chain your feet sole and heel to the dance floor
And retreat to the windswept moors.
Write a poem that follows the beats of a classic joke. Emphasize the interplay between the form of the poem – such as the line breaks – and the punchline.
I think I bent the rules a bit. But I like writing nonsense that has some logic. And I also like writing about The Mad Hatter and Alice (I have quite a series of them). If you put Hatter or Alice into my search box you will probably find all of them. They have an ongoing relationship.
Considering Time
Where will we ever find time?
The answer to that
depends on the date of your death.
Consider it might be tomorrow
and make up your mind to live.
But, you’ve misunderstood my question.
I will rephrase it. Listen.
Where will we find time?
Let’s look in the hedgerows first
to see which plant are budding,
are they limp or dry?
Have all their leaves been lost?
Has a bird built a nest or are all the fledglings fledged?
Did they all fly away to the south?
A year is the same as a decade
or a summer can last a year
but only when you’re a child.
Time is a relative concept
linked to innocence.
It moves faster as you age.
To witness time watch an apple
moving from ripe to rot.
I don’t own a clock.
I don’t expect precision.
If you want to arrange a meeting,
I’ll meet you when the sun dips down
behind the ridge of your roof,
or later if you like
when Mercury hangs above us
a step to the west of Jupiter,
almost parallel to the the moon
(that is to say, on April the 12th at roughly half past nine).
I will wait for you there but if that’s too soon,
any chance meeting is fine.
These moments hang
on the infinite line of time.
Do you think it ‘s all on a line?
I don’t.
Everything turns around and everything’s relative.
The rotation of the stars at night
is faster than we perceive.
I’ve seen them move, from dusk to dawn,
by sitting as still as a rock.
© A.Chakir 2023
Splitting pentametres makes the tune roll.
Think about water and raising the waves.
Hey ho, let the words flow
No need to write like grammatical slaves.
No need for sailors, no need for salt
Hey ho, let the words flow
Scatter some verbs, let the syntax revolt
Mention some senses, avoid the trite phrase
Hey ho, let the words flow
Don’t rest on the rocks, that strand is a phase
Don’t forget metaphor, burnish the truth
Hey ho, let the words flow
Don’t use old words like begads and forsooth.
Hold onto the rhyme, don’t let the rope go.
Hey ho, let the words flow
© A.Chakir 2023
Luke
Life is a road with many whips, silent crossroads and knots.
I’d fly off with the birds, if my wings weren’t hidden.
I’d feel the wind on the water and see the birds songs.
I’d hear the strong blast of yellow that comes with the sun.
But none of that ever happened.
Once upon a time it seemed possible.
Everything seemed possible then,
in London with Luke I might have stayed happy
if the roads never twisted and bent
We walked through the City Squares
amid the Mimosa, Jasmine and traffic fumes.
His skin had the scent of dried cedar.
Pimlico, Stepney, Westminster and down to the docks,
we ducked and dived into museums to feel the heat
then down through Covent Garden.
Five miles a day is nothing,
when you’re looking for something to eat.
‘Buy a rose for the lady, mate!’
We had no money, no dosh, no doe.
You can pick roses for free in the parks.
Money is meaningless in paradise garden,
brimming with beauty and rain soaked grass.
The bridges criss-cross the river
following constellations,
and the stars that shine out in the dark.
He calls her ‘Angel’
But I think he is hers.
That won’t stop me predicting an end.
He holds her hand inside his coat pocket
To stop their world falling apart.
Eles não terão sorte.
They don’t stand a chance.
The trees in the park bend down
to listen to their words.
Lovers prattle and tease with affection,
whispering on the air.
It’s all scattered amongst the leaves.
Their words may still be there,
treasured in tree bark or written in fallen twigs.
Time is moving on.
O tempo é um traidor
The sparrows come home in the evening,
the pigeons are losing their feathers,
the fountains are freezing over.
A clock chimes in Whitehall.
Eros shifts on his plinth, covered in dust and decay.
© A.Chakir 2023
Today’s prompt was to write a triolet.
A triolet is an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetrametre (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) — ABaAabAB.
But I decided to play with it so I have written a double-triolet and a triad.
The Man with Lambs in His Eyes
the Ocado man came today
the sunshine arrived in his trail
he saw the spring lambs on his way
the Ocado man came today
he’d been watching the spring lambs play
they’d danced all his worries away
the Ocado man came today
and sunshine arrived in his trail
seeing the mirror this morning
I looked deeply into my eyes
I saw a strange sign and a warning
seeing the mirror this morning
no recognised face was forming
it gave me a total surprise
seeing the mirror this morning
I looked into faded dark eyes
the Ocado man came today
with lambs dancing in his eyes
and wiped all my troubles away
© A.Chakir 2023
Hermes Drift
a miraculous form wrapped in feathers
closing the eyes of the day
opens his own eyes wide
Athena’s child
flashes through beams of moonlight
his wing curves create an all-knowing smile in the cleft of night
how swift he is in bringing death
to the thoughtless feasting of earth
a confusion of eyes look upward
through milk-merged, mist-soaked, fur-fleeting air
he falls, tearing the skin of the firmament with his sudden cry
the river floats on by
filling the veins and arteries that lead to the vastness of oceans
where Neptune’s hair shelters the young, as yet unformed, children of gentle Salacia’s sighs
the right hand of Zeus slices the wind and the rain
above the sea-salt beds
where two brothers will never be parted
bound as they are by a miracle unsurpassed
essential to every life
silver-backed fish shoal, slip-witted and swift
driven by beautiful Hermes in a trick of the gods
and mercurial wisdom switches this way and that
in an image painted with fishtails
showing us moving atoms unseen by a naked eye
And what is longing, what is hiraeth, what is yearning
but a sense of old displacements
from banks of shifting sand?
It’s the magnetic current
spawned in our deepest wishes
that persistently calls us home on elusive tides.
© A.Chakir 2023
Practical Taxidermy
Here I am
strapped to a frame,
a never changing armature
holds me in its tight grip,
preserved in formaldehyde,
polished and preened,
displayed on a shelf
under a spotlight
my guts torn out
and burned on the fire.
My skin is so cold.
How is this me?
Where are my entrails,
my being,
my soul.
The eyes remain dead,
despite all their efforts
to keep the light twinkling in glass.
It’s not me.
Why preserve a thing so lacking in spirit?
They should have installed me
inside a badger,
a crow or a fox.
© A.Chakir 2023
From April 1st many poets will work hard to produce a poem a day for a month. It’s a sure-fire way of getting any sleepy cogs turning. They provide daily prompts (you don’t have to use them but they do tend to be interesting).
I am one of the poets who will be participating – so throughout April you can expect more from me than there has been in the last two years as I will post them all here
For more details see the NaPoWriMo website .
The Dreaming Path 