PROMPT: First Time

Daily writing prompt
What could you try for the first time?

Skydiving comes to mind. Particularly, because it seems like something that I’d like to do once, but then would have no pressing urge to repeat it, having had the experience. There are a lot of things in this world that I could try for the first time, but I’m getting old to be trying anything that might become an ongoing competing demand for my time and energy. For example, I’ve thought of doing scuba, but that seems like it would become a whole ordeal of maintaining certifications and feeling the need to keep doing it.

The Color Burden [Haiku]

branches hang strong
against the dense clusters
of yellow trumpets.

Tree Taiji [Haiku]

“turn left to go right”:
branches sweep around in arcs,
is the tree moving?

DAILY PHOTO: Chicago Chinatown

DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from Shyok Valley

PROMPT: Can’t Fail

Daily writing prompt
What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.

Anything for which one is guaranteed not to fail sounds boring and not worth doing. [Not to mention, fictitious.]

DAILY PHOTO: Sümeg Castle in Winter from a Distance

Grave Reviews [Free Verse]

I click on Google Maps;
 a pin highlights for a cemetery,
  and, here, I stumble upon 
   graveyard reviews.

These reviews intrigue me because
 it seems to me that if one is capable 
  of writing a cemetery review,
    then one is unqualified.

And, if one is qualified to comment
 on the caliber of an eternal resting place,
  then one is unlikely to be capable of 
   posting a review.

I read one of the one-star reviews
 and see that the reviewer's principal complaint
 is an overabundance of "pocong."

"What is a 'Pocong?'" you may ask.
 It is a Javanese ghost that takes up
  occupancy in death shrouds.

Why is there a Javanese ghost
 infestation in a cemetery 4000 kilometers
  from Java, and -- as near as I can tell --
   with zero Javanese occupants?

The review does not say,
 but I love that someone panned 
  a cemetery based on the presence 
   of foreign ghosts

[and not because it is simultaneously
 phasmophobic and xenophobic.]

But because it shows an unbridled commitment 
 to one's imagination that is usually 
  only seen among children. 

DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from Chicago

Cemetery Math [Free Verse]

i walk through the graveyard,
subtracting birth from death dates
to determine age at death.

there’s a correlation between
speed of calculation &
the degree of tragedy.

the faster i can determine an age,
the more disconcerting the death:
like the girl — 1990 to 2008.

the 89 year old man who survived WWII
service in the Burmese jungle
doesn’t raise as many questions.