The Cough [Free Verse]

Posted on by
3 
Remember the days
     when you dreaded
     a scratch at the back
     of your throat --

harbinger of a cough
     that you thought
     would get you rushed off
     to quarantine.

Or, at least, get a footlong swab
    shoved through your nasal cavity.

Best case, it would put all eyes upon you, 
     as the public wondered whether 
     you were their Typhoid Mary --
     (Except Mary was asymptomatic,
       and - clearly - you were not.)

We all learned that the one cough
      that one can never suppress
      is the one that you desperately
      wish to. 

That cough won't be silenced.

DAILY PHOTO: Murdeshwar Shiva

Posted on by
Reply

Green Front [Haiku]

Posted on by
Reply 
squall line coming:
 the rains will freshen the fort,
  those walls grown green.

PROMPT: Three Books

Posted on by
Reply
Daily writing prompt
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
View all responses
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

This poetry collection teaches that most challenging of human skills: how to be insanely confident that you can do anything without being a jerk about it. (Also, how to see beauty beyond the societal consensus of what’s beautiful.)

Zhuangzi by Zhuangzi

The virtues of a carefree, spontaneous, minimalist, and down-to-earth approach to living explained through tiny stories.

The Tragedies of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

A master class in things that can turn a life into a tragedy.

Titus Andronicus: Live by the sword = tragedy (An eye for an eye, and everyone dies.)

Romeo & Juliet: Grudges (+ Lust) = tragedy

Julius Caesar: handing your adversary the mic (/ the fickleness of crowds) = tragedy

Hamlet: indecisiveness = tragedy (i.e. On or off the crazy-bus.)

Othello: jealousy = tragedy

Macbeth: excessive ambition = tragedy

King Lear: needing gratuitous signs of affection = tragedy

Timon of Athens: expectations of reciprocity = tragedy

Anthony & Cleopatra: mixing one’s love and work lives = tragedy

Coriolanus: a crotchety old warrior in peace time = tragedy

Burning Sensation [Free Verse]

Posted on by
Reply 
What's this world?

It's energy playing a game,

  a game whose goal is to be rid
    of an intense burning sensation,

  a burning sensation caused by
     low-entropy energy sitting
     around with nothing else to do
     but burn brightly. 
  
  We, the wasters of energy, are 
     a soothing lotion to the universe,

     expediting the making high-entropy, 
          soothing, tepid energy from 
          all those stars -- 
          i.e. the universe's poison ivy.

Midday Fish Market [Haiku]

Posted on by
Reply 
a fish market,
 broken down for the day --
  yet, its scent still grows.

DAILY PHOTO: Staré Mesto [Bratislava’s Old Town]

Posted on by
Reply

Hamlet’s Revenge [Limerick]

Posted on by
Reply 
A befuddled Prince from Denmark's Elsinore
 was asked by his dad's ghost to even a score:
  "Old Claude poisoned my ear,
   wed (-n- shtupped) my wife, dear.
 So, please ensure that he lives, Nevermore!"

DAILY PHOTO: Yurts & Meadow

Posted on by
1