PROMPT: First Impression

Daily writing prompt
What’s the first impression you want to give people?

My conscious mind would only tell lies about this. While I’ve long been aware that I’m an introvert, it’s only more recently come to my attention that I have resting-“get the hell away from me”-face. It’s nothing I ever purposeful cultivated, and — now, being aware of it –I’m trying to be more discerning. (But I have a lot of decades of programming to work against.)

Picture Horse [Lyric Poem]

Stacks and stacks
of wooden plaques:
Prayers on front,
Art on the back.

Each a wish
and a dream?
More an expression,
or so it seems.

Whatever prayer
may be writ,
There’s always
something
more to it.

A need to show
one’s unique soul:
To tell the world
that one is whole.

A life reduced
to a shingle:
Multitudes,
to a single.

Fool’s Wisdom [Free Verse]

license to speak
           is 
license to think.

the jester can say,
 apparently in jest,
 what he feels to be real,

and, if he does so with 
 sufficient linguistic dexterity
  to not be murdered by the monarch,

he has fool's wisdom. 

Silent Wailing [Sonnet]

I saw the lips move, but no sound came out.
 The message could not cross from air to brain.
  With reddened face, next an attempted shout,
   but silence suggests words weren't true but feigned.

You'll think me deaf, but I heard other sounds:
 a ticking clock, a fan, and distant horns.
  Maybe, barrier glass made unseen bounds?
   Perhaps, but what bars only sound that mourns?

I know of nothing that would fit the bill,
 but start to suspect nothing stopped the scream
  from reaching me, but rather force of will
   did stick that voiceless face within my dream.

But am I sure I'm having a nightmare?
 I can't say for sure that I'm even here.

DAILY PHOTO: A Story in Expressions

Taken on March 14, 2015 at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Bangalore

Taken on March 14, 2015 at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Bangalore

There aren’t many activities in which one can capture an entire story in a single still photo as well as one can with Indian dance. There’s so much expressiveness in the form. There’s an entire art to the eyes, let alone fine control of the rest of the body.