9-11

grief seeps from bagpipes
wheezing discordant sorrow,
solemn remembrance
***
white gloves mask the blood
but mirror the ash that cloaked
our ruined city

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procrastination haiku

summer fades away
like a pleasant memory
tucked inside my heart
a cool autumn breeze
hushes the leaves soon to fall;
a crisp death awaits
late summer roses
shed wind-whipped petals as fall
disrupts the garden
mid-afternoon naps
provide time for ideas
to take root and bloom…
Haiku, nap, more haiku…except the syllables were off.  The point being that I haven’t worked on Judah’s Tale in over [...]

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from the heart

Ok, so these students probably didn’t have a choice about whether or not they wanted to write me a letter—but still, *what* they wrote was so touching!  Shadra showed more restraint; she only posted one on her blog, but I’m going with these three:

A future author!
What a sweetheart…and a natural optimist!  I hope I *can* [...]

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homeland haiku

I’m having one of those days of sheer indulgence…been reading all morning, just slurped down a coffee ice cream/Milo/banana & peanut butter smoothie, lost internet connection but managed to restore it myself when the Verizon rep proved useless…and now I just found a fun haiku exercise from You Know…that Blog. My fellow Canadian is [...]

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hope & a token

That’s one of my favorite sayings: “Hope and a token will get you on the train.”  Meaning, it’s the token that gets you moving–hope is lovely, but it must be paired with something tangible (resources, action) in order to produce change.  On Monday night I attended this event, which was intended to commemorate the 40th [...]

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dancing with anger

I wrote this in ‘04 just before leaving for Africa. I was collecting books to donate to the university in Djibouti, and instead got a surprise from a jerk in my life. Went downstairs and told off the security guard earlier this evening…feel much better now:
“dancing with anger”
that fool sent me a book
on [...]

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a place of rage

It’s raining. Again. I had just worked myself up for a run in the park; I stopped running about 5 years ago, and that paired with owning a car is partly to blame for my current physical state (affection for cake is the other part). I’m about ten pounds overweight, and the [...]

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Diversity Roll Call ~ poetry

Your assignment is to post a poem in a form unique to a particular country, an example would be the sijo (Korea), haiku (Japan) or American Sentence (this is a single line of 17 syllables like a haiku. Created by Ginsberg). Another option: post a favorite poem by a poet of color. Tell us a [...]

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the best thing about a bad day…

…is that it has to end eventually!  After that last post I printed out two press kits, then felt my headache coming back so lay down for a nap; woke up and knocked over the glass of water on the nightstand…almost crawled back under the covers to hide, but was determined to make it to [...]

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second-to-last haiku

bare walls signal change
empty boxes await books
time to graduate!
***
generosity
astonishes yet humbles
those too proud to beg

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