Cocktails for Three

She brays with unfelt laughter
cold facets of glass gleam
ice cubes crash and splinter
the glass he holds is not so brittle
his face pre-marked by patient caring
and between them sits the dog
a small black balance beam

November ends. NaNoWriMo is behind us and I met the challenge for the third year in a row. This is the final NaBloPoMo challenge post.

What will I do now? Maybe I'll spend more time on yoga (lotus as my older daughter defines it). Or compile another ebook and one more book of poetry. Maybe I'll paint for a while. Maybe I'll take a nap.

Looking outside, I know that snow shoveling is in my immediate future.

poetry watercolor

Dock Envy

exhausts

duple

   thrrump thrrump

Chris Craft

vintage

   sashays

scheme of

envy

   harbor

movement

ceases

Fractal created in Fractal Explorer
Poefusion prompt words: cease, harbor, vintage, scheme, duple
fractals

Cicatrix

Wild words skid
amid lucky bamboo
call the cry of scars
paddle down the moon
bereft of useful mojo

sundry recent dead
sidestep history's debt.
One mad zebra
kicks a bird of paradise,
swears the past was true.

Watercolor by Sue
For Totally Optional Prompts
poetry watercolor

Night Sky

cigarette smoke curls

on the black night

etching white lines

like dim serpentine braids

flung from distant Medusa

~~he squints into the telescope

for that single eye sight

afforded only by a desert sky

Fractal created in Apophysis

3 Word Wednesday Prompt words: cigarette, afford, dim

fractals

Tome of Winter

night speaks a thousand words,
clouds beat against the dawn
birth a day darkly silent

a crystal hook of moon
creeps across the nival sky
slings frigid stingers

life warps toward a bottle
and there stoppered
ponders the lengthy book of winter

Fractal created in Apophysis
fractals

Rocks

memories of youth ~
whistling along the creek bed
pocket full of rocks

**

geodes, agates, quartz
crystal mysteries galore
holograms of earth






Watercolor sketch, Rocks, by Sue
Prompt by One Deep Breath

poetry watercolor

Writes of Mother Nature

Dear Residents,

Tomorrow will be cloudy. Cloudy with rain. Great heavy gray sheets of rain. Rain enough to rehydrate a mummy. There will be flash floods. Jagged gashes will split the sky and fill the air with the single sound of a thousand drums.

You have been whining about lack of rain. You have been forecasting a big year for wildfires.

Tonight, your weather forecaster will consult his doppler and chase his tail around the map in pursuit of flashing colors. He will generously promise sunshine tomorrow. He believes. He and his machine are wonderful playthings. He is such a fool, but he should fool with someone else.

Tomorrow will be cloudy with rain and rain.

Love,
Mother Nature

Writers Island Prompt: The Letter
Digital Photo by Sue
poetry and photos

Shadows

a film of cloud
blows into the night
co-opts the now
from shadows of dark

crawls through crumble
dragging devil sticks
reheats her years on
the salver of remorse

Sunday Scribblings Prompt ~ Misspent Youth
fractals

Screens of Graft

screen of Cyclops showed the contaminated rind of rotten lemons
Dulcinea knew graft when, with hard displeasure, she first sighted it
damage did not abate until the eighth year of the new century
when events began to fall into the sequence vitally required
and that crop of lemons calved from the diseased limb to permit healing

Prompt by Poefusion: dulcinea sequence graft rind calved
Fractal created in Fractal Explorer

Thanksgiving

Wishing you a perfect day...wherever you are, whatever you do.

American Sentences is an interesting site. Strangely enough, the sentence above might qualify.

Free Rice is a fine site, as well. Amazing how little it takes to make a difference in the world.

Original watercolor by Sue

November

Retrograde Mercury
across the sun
triggers an Ichabod night

my trousers cuff at curling leaves
churned by corkscrew winds
pines try their taproots

one brave star dots the lonely dark
retreats behind boiling wings
sweeping black the sky

tomorrow the sun will rise
over the ides of night
and calm will claim the day

When Fog Spools

white fingered clouds
scratch the bruised sky
naked trees stretch
their outreached limbs

fog spools anonymity
cloaks the stars in
November bare and
night time chill

by the dark of moon
across two empty tracks
she dreams of flames
and waits for love.

Fractal created in Fractal Explorer
Writers Island prompt: The Dream
fractals

Hook, Line and Sinker

daylong tug of war
primal scene of she and he
blue marlin ~ released






Watercolor sketch by Sue Turner

Response for One Deep Breath prompt: Adventure

poetry watercolor

One Haiku ~ NaBloPoMo

ripples in the sand

furrowed terra cotta tint

footprint of the wind

My Bookstore
Other digital photos
poetry and photos

Chains of Taproot

drawn from left hand sea
to flatland grain
by the glow of November's
Mourning Moon

vigilant for clues
I cross the country
re-wind
my parents' path

pick missing stitches
see life unravel
begin at the start
feel the web
that fetched them here
rephrase the forms
I didn't think to pose

Uphill Path, Original Watercolor by Sue Turner

For the Sunday Scribblings prompt: I Carry

poetry watercolor

White Screen

the last scarlet leaf drops
barren limbs yield
to malaria of psyche
join in Demeter's grief

immobile on the
white screen of theater
until Persephone returns
incalescence of spring green

Abstract Watercolor by Sue

Poefusion Friday 5 prompt words: theater, malaria, incalescence, leaf, yield

poetry watercolor

One Place in Time

Totally Optional Prompts for this week: Places.

I wrote a couple of short poems which I'll post later in the week, a tiny essay which may never see the light of day and eventually made a thirty-second video clip of a place that fascinates me. I've watched it for more years than I'll admit and each time it stirs something in my cells. I've never been particularly fond of the past - always more inclined to look ahead but this place astounds me.

Tanka to the Past

high-rise icy peaks
guard the wavy desert heat
wagon train on pause
hunts the hazy hard pan trail
coyotes howl into the dusk

Fractal by Sue
The 3WordWednesday Prompt offered these words for use: icy, train, pause

fractals

Friendship

For the Writers Island Prompt. This piece is a fibonacci form with partial Pleiades patterns. It was fun to write...



free

forms

friend-filled

flip ripples

force grins from the gray

familiar faces reduce blues






Pollen Mover, photo by Sue
poems and digital photos

Belonging, One Deep Breath

Winterland
White, wool, gloves, ice boots
Snow angels







No Swimming, Digital Photo by Sue

One Deep Breath Prompt: Belonging

poems and digital photos

Palm Reader's Welcome

A calling card bids me enter
turbaned lady offers answers
for coins and bills she reads my lines,
tells me who I am.
But, I say, my lines have changed
So lay another dollar here,
I’ll tell you what it means.
They’ll change again, I say.
Too late, I’ll be gone by then.

Fractal created in Fractal Explorer

poetry and photos

A World of Blurt

Fifty/fifty
Half-and-half
Nose to nose
Drawn lines
I’m right
You’re not
That’s true,
That’s not
Nose to nose
Half-and-half
Fifty/fifty





Sunday Scribblings Prompt: Left and Right

fractals

Winged Buffet

day sank behind the crest
night aroused the moon
one lone bat
vagile in the dusky quiet
pitched out tiny peeps,
circled the creekside’s
willow formation
and even as I watched
braces of crepuscular bats
plural as if called by the Ark
emerged from hidings deep
gorged on the winged fare
offered on that generous night

Poefusion Prompt: crepuscular, vagile, formation, willow and plural.

poems and digital photos

Still

My mother was gone
by this age I am,
messages
she may have shared
are nowhere found,
there’s no track
to follow
no clues to see,
she didn’t go here,
it’s all new to me.

I write my life
by first-hand view
no warning words
no clearcut signs
an unmarked path.

Still,
I want to ask.

Digital Photo by Sue
Totally Optional Prompts: evocative poetry
Still is an older poem but it brings back a house-full of memories.
poems and digital photos

Currents

modern radio vibrates
in my pajama pocket

tiny buds fill my ears
compensate for offbeats

turned loose by local juvey
current battle of the bands

*

modern radio
cannot compensate
for old-time music

*
earphones and a stick
compensate for huge speakers
modern radio

Today's Fractal
Today's 3WW prompt: Compensate, modern, radio

fractals

Replay

one doo wop replay night,
from a front row seat
he shines in camera light
his guileless face behind
a single tear near spill.

from a king of sing
innocent words,
a sweet cover for acts
pitting few against many,
rekindle years of sixty

he hums along with love
that lasts a million years



Writers Island prompt: Unforgettable

Tears of Iris, Digital Photo processed in Digital Image Suite
Other Digital Photos here

poetry and photos

Loneliness Haiku

One Deep Breath offered today's prompt: Loneliness



iPod pink
dot blogspot dot com
plastic life



yard fencing
guards the resident
locks life out





Original Watercolor from my Abstract Watercolor Gallery

This is a busy month with both NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo. Sometimes I barely remember to get to yoga class (or lotus class as my older daughter calls it!).

poetry watercolor

Daylight Savings

extra hour
disappears at night
unrescued




Fractal Created in Apophysis, edited in IrfanView

My Abstract Watercolor Gallery

For NaBloPoMo
fractals