Tanka for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts offers this prompt:  Penultimate means next to last, as in "This is the penultimate prompt from Totally Optional Prompts." 

AND I say, 'For that I'm sorry.' But it's been a fun and worthwhile meme to say the least. A tanka today:

the penultimate

like nested doppelgangers

she was first of two

echoed in smoked reflections

a role model or villain

♥♥

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts posts: What slow turns did our writing take this week, TOPers? Let us know!




SLOWLY, he turns

where red rock hoodoos
distort the indigo sky
twisting shadows tumble
to stylized test patterns and
sand scripts the morrow
at the close of day

thorns of ocotillo
dispense thick blood
into threats as real as life
a chattering rattle,
amid the scratch of stealth,
re-writes the dawn

Fractal image was created in Fractal Explorer.

♥♥

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts posts: So, what do you have to say about laundry? Do you do your own or does someone do it for you? Do you hang it outside or use a dryer? Do you use fabric softener and bleach? And what about your dirty laundry? You know those deep, dark secrets. Do you air them or keep them hidden away?

Life Lines

stain-formed fractals
test the Jung and Freud
wrinkles hugging lint
while
origami layers enfold
dark and bitter defects
and agitate her sins

tangled strands of self
spin a thousand cuts
she spills not a single word

Image created in Apophysis, resized in Irfanview.

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Shoes for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts: requests poems using shoes as a metaphor for death...

Rule of Red

magical red
spun along the path
Rubik's cube facets
sparkled up
a brown shoe world
flat as waning seas
before the dying sun

casual abandon
suspended by laces
birled at transformer lines
clustered crows
looked askance
into the nearing murk
and an empty pair of shoes


The image is a fractal created in Fractal Explorer, resized and buttoned in Irfanview.

***♥***

Midnight for Totally Optional Prompt

Totally Optional Prompt: Midnight. What might happen at midnight? Besides the date changing, a new day starting, a deal with the devil, the witching hour, a half-moon rising, clocks chiming?

Midnight

midnight passed
with air black and still
lightning roared to life
rode thunder to the earth
shuddering trees shook free
their limbs and leaves
exposed the underside of rot
the sun bent dark to light
and looked upon the world
that midnight lobbed and left


Fractal image created in Fractal Explorer, resized in Irfanview.

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts: Planning or Spontaneity

Restless

chainsaw grumbling
not the silky rumble
of a smooth-ride Harley

one more Douglas Fir
drops limb by limb
free of second thought

tear it down, change it up
pave it over, plant a roof

chainsaw grumbles

Fractal created in Fractal Explorer, resized and buttoned in Irfanview.

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts offers a selection of 'randoms'.






Incoming

through a rust storm
glowering
from the belt of production
black mice shrug

guttural as growling crows
robins gossip through gloom
to a wine stained rose
shaking dew from her heart

the banality of daily chaos
covers thinning backsacks
on those who missed the sign
of the first blinking lights

Image was created on Bamboo Fun Tablet with Adobe Photoshop Elements, resized in Irfanview.

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts offers: Fireworks




Crone in the Moon

three quarters of a step beyond
the top of the midnight hour
dawn rubs the nub of dark

thunder slung by fireworks
embeds like earworms
rebounds from fissures in the sky

with a hum soft as breadcrumbs
the crone retreats to her crater
and the rain begins to gush


Fractal created in Fractal Explorer, resized and processed in Paint.Net...

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Weather for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts offers: Weather

Southern Shifts

she holds her breath
three days at solstice
when the sun stands still

summer days condense
tree shadows unfold early
and night steps ever closer

black tracks slash the day
and the sun begins to leave
she holds her breath


Image is a light-hearted sketch of eyes, created on Bamboo Fun Tablet in Adobe Photoshop Elements and resized in Irfanview.

My poetry books North of Summer and South of Winter are now available at Amazon through a pilot program by Lulu Publishing and as always, available from my LuluBookstore.

~~~***~~~***~~~

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts posts: Check out your horoscope and write a poem in response to it.

Natal Chart

A dry moat
Circles her houses
Family. money and love

Earth, fire and wind
Feelings are flares
Without tears

No water for mud
No water for steam
No water for flow

She seeks lakes
creeks and ponds
for a moat born dry

Fractal image was created with Apophysis, resized and buttoned in Irfanview.

My poetry books North of Summer and South of Winter are currently available at Amazon and, as always, available from my LuluBookstore in print or as download.

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Yard Sale for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts offers 'Yard Sale' as the weekly prompt.

they came by car
by truck and bike
searched in vain
for tables clad
in two-for-a-dime
priceless bric-a-brac

the yard didn't sell
its weeds so tall
and flowers so small
one mell of a hess
~ not a single soul
made an offer of cash
**

My poetry books North of Summer and South of Winter are currently available at Amazon and, as always, available from my LuluBookstore in print or as download.

~~♥~~♥~~

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts offers: Uninvited Guests - what do you do with them?





boisterous birds
shred the silence from

the first warm spring day
shatter my nerves

camera lens reveals
a baker's dozen shriekers

hopping at the diving board
in the pool and out, except

one frightened screamer
who needs skimming

and set aside to dry
his feathers calmed

before the glorious day
resumes its serenity


~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts: Opposites. What happens when opposites combine?

Just Past Before

half a world past dark
when wobble
alters axis

in a crush of time
poles trade space
warm swings to cool

revelations
unwrite tomorrow
while words twist

dust to ashes
somewhere beyond
half a world past light


Fractal image created in Apophysis, resized and buttoned in Irfanview.

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Late for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts posts: Tardiness

Late

her future loiters
on the double offsides
of a dozen tomorrows ~
tonight she breathes
a kiss for amour
to the bright Venus star,
first twinkle of dusk,
while pleading to miss
that well-known downside
of endless tardiness

Image created on Bamboo Fun Tablet with Photoshop Elements, resized in Irfanview.

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts post: Let's write about exercise this week.

Orphaned Thoughts

ghosts of threat
...promise carrots and
wield small sticks
treadmill hugs the wall

books lean against weights
...flexible rubber tubing
on scattered tables
pleads for a stretch

she expects to work out
...doesn't know for sure
when dust buried
thoughts of good intent

Watercolor by Sue.

♣~~~♣~~~♣

Poem for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts offers: This week write a poem that is inspired by a quotation. The quote could be from a newpaper or magazine article or it could just be a quote that you like about life or anything.

“There is no space wider than that of grief,
there is no universe like that which bleeds.”

--Pablo Neruda

After

on the tail of wind

raw spots and bad times

breathe in the streets

double back through dust

from still warm ashes

reluctant mourners

filter knuckle bones

sift familiar bric-a-brac

beyond a thousand cuts

like a jester in the rubble

the future comes again

and finds no one at home

~~

Abstract watercolor by Sue.

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Haiku for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts offers: This week, find an interesting photograph that has meaning for you and write a poem inspired by it.

spring blusters
winter peeks, then hides
...a child's game




~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Ess for Totally Optional Prompts

Upside or Down ~ The Heart of Ess

a small slip of ivy
the heart of ess
curls round my thumb
fashions a smile
a sense of summer
symbolic and green

the original sin
shaped by an asp
morphs to blood stains
on spreadsheets and
scripts the bottom line
of snakes in the grass

sweet and sensual
serendipitous
curves to a spiral
the siren call
of the seasonal ess
a small slip of ivy


Totally Optional Prompts offers: Choose one letter this week and examine it, smell it, listen to it, hold it in the palm of your brain and feel it. Then write a poem about it.

The digital image is a copper wire twisted to an ess and photographed on top of a CD in a window's light. Resized in Irfranview, framed in MS Digital Image Suite.

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Solitaire for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts posts: Solitaire.

Queen of Hearts

queen of hearts
walks her footprints
into white sand

she wears a smile
bears a special shell
and her dreams in hand

a redeal of cards ~
no rags of regret
unfurl from the past

ahead of the wind
she moves without haste
keeps an ace in her sleeve

♥

Original watercolor by Sue...

~~~♥~~~♥~~~

Spring Haiku for Totally Optional Prompts

Totally Optional Prompts offers: The Spring equinox (N. Hemisphere) has just passed, so it's now officially spring in the US. I declared spring a number of weeks ago, though, when we had our first balmy day. How do you mark the change into spring, or into any other season? Do the equinoxes and solstices anchor your calendar, or do you go by the weather?





◊

pitchfork
frozen in baled hay
spring, they say

◊

flipflops by the door
down slippers on frosty feet
lion feeds on lamb

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Sometime Spring is an original watercolor by Sue.

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