love in the time of coronavirus

Our love in the time
of coronavirus is
thousands of miles away,

my tourist visa got
cancelled before it sees
the light of another Indian day,

his feet are planted,
prohibited to fly to Malaysia’s sky,
because it is safer that way,

in the end, perhaps, nation
gates are needed to be locked
to keep the virus at bay,

regardless of the many
hearts sleeping on empty beds,
dreaming on sadness’ sleigh,

regardless of some pair of hands
burdened but enduring,
without home-arms to rest and stay,

like our love in the time
of coronavirus, parted
thousands of miles away,

but we are both here
filled with more love,
blessed on our own way,

at the back of our
surrendered hands—
a constant prayer,

to be inside a
single roof together,
one day. One day.

—

Note: Title inspired by the classic novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

—

03.2020
©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

well, we are all caged inside aged standards: a string of landays*

‘Tween legs without hanging, cloning tube,
hands tied inside kingdom of plates, forks, knives, fittingly.

Rugged palms even at birth, first cry
should be the last, plow land, tear not. Masculinity.

Fingernails painted in red welcomes
thin sheets of cloth be stripped, cream breasts bared, unwillingly.

Broad chest cracks in silence, no one wants,
your own side of the story, just pay alimony.

Are we shouting, equality, freedom
deaf, blind of all genders’ clipped wings aching to be free?

—

03.11.2020
©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via Unsplash

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

—

For dVerse Poetics: “Bartender, I’d like to close out my tab-oo”

In Pashto, *”landay (LAND-ee)” means “short, poisonous snake,” likely an allusion to its minimal length and use of sarcasm. Landays (or landai) often criticize traditions and gender roles.

There are few formal properties. Each landay consists of a single, twenty-two syllable couplet. There are nine syllables in the first lines, and thirteen syllables in the second. In Pashto, the poem ends on a “ma” or “na” sound. The lines do not generally rhyme.

A quadrille for my Rodnoy, my king of sonnets

A peaceful Sunday,
watching
queen sun’s
everyday bowing,

with a shaken call,
soul-stirring words,
i learned of
your sudden passing,

premature, it is,
a thief of sonnets I did
not see coming,

with a holed heart
I ache for your pen’s rash

drying.

—

A poem I wish I never had to write for my Rodnoy, my big brother, the classic poet, Instagram’s @elusive.illusion. Rest in peace, in bliss, with so much love. 😦

—

03.10.2020
©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via Unsplash

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

—

For dVerse Quadrille #99 – Poems Stirred, Not Shaken 

so we think we’re smarter than God: a haibun

Once I have read the stars are becoming less visible more than ever. With human knowledge soaring higher and higher (I hope we will not find our specie crashing soon), our mortal hands (tainted with scarlet juice of many wars) have made our earth-based stars, letting our eyes and minds awake round the clock.

Last month I went to a remote village tucked inside the snow-covered arms of the Indian Himalayas, almost 10,000 feet above the sea. There, oh there, the hidden stars stripped bare in front of me. I am again reminded of how significant and insignificant my breath is, our breaths are. One day, warm oxygen. Another, floating with frozen air.

Blushed Mars giggles with
blinking February stars,
nothing beats His hands.

—

03.03.2020
©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via Unsplash

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

—

For dVerse Haibun Monday 3/2/2020: Mars

Whether it’s the God of War or the Red Planet, write your haibun that alludes to Mars.

Remember, a haibun is combination of prose and haiku. For the purposes of this prompt, the prose may be non-fiction or speculative. The haiku, while not needing to be in the 5-7-5 syllabic format, must include a kigo (season word) and present a complement of seemingly divergent images, such that there is a moment of insight. For more on haibun writing, click here.

variations of the word uprooting

as a toddler these chubby
set of tiny toes were
buried in brown cake
of forest’s earth, as the
plump fingers reach out
for blood-red wild berries,

as a student these
leather-covered soles
wandered through cemented
schools, universities, as
the mind gulps data after
data, oh so, committedly,

as a two-decade lady
these desperate feet
tried (begged) to belong
in carpeted corporate
floor, as the pocket gaped
with empty plates
waiting at home.

at present, these trotters
gait with certainty from
one plane to another,
on concrete cities to
Himalayan snowed floors,
with the same soft chin
looking up to thank
Him who is above,

prayers work. prayers work.

—

02.26.2020
©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via Unsplash

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

—

For dVerse Poetics: Impermanence

…I’d like you to think about impermanence, things that are transient, or things that have passed their time. If you want to stick to the seasons, nature, or the weather, that’s fine, but I’d like to challenge you to try to come up with something different or unusual. Your poem can be in any style or form.

open your eyes, see how the world undresses: a quadrille

(revolving earth
undresses, each
season unravels)

spring, peeler of
silent blue winter,
blush in pastel young
blooms, will then
succumb to laughing
rays of golden sun,

salted seas curdle
to scarlet red as
autumn conquers
the rusting lawns,

(revolving earth
undresses, each
season unravels)

—

02.25.2020
©2019 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via Unsplash

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

—

For dVerse Quadrille #98 – Peelings, Nothing More…

Today I offer you the word “peel” to include in your quadrille.

You may use it as a noun or a verb or play with it as a derivative….peelable, unpeelable. unpeeled.

You can “peel off” or “peel out”.

Are you a “peeler”? Do you save your peelings or throw them away?

thank you winter, for letting the spring in: a haibun

When I was young there was this Koreanovela titled Winter Sonata, a part of a series titled Endless Love. I was nine or maybe 10, innocent and clueless, but that was my first encounter with you— season of snowflakes and magic.

It has been more or less three decades and you remain a dream to me. To watch how your fairy flakes fall ever so slowly, from heaven to the waiting parched earth. How your tiny drops can eventually cover a city’s entire map. How you serve as natural soundproofing, silencing the murmurs of the earth for a few months.

While some links your beauty with gloom and doom (let’s face it, you can also be cruel), but as was written, “What’s essential is invisible to the eye”, we, we mere mortals were not able to witness the kingdom you protect behind your thick coating. We do not know that inside you sleep pregnant seeds and there you nurture them away from any predators. And how unselfishly you melt, little by little, vacating the streets and roads you conquered, knowing it’s time for births, and it’s time for you to go.

Under white blanket,
hide so patient, tender twigs.
Hello, spring sunshine.

—

02.04.2020
©2019 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via Unsplash

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

—

For dVerse Haibun Monday 2/3/2020: Spring

Let’s put a little spring into our step today, shall we? Let’s spring into action. Or let’s just enjoy that first taste of spring. After all, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early Spring on Ground Hog’s Day. Yesterday’s temperatures, at least in New York’s backyard, warmed to spring low temperatures.

counting poems before and after him

thousand poems
have i written
‘fore fate allowed
me to meet him,

oh, how in hush heart-
beats, low key hums,
dearness draws near
me towards him,

oh, how my shy
muse sings hymns,
so sweetly since
i knew him,

oh, how rhymes
roll off in rivulets,
thousands and more
poems now for him.

—

01.31.2020
©2019 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via Unsplash

—

For dVerse The music of alliteration, assonance, and consonance.

Today I would like you to try using different types of assonance and consonance in any poem of your choice. Try to listen to how it sounds, and see how you can enhance the connection between the letter you use and the meaning of the poem. Maybe you can add the beat of the poem with accentuated alliteration.

—

Inspired by my book Poems for S.

soft arms and midnight crumbs

soft arms of dawn
sneaks in between
half-closed
bedroom blinds,

(wake up, wake up)

infant sunshine
sweeps leftover
crumbs of late
stars’ snack,

(come back, come back)

i sat, unmoving,
inside the swaying
boat of an
ended dream,

(wishing, wishing)

our sheet isn’t
empty of you.

—

01.29.2020
©2019 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via Unsplash

—

For dVerse Tuesday Poetics with Lillian.

…how about writing a poem that takes us inside a dream? It can be your dream or someone else’s dream. Are you sleeping in a bed during this dream? Sitting on a train dozing? Leaning up against a tree staring at the clouds? Does your dream take you beneath the seas? Into the clouds? Or maybe you’re on a stage flooded with the smoke of dry ice? Is your dream triggered by a scent? By a song? By a photo you came across? Let your imagination drift and take us with you into a dream!

you cannot give a bird its wings: a quadrille

you cannot give a bird its wings
nor bless a fox its howl,

you cannot give a snake its fangs
nor bless a frog its tongue,

you cannot free these wild, wild things
whose freedom sings with spring,

humans, we don’t have it all.

—

01.28.2020
©2019 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.
Photo via Unsplash

—

For dVerse Quadrille #96: Wild Monday.

“This Monday it’s me again, Kim from Writing in North Norfolk, welcoming dVerse poets to this week’s Quadrille, when we take any meaning of one word and transform it into 44 poetic words.

The word today is ‘wild’, most often an adjective meaning living or growing in the natural environment; not domesticated or cultivated. Synonyms for ‘wild’ include untamed, undomesticated, feral, unbroken, fierce, ferocious, savage, uncultivated and natural. It can also mean uninhabited, uncultivated, or inhospitable.

You can have a wild party, take part in wild dancing, or burst into wild applause. Wild can mean very angry, very excited, or a look that is frightened or manic. Wild hair is long and untidy, and you can experience wild weather or a wild night. In slang, the adjective ‘wild’ can mean very unusual, often in a way that is attractive or exciting, such as ‘Those are wild trousers you’re wearing!’  One can even make a wild accusation or guess, or start a wild rumour. I rather like the sayings ‘wild horses wouldn’t drag me’ and ‘in your wildest dreams’.”