Renga – Dead Men (Jilly/Charley)

They answer like dead men
A sound silent as a thought

words still as those graven
and uttered like mute birds caught

perilous the journey through synapses
binding wings and tongues confined

unuttered lights high in barren copses
guide to truth the deaf and blind

specters of unanswered prayers
searing darkness stirs the voice to sight

angel’s wings unused turn grayer
lightning’s torch chases spirits to flight

awake! arise! deadened senses revive
snatched from the gates of hell

draw out of the pit where silences thrive
unsound the mumming knell

resuscitating tongues untied
cataracts of fire refined

answers voiced and mortem belied

a rush of sound now divined

 

 

 

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Renga – Dead Men (Jilly/qbit)

They answer like dead men
A sound silent as a thought

Rhapsody of the Deep begs for redemption,
Our mirrored voices too dark to know

Improvised songs from thermal vents
Frequencies whales only hear

Did I evolve from lethal smiles?
Dive for this poison, dive for this hunger

Only to modulate to that minor key
Cecilia’s Café D

Where wrapped in lexicons of blues and saints
Arpeggiated blessings sound

Refracted images of flotsam refrains
Repeating hymns of reanimation

Scrimshaw chorus plays with light
Jaws of life bring joy

Epic lines and tragic flaws
fluted on the waves

Whose questions quiet cetaceous storms
Jubilation and laughter well from the sea

Renga Challenge: They Answer Like Dead Men

“They answer like dead men

A sound silent as a thought”

 

This is a Couplet Renga Challenge for October Casting Bricks.  Care to join in?  Just let me know in a comment below and I will start a post for us.  I propose a total of 10 couplets; 5 each.  Everyone is welcome to give this a go or to stop by Jilly’s October Challenge and join in with any of the Collaborative Challenges.  Presenting a challenge of your own would be awesome, as well.  The more, the merrier!  

A Blessing for our Daughters

Sarah Connor (Sarah Southwest) put forth a lovely Retourne as a Challenge for the October “Casting Bricks to Attract Jade.”  Her opening stanza was for the occasion of her daughter’s 16th birthday and I thoroughly enjoyed completing her Blessing for My Daughter, keeping my own daughter in mind as I wrote.  Sarah’s words are in bold.

May your heart sing like the ocean,
May the air be clear around you,
May your midnight flame burn bright,
May your feet find firm ground to stand

May the air be clear around you
Words of kindness swirl about you
As a fresh breeze filling your lungs
and exhaling truth with your tongue

May your midnight flame burn bright
When your soul passes that dark night
The rays of the bold morning sun
Flood your eyes when trial is done

May your feet find firm ground to stand
and in scree, a friend’s proffered hand,
In all your day’s strange commotion
Shall you ever have my devotion.

© Connor / Lyman Collaboration

Everyone is welcome to join in with our collaborative poetry project of “Casting Bricks to Attract Jade!”  We begin fresh on the first Friday of each month.  A permalink can be found on the sidebar to your right.

Renga – Geometry (Jilly /Sarah SW)

A circle within
The well of infrequent tongues
Radius opens

Fibonacci sequences
Spiraling my fingertips

Primitive riddles
In sunflower’s eye are held
Voices sing out loud

The universe is dancing
Steps of fractal precision

Ribbons of crystal-
line explosions expanding
Inward gravitas

Outward, a centrifugal
Joy in movement, energy

Dark vitality
A matter of mystery
God’s hands compressing

We are gravity’s children
Held in eternal embrace

The circle contracts
Celestial hymn intones
Radial refrain

Time, space, matter energy –
Double helix corkscrewing.

 

 

A Classic Renga by two amazing poetess divas; Jilly & Sarah Southwest!  Interested in joining in with some collaborative poetry?  Join us over at Jilly’s October Challenge of Casting Bricks to attract Jade; everyone is welcome!

Park Shade – A Collaboration

You grew in what became a picnic grove
Providing shade to what is now a park
While dying you were cut and when I drove
One morning past your place expecting dark
I found the stump, your tombstone, your new mark
And knew eventually that so will I
Look up with new perspective on the sky.

One year and a day, again walking there
Gentle green and tender shoots spring upward
Branches, leaves, hands reaching to heaven’s prayer
Joy on finding an old friend, my heart stirred
As descendant voices drew me forward
That from this future stand will grow one day
My children’s children bursting forth in May

 

A collaborative Chaucerian-stanza poem by Frank Hubeny (in bold) and Jilly.  Posting for Jilly’s October Challenge of Casting Bricks and for dVerse Poet’s Pub.

Renga – Geometry (Jilly/Charley/Qbit/Madaket)

A circle within
The well of infrequent tongues
Radius opens

An arc of conversation
repeats at high frequency

Unseen calculus
Area under your heart –
Infinity fails

Reveals unspoken postulates
Painful theorems eroding truth

Residue in cups
Wrestling your motes and beams
Whitewashed verity

Vitreous fibers obscure
A miasma of deceit

Cataracts of light
Impassable to the soul
Dark water falling

An incalculable angle
Vibrates and vies for integration

Strike the tuning fork
Voices search for common key
Hardened arteries

Implanting resonant stents
Bypass cholesterol thoughts

Tendons hum like wires
Chorded axioms of blood
Theory proved in song

Mainlining reason
To the point of origin.

 

 

Renga Classic Challenge – Geometry

A circle within
The well of infrequent tongues
Radius opens

 

[You’re Next! – 7 Syllables]
[7 – syllables]

[Repeat 5/7/5  7/7]

This is a Classic Renga Challenge for four poets.  Here is Qbit’s explanation with more details of how this works. Poet #1 writes a Haiku, Poet #2 writes a couplet with 7 syllables per line, Poet #3 writes another Haiku, Poet #4 adds another couplet.

If you would like to join in, leave a comment below and once we have 4 takers, I’ll create a new post and we will run with it.

This collaborative craziness is a part of Jilly’s October Challenge of Casting Bricks to Attract Jade. Everyone is welcome to join us!

I Change Not – Collaborative Poem

As a leopard cannot change it’s spots

I cannot change, no matter what

I am that I am and was

Ever as such because

Spotted, red-striped or

Green polka-dots

Me is She

I am

Lots!

Zems / Lyman
Collaboration for Jilly’s October Challenge of Casting Bricks to Attract Jade.

Sitting down to complete Vivian Zems’ nonet challenge, two things ran through my head; Put Me in the Zoo by Lopshire and Horton Hatches an Egg by Dr. Suess.  It is not wonder that the outcome is a silly, rhyming Suess-esque poem.  Vivian’s words are in bold.    Everyone is welcome to join in the collaborative challenge!

Narcotic

I hold the needle, paused above my vein
pump a fist to watch it rise and bulge like
hungry goldfish lip-quivering for a grain
of tetra flake craving; a perma-blight.

What night-terror stands naked in the hail
leaves me gill-gasping, ravening for you
a gritty fix for this rapacious frail

 

Here is my Half-Poem Challange for the October Edition of Casting Bricks to Attract Jade.  It is in sonnet form and I have written the first 7 lines, leaving it open for collaborative completion of the last 7 lines.  The English Sonnet is 14 lines in 3 quatrains and a couplet, holding a rhyme scheme of abab / cdcd / efef / gg.  Good luck and happy writing, my friends!  ~ Cheers, Jilly 🙂

Jilly’s October Challenge is open to all poets; please join us!