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A Little Bit of Drab-Peculiar for Miz Quickly
Miz Quickly is counting down from 7 (this is 6) until she closes shop, calls early doors, and goes fishing. Or plays baseball, possibly. I don’t think she’ll be using a bicycle though; Fred has it, and he’s disappeared into a low horizon. Anyway, the Miz wants drab. Peculiar. Mundane. I give you a paper…
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Dreaming with Miz Quickly
A Tin Wind Rattled I disown these homeless dreams, these friendless and wandering merry bands plucking at my broken strings. And whose familiar voice rings lost — those words, noisy as a tin wind rattled. Dreams — a fractured beauty scenting a broken night. And then its final moments fade, scatter mute as stones. To…
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dVerse Quadrille #11
Bound to Mine Steal a moment from this mad procession, lie with sunbeams; long, slender as fingers. Come and steal away on mossy green and wreaths of ivy. Bind your desires to mine like perfume, like your morning-scented robe, and we’ll spill this world on weedy rocks. Poetic Form: Quadrille (44 words including the…
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Less Than 20 Questions for Miz Quickly
It’s a Very Short Duration I’m like a tiller. I’ve learnt to live with stones, keep a course of steps to climb, my personally chiselled architecture, the pain makes me feel alive, and I dig my boots in for the duration. I chat with the neighbours, “How are you?” I say — good manners are…
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A Weekful of Haiku
I. Sun-bleached on the line Sheets fly like a sparrow’s wing We sleep deep tonight II. The day is restless A pace gripping at both legs Puffing steam and smoke III. Young love and young flesh I watch them growing older My eyes, rimmed with soot IV. Workers. Soldiers. Ants. Wasps and bees in hollowed…
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Miz Quickly Has a Few Words
A Town Like Ours This town’s worthy of hate, its valley cloud-soaked, flowed with rain and smoke, and dingy as old grey sheets, a bed unloved, a corner where the sun never shines bright enough, where bells plead and peal plain expectation off-key, off the back of war that emptied our town of hope but…
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Miz Quickly on Chances
What Are the Chances What were the chances that I’d survive bitterness, outlast my misspent childhood. What chance was there that I’d find space to dry my wings, to fly before I learned to accept life’s slips and pits and stumbles, and eventual fall. And lately I pray for belief in God’s goodness — that…
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dVerse Haibun #15
I am awake. I wake too early some days. No pattern – not just odd days, not just even days, or days with certain vowels or syllables. Some mornings I seem to wake in a neon blast, a flickering slap. A toothpick in the eye. My bones are agitated the way Jackson Pollock’s paintings sets…
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Rattling Along with Sunday Whirl
“Honey is the only food that doesn’t spoil” — anon Cars rattle, and that could move my dad to break into a howling burst, an echoing drawl of purpled complaint. And my sister and I, we’re split apart by pillows and sleeping bags because we encroach on each other like a red tide, and we’re…
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Miz Quickly on Marilyn Monroe
On a Slip of Dark She reminded me of a little bird, perched on black and white. A feminine sea, inconsistent as sunshine, and she was stucco pale on a shriek of dark. That unbalancing dark — follows you around; prey in the background. Like a stage. Like a shadowy prop. And it would stutter,…
It's Still Life 