Cos Truth Be Stranger than Fiction

_{^{Photo by Ronu00ea Ferreira on Pexels.com}}

The elephants have been walking in the cookie dough again. With their old-world charm and their circus-popping moves.  I wear a wig to fool you and it works.  We go trapeze-flying in the afternoon, me in my new guise just to hang out with the guys, and they, not knowing I kind of have a crush on one or two of them. Of course, I keep schtum. Don’t want them ego-tripping.

Pretty sure Misery found her true love in the end.  Or rather, he found her, came galloping on his horse in the night to save her from the evil clutches of Baron Heidzig.  After France, when she had a brainchild then returned.  (As a pig in the back yard, didn’t she, Paul?  You there, Paul?)

These papier-mache dreams would abscond into the night with their breath hanging in the air, but there was an incident once so now I keep it under wraps.  You see, some clowns got arrested on their way to the party and got strip-searched for bad jokes and role-play.

These days they go guerrilla gardening instead, and throw hand grenades of seed bombs over barbed wires onto protected land, manicured by law, so when the rain hits them, they spread open onto their backs and yield forth an explosion of wildflowers.

Really, guerrilla gardening’s the thing, let’s go do it.  It’s the new afternoon tea party.  Afterwards, we can even dress up as clowns and play leapfrog in the shed.

^{_{© N Nazir 2023}}

Written for Shay’s Word Garden where we are given inspiration with The Circus in Winter by Cathy Day. Words used: elephant(s), cookie(s), charm, circus, popping, wig, trapeze, misery, papier-mache, incident, clowns.

*

*Sadly, this is Shay’s last word garden prompt list, so of course, I had to write something for it. It was my favourite writing challenge on WP, I always learned about some new writer or other, and got to read some quality responses to it too, so I shall miss it. Thanks Shay, for the inspiration 🙂

The Poet Desires

_{^{© N Nazir 2023}}

to be in the storm, amidst the howl of this whip-surging being

to then experience the goodness of being indoors, even if one’s hair is plastered to one’s head.

The poet is provoked into oneness and awe by the sight of a crow drinking from a puddle of blue-sky water, drinking its own winsome reflection.  The poet’s heart clenches at this spectacle.  For a moment they consider the impermanence of beauty and the pain of not being able to hold on to it.

The poet seeks to be rendered uncomfortable in order to shake hands with their muse. The muse is sometimes a shadow, more enchanting than they remember. Elsewhen, its appearance wears a dishevelled look as a room after a tornado has left.

The poet doesn’t care if the sun doesn’t come. They know it’s there and that’s enough. They seek the solace of library and it simply won’t do if the sun is blazing whilst they’re in the library.  The poet is a pluviophile and seeks the library weather of rain.

The poet sometimes agonises over lines of unequal length. The poet thinks a lot about death.  

The poet wonders if anything new will ever happen to earthkind ever again. Or if the same tortures will repeat themselves over and over with them in the middle, ineffectual, or perhaps, affecting everything.

The poet seeks nobility and tries to describe it but words don’t work and neither does paint.  Only wind and water dress it right but they remain susurrus and formless.

The poet again contemplates beauty.  But this time, the simple wonder of a bumbling bear or a lonely buttress of rock jutting out into nothing.  Or other wild things, feeling themselves wild amongst them.  If only as a tiny grass snake or the unfurling stem of a dreaming cornflower.

_{^{© N Nazir 2023}}

Shared also for dVerse Open Link Night.

The World is Your Lobster #Visual Verse Publication

_{^{Image by Adriaen van Utrecht / Rijksmuseum}}

Yes. Feast your eyes. I am centrepiece, after all. Summer’s expanding belly come to laze, somnolent. The sun, a kind benevolence on this good life. Eat your fill and be done. I siesta, waiting for you, of all the ways you’ll bite . . .

. . . you can read the rest of the poem here.

_{^{© N Nazir 2023}}

*My greatest thanks to Visual Verse for publishing my poem this month ❤ And so nice to see many of my fellow bloggers also make it in! It’s like we’ve got VV covered! From all the submissions in the world, the WP bloggers are all over it 🙂

*

*Shared for dVerse Open Link Night, hosted by Bjorn.

Left My Soul There #Publication

_{^{© Giorgi Iremadze (Unsplash)}}

I heard
Saturn ate his babies
to stop them taking his power.
Icy moons
with hearts of fire
they ruptured
then hung
in orbit
reborn and broken.
Saturn nestles
into rings
of resculpted newborns.

…you can read the rest of the poem here.

^{_{© N Nazir 2023}}

*February’s been kind of unreal for publications! Sometimes, you don’t hear back from editors at all and then you get more than one acceptance in the same month. It’s made up for a stressful month. I hope you like this latest offering. Though I actually wrote it about two years ago. I’d change the title if I could, I just couldn’t think of a better title. My greatest thanks to Green Ink Poetry for publishing it in their latest Collection: Cosmos ❤

A Heaving Petticoats Poem

It’s true, I said, I’m musically promiscuous
but I thought you were too?  

Surely we belong together?
What a gorgeous catastrophe,

you replied, how we flamenco like this 
but never meet, not really.

Then let’s rewrite the script, I urged
let’s go one cerulean afternoon

to the cottonwoods 
where the bees wallow

and make like a samba in the zinnias.  
No one need ever know!  Besides

I wore my peignoir for you
and the moment is already cyanic.

You give me some kind of all-overishness
damn you! you declared, but got up

gruntled, took my hand
and led me there.

^{_{© N Nazir 2023}}

Written for Shay’s Word Garden where Shay brings us inspiration with award-winning poet Alicia Suskin Ostriker, with the word list taken from her poetry collection The Crack in Everything (words used: gorgeous, catastrophe, flamenco, cerulean, cottonwoods, bees, samba, zinnias).

Written also for Sammi Scribbles Writing Prompt: Script, 100 words.

*This is really a belated Throwback Thursday 🙂 But has also been my earworm this week.