Erotic haiku / senryu and tanka: February 2016

your strong body
in my arms again –
you fill me

***

the smell
of your warm flesh
and the taste ...

***

a long time
between drinks – here now
I drink deep

***

you uncurl
and stretch your long limbs
exposing
the magnificence
I love to stroke

***

no need for touch
the mere thought of you
and I flower

***

I lick your skin
your nipples harden
I feel you swell

***

your hand stroking
my breasts and belly
heating my blood

I Loll in Bed

I loll in bed

in a bubble of memory

and there you are

in my arms again.

I feel your muscular chest

against mine,

inhale the scent

of your warm skin.

I don’t see how this

could be a dream.

Anyway, I’m awake
happily.

Another poem for dVerse's Quadrille 3: bubble, as we are encouraged to double bubble.

Imaginary Friend

I drive past her house
and spit (mentally).
Who'd have imagined

sweet, petite, pretty,
conservative she
desired to own me?

Delicate tendrils
tightened gradually,
mere irritations at first.

Eventually I hacked my way out
through tough strangler vines –
left her alone in her bubble.


Written for Quadrille 3: bubble at dVerse

A Long Marriage

We were promised to each other

before I was born.

Perhaps I understood this

even in the cradle. I knew it 

when I was seven and,

in my infantile way, embraced you 

as one who had the right.

There were some who told me

I could not aspire so high.

By my teens they suggested

you were fickle, and would never

be a good provider – 

I would do better to treat this

as a mere casual flirtation.

But I knew it was a true betrothal,

a deep affair of the heart.

I knew that I was incapable

of ever forsaking you, no matter

what other loves might intervene.

As I knew that you, despite mysterious 

absences, would always return to me.

And so it has been. We've both

had other paramours, even other 

true loves. There are times, still,

we need our space apart – for play 

or solitude. We no longer consume

each other lustfully. We are old friends.

Yet we are all in all, faithful unto death.

Take my hand, Muse of Poetry.

Press your lips to my heart.

There are still some songs 

to sing to each other, 

some dances in each other's arms. 

How surely, now, we move together, 

closer than ever, inventing new steps.

For Poets United's Midweek Motif: Marriage

My Living Room

It is full

of coloured clowns:

puppets on swings.

They hang from

ceilings and sills,

perch on ledges.

Some visitors shudder,

but to me

they are gorgeous.

And more colour –

paintings and photos

on every wall.

I arrange them

by matching tonings

rather than styles.

(Mine, you see,

are eclectic tastes.

I have fun.)

And the ornaments –

elephants and angels,

crystals and shells.

There are vases

and bottles full 

of gathered feathers.

There are offerings

for the faeries 

(the nature spirits).

On the bookshelf

sits a cat:

of plaster, black.

By the door

a live cat

rests, also black.

This living room

is of course

a witch’s lair.

Written for dVerse Poetics – Room With or Without a View.  
(In this case the room IS the view.)

P.S. Colleen asks, in the comments, 'What, no brooms?' Of course there are brooms, one at each outside door:

Photos © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2016. These photos are mine and should not be copied or used in any way without permission. 

Fairy-tale Abyss

“At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.”

― Paulo Coelho

He was a tall, skinny lad, long-limbed. His mouth was long too: long and mobile with quirky corners, giving a naturally humorous cast to his face. Big, generous ears. Clear eyes. Long, slim, square-knuckled fingers.

He posed with his Japanese sword, one hand clasping the black handle, long hair swept back behind his shoulder, mouth held straight and serious, eyes fixed. The ideal of the mystic warrior. (He was Aikido-trained.)

'I know you now,' I said. 'You are my animus.' 

'The age difference doesn't matter,' he told me. 'Our minds have no age. We just are.'
 

We existed for each other in a space of pure being, a vacuum, a sanctuary, a circle outside of time. But we cannot live only as minds. The fairy-tale was the abyss. It was a black hole – gradually, inevitably pulling the outside world in. Bit by bit it became filled with details of our lives, until the pure space was no more. Under the clutter of fact and time, our fine connecting thread grew imperceptible even to ourselves. 

We were left with a question: What is real?

lolling on bright grass

he beams at the camera –
unknown to me then

Written for dVerse Haibun Monday #7

Across the Water, Moonlight

Across the water, moonlight

seems to beckon you away.

Although I beg you to stay,

you go out into the night.

How long do you want me to wait?

I lift my face to the coming day.

Across the water, moonlight

seems to beckon you away.

Sunlight, moonlight; both are bright.

I don’t know – should I follow or stay?

You travel fast, an unknown way.

I gaze, but you are now past sight….
Across the water, moonlight.

Moonlight Reflection by Peter Kratochvil, public domain.

Another Rondel for dVerse Meeting the Bar, as I got the first attempt a bit wrong.

Cat-Lover's Turn-Around

I shall not have again, I said,

a slinky feline all my own.

It’s time for me to live alone

now that all those I loved are dead.

I need no purrs to share my bed

nor paws to wake me every morn.

I shall not have again, I said,

a slinky feline all my own.

Famous last words! There came a need.

Oh, beautiful – and lacks a home.

So much for solitude. Instead,

by grace and happenstance, I’ve won
a slinky feline all my own.

A Rondel for Meeting the Bar, at dVerse. (I see too late that I've made mistakes in the rhyme scheme, but can't find a good way to fix it now.)

Photo © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2016. This photo is mine and should not be copied or used in any way without permission. 

There Comes That Lull

There comes that lull

just prior to the upsurge.

Breath stops. The whole world

pauses in a long silence.

It seems to extend

indefinitely.

But then, suddenly,

the world slams back

in brighter colour,  

more piercing sound.

A radiance, a crescendo

explodes, soars, spreads.

The 'Quadrille – 2' prompt at dVerse today is to write a piece of exactly 44 words, including the word 'lull'. Follow the link to see how others have tackled it.

The photo is mine and should not be reproduced without permission. © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2015.

Komorebi

I used to go out the wooden back gate

up the slight rise of the dirt path through the bush

and savour the fall of the sun, soft gold or blinding silver,  

down through the leaves of the eucalypts, in long shafts.

That was when I still thought the home I lived in was mine.

It's Flash 55 PLUS! right now at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. This time the PLUS is to use one of twenty-two words in other languages for which there is no English equivalent. 'Komorebi' is Japanese and means 'sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees'.

Also linking to Poetry Pantry #288 at Poets United

The photo is mine and should not be reproduced without permission. © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2016

Finding the Core

'Where would you come back to?' he asks. 'And would you come back as yourself ... perhaps you'd return as a bird?' When I ask this of my inner stillness, dropping into deep knowing, my outer mind is faintly surprised. I don't choose the Tweed Valley, where I have spent the happiest years of my life – where natural beauty and easy friendships nurture me daily, and where I shall most likely end. No, I would go back to the place of cold rain, of slippery frosts and insularity – yet where my earliest friendships were born, and its own particular beauty sustained me. Yes, that island. 

That island, yes; of dark mountains and cold streams. Above all I would go back to Richmond Bridge – strangely, as it was not a frequent haunt. But my Dad loved it, and I loved it too through his eyes and my own. That was before I became disillusioned in him. We would pass it on family trips from Launceston to Hobart and back – from one end of the island to the other, so we didn't do it often. (There were not the fast highways then.) We loved its simple arches, its ancient stone, the slight rise in the centre coming to a point. We loved its perfect shape, a lily needing no gilding. (The bridge at Ross is beautiful too, but more ornate.) I would be a bird, I think, perching on that bridge, making a nest nearby. A magpie, able to stand up for itself and its young: killer of snakes, aggressive guard against intruders, feeder of the helpless. A magpie warbling its most beautiful song to wake the morning, and later farewelling the day as dusk descends.

'Who are you?' she asks. 

I am a bird on a bridge 

in a small island.

This photo, by Gabriella of the dVerse team, provided the original inspiration for this piece, reminding me of Richmond Bridge which I refer to. 

Linked to Haibun Monday #6 and to Poetics: Coming Back, both at dVerse, as well as to Poets United's Midweek Motif: Identity. [The concluding verse is perhaps more senryu than haiku. I hope it qualifies.]

The New Cat

Her back,

a slim violin,

moves before I get the photo.

But I caught

her front view – those long white whiskers

against the over-all black:
stylish!

(The poetic form is the Cameo, which is syllabic:

lines of 2, 5, 8, 3, 8, 7, 2 syllables in turn.)

Linking to the latest Tuesday Platform at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Photo © Angela Junor 2016. All rights reserved.