Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Variations on a Ballade

Google image
 
 
Last night, I couldn't sleep a wink--
reaction to your call
      that she was over with the drink,
      the pizza, sons, and all
      her helplessness (the gall!)
has kept my spirit from its rest,
so that today, I walk the hall
and wish 'twere I who'd been your guest.
 
Why do I worry so, you ask.
"I've told you you're the one.
You think my protestations mask
     some silly, willy-nilly fun
     to keep your psyche quite undone?
     I told you I love you the best;
now of your jealousy be done,
for only you shall be my guest." 
 
(For this ballade to end up whole,
it must include another verse.
     French forms--factitious--must cajole
     both form and content into terse
     but lucid stanzas. I immerse
my jealousy in words to wrest
catharsis from a chafing curse.
Aha! 'Tis I who've been the guest.)
 
For seven years this poem's lain
unfinished in my writer's chest,
but time has exorcized the pain:
you married her--SHE'S been your guest.
 
PL - from variations, 1994

Friday, July 17, 2015

Haiku/ senryu-- actual, found and fancy

                Son Eric's backyard last summer. His photo.
 
 
calico sniffing
the cherries and pear
in the new kitchen rug
~~~
 
bermuda
growing better
in my flower beds
[from Janet Carson, AR Living, June '14]
~~~
 
a former rent house
now only an old picture--
the new school building
~~~
 
shorn by funnel cloud
it will never again shade
the old man's milk cow
~~~
 
working the crossword
a mosquito grazes
the top of my pen
~~~
 
male cardinal
on a limb
above the red truck
~~~
 
dusk
stomping the roach-shaped leaf
into the carpet
~~~
 
thirty minutes
after 'lights out'
thinking of another poem
[written 10 years ago to the date]
~~~
~~~
c 2015 Pat Laster dba lovepat press
 
Eric's photo of a day lily against his shed
 
 
 
 

 


Wednesday, July 8, 2015

A post-reunion Etheree-patterned poem

Here is the Couch sibling--Thurman-- missing from the July 4 reunion. Let's say he might be bowing in sorrow that he was too ill to make the long trip from Pasadena, CA.
NOTE FROM THURMAN: I'm singing to entertain customers.  My buddy,
Don Cadogan, to the left.  A nurse friend at right.  This was on a Superbowl
Party event.  2013.  I was raising the roof!


 
 
This poem written July 7, while resting from the delightful, 3-event reunion held over the July 4th weekend.
 
I'm
eating
leftover
purple hull peas,
potato salad,
tomatoes, grape salad
and watermelon, apple
and coconut cream pies--all left
in my refrigerator after
the main meal of the family reunion.
PL -