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Tag Archives: poetry for fun

Good Day for a Flow Tale

04 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry for Fun

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#onesyllablewords, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, poetry for fun, sonnet

I love the sound of the sea, so one day
my friend and me set out on a small boat
from the brook near his house. I heard him say
I think this is the way, if we can float

and not look back, just go, dare I say flow,
to where the slow speeds up a bit, we might
come to a bend or fork, I do not know
for sure, but who does? This may well prove us right—

—or wrong. Life, as they say, can be a song
you sing out loud or just a ton of work.
My friend was not the type to think for long
on thoughts he did not like. He was no shirk.

The shark that took him flipped our boat, then spat
him out. We swam to shore, and that was that!

~~~

One of my favourite improv games is to play a scene or tell a story in words of only one syllable. This is a sonnet written in the same spirit.

© Elaine Stirling, 2018

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Social Media Be Me Rag

29 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry for Fun

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, poetry for fun

Click, share, like, react,
does it reinforce a fact?
If you make me look at that,
do you wrest control from me?

Does my pause intensify
those emotions that you try
to smother deep or magnify?
What an odd psychology.

Lock step, real quick,
don’t argue with my politic!
Friends together have to stick,
God forbid we disagree.

I know who will slap my wrist
if I say unicorns exist.
They’ll tell me they could not resist;
it’s hard, I know, to let things be.

You love science, she hates fiction,
I’m a stickler for good diction.
Conflict is a mean addiction
to our fastest-growing industry.

Pity poor or hate the rich,
some days I just don’t know which
cheap polarity to ditch—
Robin Hood, we’re up a tree!

By the time I end this poem,
a million cells I will have grown,
to feed on whate’er seeds I’ve sown
in my garden of biology.

You think we’re in our final act,
maybe never coming back?
This life might be a single track
on the  album called Infinity.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2017

Giving a Ripe Red Fig

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry for Fun

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

breakfast inspirations, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, poetry for fun, Richard the Lionheart

img_4693

I love that there are figs.
I love that figs exist.
I love that figs have been preserved
to grace the plates of ancient royalists.

A day that starts with sweet
and old from orchards of Provence
means more to me than all the tea
and crumpets you might find
in fancy restaurants.

Good breakfast makes us champions
and this I do believe,
for even Richard Lionheart
from battling nasty dukes
each morning took a brief reprieve…

with crusty bread, a blob of jam,
and fresh ground chicory, he pushed
the foes of Aquitaine back to their
smarmy lairs and claimed
his figues rouges-fueled victory.

All hail therefore the mighty fig,
its Maker, and this day
where once again I’m free to choose
my battles, how to fight them—
and where not to give a frig!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Obsessing

10 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry for Fun

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, Malayan fixed verse, pantoum, poetry for fun

rabbit obsession

~~a pantoum~~

Obsessing on thoughts on streets that go nowhere
I’m hunching my shoulders, recalling
how yesterday’s runners took up all the tables.
We sedentary saints couldn’t hear ourselves think!

I’m hunching my shoulders, recalling
how someone on Facebook went apeshit again.
We sedentary saints couldn’t hear ourselves think
about hot desert islands and big fat accounts.

How someone on Facebook went apeshit again
is upsetting my mojo that loves to dream
about hot desert islands and big fat accounts—
ought to give you some pause, don’t you think?

Is upsetting my mojo that loves to dream
how yesterday’s runners took up all the tables
as easy to fix as—slow down, silly rabbit?!
Obsessing on thoughts on streets that go nowhere…

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Rancheras & Tequila

25 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry for Fun

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, Mexican Ranchera, poetry for fun

Illegal Bar Rainey Street Austin, Texas

I have loved Mexican rancheras since the age of three when my parents and I moved to the Gulf coast of Mexico. I heard rancheras on the radio and danced to them with our maid and her hot, 12-year-old son, Miguel. I saw musicians singing rancheras live on the street and at fiestas. Whether I could distinguish Javier Solís from Vicente Fernández I cannot say, but I did have a preference for the super campy, drunken wailing versions. They just seemed so funny to me (and were probably sung by José Alfredo Jiménez).

Decades later, pregnant, I listened obsessively to Cuco Sanchez, the only ranchera album my family still owned. To this day, my Canadian-born son feels an almost patriotic passion for Mexican Spanish.

Recently, a friend delivered a wonderful presentation on the Mexican corrido, a close musical relative of ranchera. She introduced us to their poetry and meter, tracing their origins to Spain and the story-telling traditions of the troubadour. Spun, not surprisingly, to my own early days, I spent the following weekend binge-listening to rancheras on YouTube. “Rancheras and Tequila” is my humble tribute, with gratitude for the memories.

~~~

Rancheras and tequila I’m enjoying
with an old friend who’s in town just passing through.
I am texting this from Rosalí’s Cantina
just to tell you we’re not talking about you.

The moon is full, fish tacos are sabroso;
our friend still has that lust heat in his eye.
From my cheek he wipes a love smear of chipotle
while the great José Jimenez makes us cry.

Ai, ai, ai, aiii, we could have been the toast of Guanajuato,
your killer looks, my brains the perfect pair.
With lonely hearts an ever-growing market,
we dreamed a way to heal the great despair.

We talk, my friend and I, until the moon sets
and our bottle of Don Julio has run dry.
We chase each other laughing to the seashore,
throw our clothes off, to life’s problems sing goodbye.

We’re kissing while our legs float out behind us,
when suddenly he shouts, “Un tiburón!”
I cannot see a fin through all my splashing,
nor the glint of antique silver from his gun—

Ai, ai, ai, aiii, we could have been the toast of Guanajuato,
your killer looks, my brains the perfect pair.
With lonely hearts an ever-growing market,
we dreamed a way to heal the great despair.

These days I hang in Rosalí’s Cantina
and imagine us together, you and I.
Most patrons cannot hear my sad rancheras,
believing the tequila makes them cry.

The shark, he doesn’t visit like he used to.
He’s famous now—what need has he of me?
But one day while he’s cheating some pareja
of their fortunes, he will hear a sultry voice,
“Oh look, a honey bee!”

Ai, ai, ai, aiii, we could have been the toast of Guanajuato,
your killer looks, my brains the perfect pair.
With lonely hearts an ever-growing market,
we dreamed a way to heal the great despair.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

To the Captain of Doom, a Pantoum

26 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry for Fun

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Tags

Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, Malayan fixed verse, pantoum, poetry for fun

dinghy 2 jennifer branch dot com

I’m bidding farewell to the dinghy of angst
with its patches and puncture holes
grommets and slipknots of conflated doubt
sticky, entangled by world wide webs

with its patches and puncture holes
tooting dystopic and off-pitch arrhythmias
sticky, entangled by world wide webs,
the captain of doom seeks only to sink me

tooting dystopic and off-pitch arrhythmias
might catch me a penny in a beggar’s cup.
The captain of doom seeks only to sink me,
distract me from seeing my fleet coming in,

might catch me a penny in a beggar’s cup.
Grommets and slipknots of conflated doubt
distract me from seeing my fleet coming in.
I’m bidding farewell to the dinghy of angst!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016
The beautiful watercolour comes from
Boats Paintings Gallery at http://www.jenniferbranch.com

The House Upon the Hill

08 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry for Fun

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Malayan fixed verse, pantoum, poetry for fun

house on a hill_caralee clark

~~a pantoum~~

There is a house upon a hill
we used to visit once a year
where daffatoos and cockadrills
in great profusion sprung with cheer.

We used to visit once a year
with pachyderms. Uncertain terms
in great profusion, sprung with cheer,
to certain joy somehow appeared.

With pachyderms, uncertain terms
must slowly be unraveled.
To certain joy somehow appeared
an appetite for travel.

“Must slowly be unraveled”
is anathema to some.
An appetite for travel
to the fixéd mind feels dumb.

Is anathema to some
an urge? To wallow in the past
to the fixéd mind feels dumb,
can blind. The fact? This too shall pass.

An urge to wallow in the past
where daffatoos and cockadrills
can blind the fact, this too shall pass.
There is a house upon a hill…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Image by Caralee Clark from http://www.DailyPainters.com

May the Fourth

04 Monday May 2015

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, May the Fourth, poetry for fun, seasonal poetry

016

Be with me now, the means
continuously given
by the millions
through a cilia of ease.
Relax and fan these veins
and arteries with great success
conjunctive to the leafing out
of tulip trees

and when the comedy
of what comes next exhausts
me, when I’m glued like fly strips
to the nearest tragedy, I could
recall what Baal Shem Tov
most loved to say—just blink,
my friend, it’s time enough
for Providence to lay
another basket
at your feet

if this be true—
if this, not that
for betterment of peace
of mind is all I need to choose,
what need have I of floodgates,
sentry walls or cable news?
The ground I walk upon
of all I’ve asked for
and forgotten heaves
and bucks in time—
we are an ocean, after all—
with nesting cormorants
whose chicks with narwhals
are convening to arrive
at optimal, sublime
orchestral entry points.

The fourth is with me now
and you, eternally, the way.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Photograph by author

Saturday Night at the Swizzle Inn

16 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry for Fun

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bermuda, Elaine Stirling, narrative poetry, poetry for fun, Swizzle Inn

180

I decided to let my fun begin
on a Saturday night at the Swizzle—
no! No, no, no, no!

I didn’t decide at the Swizzle Inn
on a Saturday night to do anything but
nurse a gingery rummy dark drink
of the house, slurp a chowder, a curry,
I couldn’t decide between fishy
or spicy…both sounded nice

but of one thing I must be
abundantly clear:
I had no intention of
knowing so dear
the commencement of fun
that had smoothly begun
with fresh mahi mahi
and Bermudian rum
chased by pale Indee ale
at a rustic wood table
beneath setting sun.

could a meal pale derision,
abolish all fear of enjoyment
perpetual, bring happiness near
enough to embrace and to tug
at my heart, and to view
on the sleeves of the good
folk around me?

well, I couldn’t have told you
what I now surely know,
how it all worked its way
into and under my sunburned
skin, which is how I began
to let the fun in on a Saturday
night at the Swizzle Inn…

postscript

to those with a penchant
for gossip and dirt,
I refuse to disclose
if I purchased the shirt—
but straight out I’ll tell you,
I’m happy to say, that I did
swagger out arm in arm
with great fun and exuberant
whim on a Saturday night
at the Swizzle Inn.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Photograph by author

Moving Day Dreams

22 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry for Fun

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

a bit of silliness, Elaine Stirling, Malayan fixed verse, pantoum, poetry for fun

001

I’m pretty sure I dreamed of a palm tree plantation
hand in hand with Merwin or maybe Gauguin
where words swell on trees like ripening citrus
rhyming lolls in hammocks with white cardboard fans

hand in hand with Merwin or maybe Gauguin
a giant yellow cat with eyes like Branwell Brontë
rhyming lolls in hammocks with white cardboard fans
warns me not to set fire to his bed again

a giant yellow cat with eyes like Branwell Brontë
knowing how much I’ve already discarded
warns me not to set fire to his bed again
I assure him that caves are too wet to burn

knowing how much I’ve already discarded
where words swell on trees like ripening citrus
I assure him that caves are too wet to burn
I’m pretty sure I dreamed of a palm tree plantation

~~~

with thanks to JC for the inspiration

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

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