This haibun is in response to two prompts. My head is full of story and it’s hard coming out of it. I’m terrified I’ll lose my grip on one of the many threads, so I’m economising my words.
For Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday, the prompt is synonyms of Dry and Wet, and for Jilly’s Days of Unreason, the quote is
“I’m quite tired of beating myself up to write. I think I’ll start letting the words slip out like a tired child. “Can I have a piece of pie” he asks, and then he’s asleep back on the cusp of the moon.” ~ Jim Harrison from Songs of Unreason
In the dark, clutching the horns of the moon, afraid of falling into needle-sharp stars, she sleeps, fitfully, rocked in her precarious cradle, while silver sharks nibble her toes, and in the garden, the moon hound howls.
Fear is grey, parched
and moist—it sings the song of
no morning after.
Jane Dougherty Writes 
Very nicely done 💜
Thank you!
I like it 🌹
I’m pleased 🙂
😀
Absolutely phenomenal poetry, Jane! This one gripped my soul! I love it! ❤
I’m so pleased, Colleen 🙂
This one really grabbed me!! ❤
I’m glad it worked! It was a second attempt. The first was too strange 🙂
LOL! I hate when that happens. 😀
I’ll save it for a darker moment 🙂
❤
My favorite of all! Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous
I’m glad it worked. I wrote one poem on this theme and scrapped it. Wrote this is an afterthought.
Vivid. I love the way you use description in your pieces. The way you set a scene is awesome. I’ve also never heard of a “haibun” so I learned a new form of poetry today. As always, thanks for sharing. ❤
I found haibun daunting at first, but it’s really very simple. I use it when I’ve written a poetic piece that doesn’t break up into lines effectively.
Hmm, so its another way of phrasing?
That’s all, as far as I can see. The prose bit has to be a real experience, not fiction, but I think that just means it isn’t meant to be a piece of flash fiction with a haiku tagged on at the end.
I get that feeling of being deep in the work of the moment and of fearing the loss of the thread. Your Haiku is spot on!
Thank you 🙂 I’ve had a migraine today and probably most of the prose I’ve written will be rubbish. Poetry is different. I sometimes think the weird effect a migraine has on the brain produces interesting poems.
All the ugly stuff does that for me; migraines included. Hope you feel better!
Thank you. The drugs have zapped it. Crossing fingers it isn’t the first of a cluster.
In my best Rod Serling voice: “You have now entered the no-cluster zone”
I hope so 🙂 I don’t know who Rod Serling is, but he’ll be my god if he can command migraines 🙂
The voice of and creator of The Twilight Zone. Surrealism at its finest!
Twilight Zone again! How come I’d never even heard of this series? I thought it was the same as Twilight (which I haven’t seen/read either) all about teen vampires.
Classic 1950’s TV show. Just think weird and surreal 🙂
I do. All the time 🙂
Snort!
🙂
A brilliant write…suffused with great imagery. You gave fear colour and consistency. I’m reading it for the third time! Pure poetry.
Thank you, Vivian! My son used to have such vivid nightmares he would still be seeing the monsters crawling about on the floor when we put him back to bed.
Oh my! It runs in the family…. that imagination😊
He still remembers those little grey creatures and probably always will. I remember the hippopotamus that ate my leg too, and the porcupine at the bottom of the bed and no doubt always will 🙂
I love the imagery your words create!😁
Thank you, Cara 🙂
Oh–love this, Jane. Magical, mysterious, and beautiful. (We both had moons, too!) 🙂
And Twilight Zone allusions again. You’re going to have watch an episode one day.
Hope you feel better.
Thank you! Migraine’s gone now and I’m going back over what I wrote yesterday. As I suspected it’s full of half-finished ideas, so I’m filling in gaps this morning. Maybe I shouldn’t ever watch Twilight Zone—it might cause interference 🙂
🙂
I didn’t like to mention the moon. You didn’t see the first poem I wrote for the prompt—nobody did because I didn’t post it—that one was even closer to yours. It had humming too.
Haha– we were same-personing again. 🙂
You’re not writing a book about Vikings and fishmen are you?
Afraid not. I know nothing about either.
Don’t read up about them then, or we’ll find ourselves in competition 🙂
Haha. OK. I’ll stick to other stuff.
Do. I promise I’ll never poach on your territory. I couldn’t!!!
🙂
This has a luminous spookiness. (K)
I have a terrible fear of falling from a narrow ledge. I can always terrify myself thinking of standing on ledges or clifftops…or tiny bits of moon.
“afraid of falling into needle-sharp stars” — nice!!
Thank you. I think I did anyway.