Summer Day

Golden sand burns soles and toes.
Waves lap at ankles and knees.
Open sky glows blue, dotted with birds
And clouds.

Sunlight glitters on
Clear blue waves;
The air filled with
Coconut-scented suntan lotion and
Melting ice-cream.

Voices weave a cheerful din -
Children chasing a frisbee,
College boys tossing a football -
And slowly the day wends on,
Suntans getting deeper,
Shadows getting longer.

(65 words)

Happy Halloween

Golden leaves, red, brown
That crunch underfoot
Mean harvest moons and
Pumpkins carved and grinning
On the doorstep.

Chimney-smoke
Like unfurling ferns on the horizon
Smells like family warmth
And apple cider.

Ghosts and goblins,
Fairies and princesses,
Knights and queens,
Laughter and costumes rustling.

Shoes patter down pavement 
In time to the swish, swish of
Leaves in a blue-cool breeze.

Dawn will bring
Candy-sickness and
Sore throats.

Happy Halloween.

(73 words)

Typhoon Season

It’s lightning and moonbeams,
The army-roll of thunder across the heavens
As rain sleets down
In ordered rows, columns, ranks
To pierce the sand,
Innumerable crystalline needles.

It’s white-capped waves
Whipped by the same invisible hands
That bend palm-trees toward breaking,
Fronds of green lashing against the horizon.

It’s thousands of homes laid waste
Like toys scattered by a careless titan;
It’s death and tears and shallow graves,
Oceanic byres,
And alphabetical names.

It’s typhoon season.

(79 words)

Fog Bound

Hazy mists obscuring
Sight; sound dimmed,
Life muffled.

Diffused light
Surrounding, enveloping.
Air sparkles
an opalescent sheen.

Enshrouded trees loom
Out of the mists
Sentinels of time

Raining Stars

Warm air -
The perfect temperature for
Short sleeves and bare feet -
Rustles tall green grass.

Clear skies glitter
With diamond-chip stars
Even as the sun
Dips its last
Down the horizon.

The last wafts of barbecue
And soda
Potato chips and
Homemade brownies
Fade in the breeze,
And as the moon creeps up

The summer perseids
Start to rain.

(60 words)

Tornado Season Again

Green skies signal
Sirens that
Break city din and
Bring on the wind.

Clouds form a wall
Black
From land to space
Triggering
Artificial night
And too-bright sunlight
Juxtaposed like
Opposing pieces
On a chessboard
Poised to kill.

The wind is
A thousand voices
Weeping and angry
And an army of fists
Battering windows
Breaking glass.

A second siren is
A false alarm
The eye in the sky.

It’s tornado season
Again.

(73 words)

Into the Night

Warm breathe of spring
Whispers silk soft
Against the skin.

Lily scent and Lilac grace
Ripening in the sun.
Color on the green.

Heavens dew distilling
Soft upon the grass
Fading into night.

Jungle

Heavy and cloying.
Tropical warmth sticks to skin.
Thick rain in the air.


(yay for Haikus)

Winter out the Window

Wind carries white
In an upward spiral,
Winter silk in an
Arctic breeze that
Turns my breath to crystal
And my words to
Weight.

Pristine powder on branches turns
Muddy in the streets
Under boots and tires and
Human industry.

Sirens and gales
Sing counter-harmony howls
Against the windows and
Around the gaps between
Doors and door frames.

The sun was
Golden
Yesterday.

(64 words)

Project #57: Weather Poetry

Up to 300 words! Tell us what the weather is like where you are or where you want to be, or anywhere in the world, and make it poetic. Does the snow glisten/like a thousand crystals/ dropped from a careless giant hand or is the sun / desert-hot and deceptively / golden / like molten metal / that burns to the touch? Let us know! Open-form or closed-form as is your pleasure. Work on concrete imagery.

Overview #56: Fluff

Okay. So I confess, I basically used this week's challenge as an excuse to get some Asia/James fluff out there in the open, because James is going to go through hell, and I needed a fluffy baseline to work from. I decided to completely give into the fluff and try out alternative forms of fluff, which ended up being some of the other boys of Sector Five just being decent human beings. I wanted to see what counted as nice and what didn't, how different people viewed compassion and what counted as compassion to them. I rather enjoyed the fact that DJ resorted to violence as an act of compassion.

Go DJ.

Still, it was more difficult than I thought it would be, trying to come up with non-cliché fluff, so in the end I resorted to cliché. For the last post.