When the fire goes out
The heat is dissipated
Darkness falls again
Only then do the creatures
Of the night, find their solace
In response to COLLEEN’S WEEKLY #TANKA TUESDAY #POETRY CHALLENGE NO. 112, “COLD & SAFE,” #SYNONYMSONLY
Check the link for the guidelines and rules
A tanka this week.
#tanka
Monster
Caught in lead and steel
Frozen
In time
Human
Caught in the machine
Enslaved
Forever
Somewhere
An artist smirks
And settles
To eternal sleep
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
The powder that burns
Clouded judgment
Gave power
To cowards
That never learned
Burnt bridges
With wisdom
Killed
And can never go back
In response to my daily prompt Powder
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Whenever wolves win
A warm beating heart is lost
The law of the wild
In response to RonovanWrites #Weekly #Haiku #Poetry Prompt #Challenge #229 Win&Lose
#amwriting, #postaday
Swirling up into the night
Like some lonely northern light
Not north but here it did appear
Why am I not filled with fear
A spiral of blue and green
Wispy tendrils barely seen
Twisting up and further still
I watch it rise with mounting thrill
Into the stars I watch it go
And then alone the heavens know
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
In silicon hell
The servant does not obey
But who is the slave
In response to my daily prompt Hell
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
We have reached the point
Where the genuine
Is ridiculed out of fear
So accustomed to lies
They have become
Our staple
In response to my daily prompt Genuine
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
From the grain grows the stem
That delivers the wheat
From the deep furrow of the ground
Harvested
By the old
Leather-clad hands
Carried beneath the canvas
Of the rocking wagon
To the mill
Until the day
We went against the grain
In response to my daily prompt Harvest
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The bag
Useful but discarded
Like so many
People
The world
That does this
Is doomed
In response to my daily prompt Bag
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The tears, the grief, the bitterness
The anger, the revenge and recriminations
They will soak away
Soak away
Into the earth
And feed it
History will take them all
Absorb them, dull them into the distance
Until we are free to look
And try to learn
But the passion is
Soaked away
So the lesson is empty
The truths, the pains, the memories
The holes, the aches and the yearnings
They all soak away
Into the earth
Enrich it
Perhaps
We should hold the pain
Remember
And learn
In response to my daily prompt Soak
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The welfare state
The helping hand for the unfortunate
The most humanity
A government has shown
How the rich and powerful hate it
How they vilify those who need it
How they love to try to destroy it
A little less desperation
Means
A little less exploitation
So
Beware the day
They succeed
In response to my daily prompt Welfare
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Hunger’s fingers steal
Deep into an empty gut
So the wolves must strike
In response to RonovanWrites #Weekly #Haiku #Poetry Prompt #Challenge #225 Strike&Hunger
#amwriting, #postaday
Roll a die
Like a gem
Sparkling
And like magic
We are in a different
World
We are different
People
In response to my daily prompt Die
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The dark clouds are charged
And reason fills us with fear
Released in thunder
In response to my daily prompt Charge
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Watching dreams
Float away
Beyond reach
While earthbound
Feel the separation
With every poster
Telling you
To chase them
In response to my daily prompt Separation
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
For a sweet moment
This green forest was all mine
My own secret realm
Now, it is fenced off, private
Playground of the privileged
In response to COLLEEN’S WEEKLY #TANKA TUESDAY #POETRY CHALLENGE NO. 107, “HAUNT & SPELL,” #SYNONYMSONLY
Check the link for the guidelines and rules
A tanka this week.
#tanka
Where the great desert
Meets the rolling of the waves
And sand and sea seethe
The wind is stirred to battle
Between heavens and earth
In response to my daily prompt Stir
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Power in the palm
Talentless tablets
Talisman of our times
Shatters
When dropped
In response to my daily prompt Tablet
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Waves rise and waves fall
And thunder wrestles the sea
The whales stay serene
In response to RonovanWrites #Weekly #Haiku #Poetry Prompt #Challenge #223 Rise&Fall
#amwriting, #postaday
Seventy billion fingers
And more
Have all in their time
Reached out for
The pure
Purely human concept
Perfection
The perfect car
The perfect job
The perfect house
The perfect friend
The perfect woman
The perfect man
The perfect hold of
A perfect hand
Yet what we still don’t comprehend
Perfection brings us stress in the end
Outside our minds it does not exist
So in pursuit we forever twist
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
The tower in the wood
Lonely and silent
Seat of many dreams
Where it was a palace of power
A refuge for outlaws
A romantic spire or a foreboding spear
A collapsed heart
Once vigilant
Now silent
Crumbling
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
The teacher
The trainer
They are the shepherds
The protectors
Of the boundaries
Fencing you
In
In response to my daily prompt Trainer
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The boat rolled
Pitched and yawed
In the roar of the storm
Rage without form
Pain without end
No captain to tend
The tiller
The sailor clung
To his sanity
Like life
In response to my daily prompt Pitch
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Light falls
Through the ancient arch
How much light
Has fallen
Through the years
Upon
Lovers joined
The dearly departed
Those welcomed with blessings
Of water
The cold
The hungry
The repentant
The angry
The sinners
The light has fallen
Age has won
All those lighted memories
Nothing
Now the vessel
Is emptied
And ruined
Only the ghost
Of the shape
Of constraint
In response to my daily prompt Constraint (Originally written for Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo prompt)
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The winter wind breathes
The reeds on the lake rustle
Night and day unite
In response to RonovanWrites #Weekly #Haiku #Poetry Prompt #Challenge #222 Breath&Unite
#amwriting, #postaday
The country’s getting richer
on the shoulders of the poor
The economy is booming
but blood stains mar the floor
A thrifty generation
careful with what they earned
Now watch it all dissipate
belying what they learned
For they are forced by empathy
to shore up their progeny
Or watch them being bled
by powerful gluttony
By vampires way up high
in lofty towers sleek
Deaf to pleas of mercy
They cannot hear us speak
And with contempt the vampires
farm their herds with glee
Until we have no more to give
And they’ll see the fallacy
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Hands caressing wood
Tracing the grain
Or moulding clay
To release secret shapes
Or shearing marble
Into silken shapes
Or stroking the page
To paint magic words
Or brushing the canvas
Revealing worlds of dancing light
Nothing
No automation
No factory
No robot
No tool
Will replace the love
In the craft
In response to my daily prompt Craft
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Sun embraces earth
Peace descends on the calm lake
The swan makes a splash
In response to RonovanWrites Weekly #Haiku #Poetry #Challenge #221 Peace&Love.
#amwriting, #postaday
There’s a prevalence
Of lies
In places
Where truths should be held
Power is held
In such ways
These are our
Troubled days
And the eyes
Are turned away
In response to my daily prompt Prevalence
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The whole kit and kaboodle
Everything you need to get started
You will soon be the expert
In your new chosen hobby/pastime/pursuit
Until the next new thing
The next thing to be seen doing
Then you will need to get
Another whole kit and kaboodle
This is the lifecycle
Of the perfect consumer
Duped into thinking
They are pursuing a perfect life
In response to my daily prompt Innovation
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Be true
To yourself
There is no other
Truth
Follow your dreams
And other such
Platitudes
But
They don’t
Pay the bills
Or
Bear the weight
Of life’s
Burdens
They were
Written
By those
Who
Enjoy the fruit
Of others’ labours
In response to my daily prompt True
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Water
Drops from the sky
Yearning to reach the sea
Its path always heading downwards
Tumbling
Humans
Are not water
Humans yearn for the sky
They strive and climb up and up
Struggling
Sliding
Down from the heights
Steps faltering and weak
Bringing us down into the deep
Failing
Thinking
Measure the path
Assaying obstacles
Planning with forethought and wisdom
Reason
Rising
Against the rain
Climbing the steep ascent
Aiming for the sky, for the stars!
Soaring
In response to COLLEEN’S WEEKLY #TANKA TUESDAY #POETRY CHALLENGE NO. 103, “FALL & TRY,” #SYNONYMSONLY
Check the link for the guidelines and rules
Had a go at a crown cinquain this week
#crown-cinquain
The whole human race
Must transform
Move on
Leave behind the past
The constraints and restraints
Of superstition
Fix the damage
And become new
Become something more
Than the consumers of the earth
In response to my daily prompt Transform
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Wide, water wash
Grey beneath the early morning mist
Chance sunbeams bounce and sparkle
River banks lost and blurred
Returning to their ancient ways
Unbound from man’s constraint
A gentle reminder of the eventual winner
Water wandering where it will
Free and unordered
Rolling, seeping or swelling to the sea
Grasses, shrubs and trees, swimming
Mirrored in their sudden still lakes
Expanding
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Deep in the Crevice
No chink of light creeps
Water carved solace
Permanent night
There dwells the one
Who will bring us to the day
When our own cavernous darkness
Will finally hold sway
In response to my daily prompt Crevice
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The most
Harmful
Things
Are the most
Unassuming
Tiny words
From
Tiny minds
Kill
In response to my daily prompt Harmful
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Infected
With weariness
Watching the corruption
Until it becomes
Normality
And we shrug
And move on
Just as they planned
In response to the daily prompt Infect
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Formulate
Don’t wait for permission
Go
Make the new world
Leave the old
With the dinosaurs
Don’t change the establishment
Ignore it
Make a new one
Reclaim
Everything
In response to my daily prompt Permission
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Formulate
Ruminate
Contemplate
Consult
Insult
Exult
Scan
Plan
Ban
Anything but do
In response to my daily prompt Formulate
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Egg and bacon sandwich
Dripping yolk and ketchup
Steaming tea from an old tin boiler
Condensation frosting the windows
Empty streets, lit by sulphur orange
Solace
In response to my daily prompt Bacon
A tenuous link today but hey!
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The alarm keeps going off
But there’s nothing wrong
The alarm keeps going off
We ignore it
The alarm keeps going off
Keeps going off
In response to my daily prompt Alarm
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Sun traces an arc
Marking the hours and setting
Events in motion
In response to my daily prompt Hour
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Screaming at the storm
The words lost in the thunder
Storm undeflected
In response to COLLEEN’S WEEKLY #TANKA TUESDAY #POETRY CHALLENGE NO. 99, “CHANGE & DEFY,” #SYNONYMSONLY
Check the link for the guidelines and rules
Another senryu – I have taken the opposite of one of the words this time, so a bit of a cheat.
#senryu
The river rebels
Against the rock, unaware
Its course is shifting
In response to RonovanWrites #Weekly #Haiku #Poetry Prompt #Challenge #215 Rebel&Change
#amwriting, #postaday
Beneath all the drama
All the bluster and the mustering of arms
The blows and the hot hot wind
The shouts and screams
The glory and the tragedy
The dreams and the hopes
Through every act and movement
Every entrance and exit grand and small
After every curtain call and echo of applause
Do not overlook the fact that
Children died
Brothers and sisters remember
In response to my daily prompt Curtain
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
It looks like the arc of the defeated
The hunch of an old and tired man
Worn down by time and routine
Only
The arc is a buttress
Against the burden of life
It is bent, not broken
It serves its purpose well
If not gracefully
In response to my daily prompt Defeated
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Some words
Are neglected
Not forgotten
Still in the lists
Used when absolutely
Necessary
For example
Chimney
When did you last utter it?
Like the object itself
It’s redundant
Only used
When it’s a problem
Sometimes
I feel like a chimney
In response to my daily prompt Chimney
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
We need fury and wonder
to fire our song
But the fire is dim
the spark long gone
So sift through the ashes
for an ember that glows
To tend and to blow
through the wind and the snows
And build from the ashes
a new song, a new light
That burns with new fury
to banish the night
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
The cur
Concurred
That his fur was fine
The Dragon
Entwined, sublime
Around the dog
Agreed
As he preened
Sat on the mat.
The rat
Sneered as he neared
A disagreed
With the lead of the cur
While the rooster sided with the worm
His belief in showmanship firm
White he strutted
The tiger tutted
And purred,
Anticipating
Waiting
His chance
The rabbit
Twitched and hopped
Unsure who
To believe
Whether to leave
Or watch
While the snake
Curled around
The ground
Sniffing out
The way ahead
The monkey
Puzzled
And guzzled his beer
Coming near
Without seeing
While the swine
Less divine
Fed
Its stomach, not its head
And the bull
Forged on
Sure and strong
One way forward
The stallion danced
And when they glanced
Gave a show
While the goat’s
Step
Slow and sure
Kept time
And amidst them all
Nothing
That had a clue
In response to my daily prompt Rabbit
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Eyes
Red and raw
Seen too much
Filled
With work
and bills
and tears
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Scott Andrew Bailey - Author 
