11 - Anvils

#NaPoWriMo Day 11 and tonight I’ve been writing a haibun inspired by a very real story that happened a few hours ago…

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the ten preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/anvils-155399668

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I am searching for the perfect metaphor, all unknowing, a way to say: this is the situation, pay attention, I’m not joking, it’s serious business, not something to downplay, get ever-so-British about, not a sideways shuffle into clout, this thing I’m on about. I have been skirting closer to the truth while people nod, knowledgeable, exchange sympathies, euphemisms dripping with sincerity and wildly off the mark, while I slump, succumb, let them off the leash to bark up the wrong tree, watch them run, blissfully oblivious. Why spoil their fun? But now you’re here – caught in the dipped beams as my friend encourages us to creep from the car and crouch, coo cozening comments. You’re having none of it – big bright bastards battering you with blather, bugger off! So you scuttle into last summer’s dried grass at the foot of habitat whose name you carry, barrier to chatterers, and hide enough of your head to no longer see us, torso tense in prickly denial. And, while my friend’s snapping pictures, I’m thinking: That’s familiar. That’s a Mood. That’s… a simile so spot-on the gods, no longer dropping hints, have got it literally spotlit…

In hiding from debt,

I spy an apt analogue:

Hedgehog in headlights

Depiction of the evening’s discovery made imperfectly by me (Krita & Huion)

2023.4 Might as Well

No prompt used this time – this comes from some free-writing while testing out the Sprinto bot in a discord app. Took literally 2 minutes to write; the first part is almost entirely free-written, then I realised it looked like a haibun, so finished up with a senryū.

I am writing some words that will never be heard in a blank space dictated by the amount of time it takes to make this assonate internally, eternally grateful to all the way the Maker shaped me for verbage. I’ve learned it’s impossible to ignore the awesomeness of your own spirit, mauled though it might be, it shines through duly, unruly and grime-streaked though it might be, it speaks, drifting in infinite wonder, sundering itself to beauty and the press of helpful flesh again and again. And though it might be lost for a while, or its light dimmed, its flicker will never be diminished as long as its name is spoken in its own, secret, holy tongue.

Once more I find it

shining in the eyes of a

friend, beckoning love.

[Image description: Black & white photo of actor Jim Carrey, a middle-aged, clean-shaven, white guy, gazing pensively upwards and being quoted as saying 'You can fail at something you don't want, so you might as well take a chance doing what you love.']

2022.2 Concerted

Today on the They//Us workshop, I was asked to provide five emoji and we were all asked to write something from them in 15 minutes. Here they are:

👀🔥

(hope these work!)

It’s not like you haven’t thought this before, your mind expanding to touch the other elements at play, but here, fearing dissolution, you succumb to the most basic ways of centring yourself, deft in your clumsiness. Clutching solidity, you look to the others and it’s difficult. Martin’s eyes are wider than you’ve ever seen them, and it’s nothing like unalloyed delight – he’s bright with all the colours of panic, static and absolute. You slew your gaze to Jenny, bouncing, hands almost frantic, but gleaming with glee, and you feel like a traitor, want to turn away to take your terror elsewhere, protect her from its stain. Chris burns, but you’re learning that that’s the ground state of their being, a bedrock of molten ire that can be surprisingly ecstatic at times, or even an elemental type of serenity. And maybe you’ll take their brightness, her joy, and his rigour into yourself, let yourself find the rhythm of prisms, the ligature of ignominious connections, abetting your own everything, and just sway, horrible and lovely, blank-faced, forgetting grace in the the name of truth.

Lights flash, gliding past.
You are entering the beat,
tucked into the pit.

2021.4 Bristle

She waves in zir peripheral vision, and ze lifts zir head with a hum, frantically palmed down into bemused silence, finger to her lips. Ze frowns. She smiles, a twinkle which ze always finds undeniable, if mildly confusing right now. And ze’s casting for a way to make the query silent, when the answer comes at the end of a pointing finger, as her torso leans unbidden warmth towards zirs, and a fleering, familiar, fleet fear flutters over zir and is gone. They watch, breaths matched in shallow, humble hush as their guest wanders lopsided, hip-hopping, a bobbing blessing about new territory, sniffs, shakes itself, and hobbles off before they can draw phones from pockets for the shot, forever to be dismissed as tricksters in anecdotal earnestness.

Two hearts stuttering

A symphony of near miss

A glimpse of the wild.

From the Day 4 prompt, whereupon I got the creature I’d been hoping for: the Wild Haggis, the subject of many a childhood holiday in Scotland (though I regret I never came as close as these two to seeing a live one). The form is a haibun.

A left-legged haggis, as captured by Margaret via Flickr at the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow.

2020.7 Love Projects

You are curled in something like sleep; you keep turning over, stretching, yawning, causing all of us, in our own ways, to feel a certain melting in the chest, caress the sight of you, bless the imperative that led us to – essentially – rescue you. You, feet up, eyes tightly shut, butter wouldn’t melt over any aspect of your svelte self, are – presumably – oblivious to what you’ve done. Your hair’s growing back so well from the escapade that led you to plead for shelter, a welter of wounds and malnutrition and skittery nature fostered by a cold season in an untrustworthy world, subsumed and excised by your time with us, a long and lovely month. We each have our own theories when you seem out of sorts – she says you’re bored, courts your claws and gentle bites, inviting tumbling play. No, I say – you’re clearly tired and overcrowded, vow to soothe you, prove my worth with soft kneading, yielding lullabies. By contrast, his theory is either food he’s powerless to resist giving or simply that you, yourself, are confused about your own state. And you blithely grace us with each pat, each purr, each turned circle to better comfort, the dumbstruck love you summon in us, renewing every day.

You arrived with Spring

Ignorance wasn’t blissful

We’ve been adopted.

Picture of the redoubted Milady Cariad in all her slumbering, soft-bellied glory.
Source: Carla Keen.

2019.4 Ghost Tour

“Will you cover for me?” I’m helpless, delving into a set of well-worn expressions, shunning the stutter he beckons, projecting: Yeah, I reckon. “Listen,” he says, “I owe you one.” At this point, more like twenty, a reckoning that’s chasing propriety into an early grave. A new voice: “Step lively,” says Greg, head a conspiracy tilt past the fire hatch and we scurry, him stubbing, me shrugging, Greg’s gaze a spinning speculation I nudge from him. “Madame’s on the march,” he confides. I sigh. “No closer to the prize?” My turn to roll my eyes, grab regulation headgear, unprop the door while trawling for witticisms. Zilch. “There’s always next time.” “Sure, love. Sure.” We watch as he darts ahead.

Tip-toeing upstage,
We are mismatched murderers
Longing for a break.


Over to our old friend the random line generator for inspiration for this not-very-strict haibun, Words generated were: cover, march, listen, tip, upstage, point, chase, ghosts.

2018.18 Three Card Draw

IV The Emperor



Every element is carefully selected, from the rams’ heads to the shades and shapes of his draperies. He is bulked and bulwarked, encased in ridged, rigid materials from crown to spurs. Everything is gorgeous, from gorge view to gorget, and preparation is everything; thin-lipped, narrow-eyed, he is unfond of surprises.

He waits, gripped in dread
Battles the creep of ageing
Less feared than fearing.


6 of Wands, reversed



Dread Emperor I have…
Dread…
(Dread)

So, my liege, a funny thing happened
On the way to the battle
And.

No.

Bravely caparisoned and thronged we strode
High were our hearts and strong our voices
Many who cheered us along our road
Blue were the skies with a myriad choices.

Cut to the chase. I think he’d…
He needs to.
I’ll.

Fear now follows fear
A new day beckons the land
The wall has fallen.


8 of pentacles 



No matter what occurs, the sky never actually falls. It calls: blue, grey, white, star-sparkling, or rain-blessing. The sky knows its own business; a kind of competence that only the masterful possess. Gaze focused, intent on craft, this one spins out protection, carves calmly the shape that turns back indignities into equality, perfectly balanced.

Empires creak and fall
Wisdom rises to artful
And work still goes on.

2018.6 Unnamed

She is stained already, slain, sained, scraped with the impurity of the material picked out for her by a man with a plan, a penchant for antiquity. No iniquity is implicated here, but we are steered towards a dark and lingering gloss on high, undeveloped breasts, our eyes rest on a twist of faceless torso, shallow mons. This is battered, armless Psyche, who must rely, at all times, on masculine charity and her own unchancy beauty, punished for curiosity, rewarded for sleeping, silent.

Kept in splendid hush,
Drowned by her only action,
She waits to waken.

2017.3 - On Room

We sit, almost entirely silent save for the occasional click. The hiss and gurgle of overworking radiators saturate the Spring air that we are not yet prepared for with a dry, flat, menthol-tinted heat. The space between us is strung with laundry - the gaud of high days punctuating the clustered Pantones of the working week. We do not speak, but every so often we lift eyes in synchrony and wave, weave gentle, Sunday smiles, slide back to our other passions.

as the unmowed grass
leaps, two tired trees lean close, roots
deep in waiting soil.


This is a Haibun. I’d never heard of such a thing before, and have now seen some gorgeous examples inspired by the NaPoWriMo 2017 early bird prompt. Hooray for new forms! :)