3 - Truncated

Confession: I slept through Friday (3-Apr) and so I’m invoking my personal Emergency Short Form Protocol (i.e. I’m allowed two emergency short forms – haiku/ senryū, limerick, clogyrnach, or tanka in the course of the month – if I chain them to make a longer poem, that doesn’t count as an ESF) already. Someone on Threads said that we should all Google Pink Fairy Armadillos, if we were unaccountably unaware of their existence already, and I took that as a sign…

(Don’t forget that you can access recordings of these poems on my Patreon!)

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You shouldn’t exist.
Your design is too tricky,
and yet you persist…
Pretty burrower won’t you
share your stubbornness with us?

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If you fancy writing a tanka for yourself, you can use my Repeating and Concrete Poetry Forms spreadsheet, which has a number of syllable-counting forms in there too…

Picture of taxidermied specimen courtesy of Daderot via Wikipedia

You can access the recording of this poem via Patreon.

2019.6 A List of Things

Things That Bring Smiles

You breeze through the door;
You rock sideways in your seat,
Bursting with rockets.

Things That Won’t Leave

That sparkly bath bomb;
Grand National 2010;
Hair dye fingerprints.

Things You Don’t Remember

How I take my tea;
Open crisps: invitation;
That Grand National.

Things That Wake Me Up

Slammed doors – car or house;
My name, a kind hand stroking;
You suppressing tears.

Things That Send Me To Sleep

A kind hand, stroking;
Your voice shares that well-loved book;
Crackling woodfire.

Things That Bring Tears 

Too much compassion;
Sister Act: that one high note;
July’s final gasp.

Things That Spark Poetry

Injustice; work stress;
Family; love; eavesdropping;
Pivoting seasons;
Memories of home; the sea;
At the right time: anything.

Already falling behind my self-imposed target of two per day for the rest of the month, but I continue to strive with this Pillow Book-style poem (thanks for the prompt, NaPoWriMo), done as six senryū stanzas and one tanka, because that seemed appropriate for the original material.

2017.9 - Tracks

Skin prickles UV
memories and the sharp drop
to unwonted sleep
Tomorrow: sunburn, regret,
Whiplash and new friends. Enough.


It's been a long few days and I keep plummeting into microsleeps (luckily after I stopped driving). I'm invoking Emergency Tanka.

#10 On the First Sunny Week in April

Today is smiling,
No longer shy over bare
Shoulders of branches.

We are awash with
A froth of blossom, giddy
With fertility.

Greens are glossier,
Windows give back more blue, and
Hearts burden us less

We squint into kind
Brightness, ease shoulders against
The sun’s warm caress,
Grin to feel Spring’s fingers tug
Our hair, quaff drafts of cool air


For those of you interested in such things, I've combined three haiku/ senryū as verses, with a final tanka.

#10 Indelible

Tanka - challenge prompt - are only slightly more difficult than senryū...

All that remains is
For you to inscribe my laws,
Ensure they're obeyed.
But remember, son, he said
That they don't apply to me.