Tag: Haiku

Or: When a Writing Prompt Takes You to a Battleground

The poet’s
skin soft from age
(perfumed in
Calvados perhaps)
knows the pulse
of waves
beneath her
feels how they
beat within, too
remembers well
the stories
and great heroics
of trust
and love
walks now
a gravely path
to an expanse
of cratered lawn
where ghosts
commune
in whispers
and tears are
only memory
reflected in
the morning rain
where sharp wires
— a final kindness —
keep her safe
from another fall.

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Poem ©2024, Jen Payne, recollecting a trip to Pointe du Hoc. Photo: Pointe du Hoc, courtesy of the World War II Foundation. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.

Folklore says
the witching hour
arrives between
midnight and four,
but I beg to differ

I will tell you
with no uncertainty
that the devil appears
sometime between
7 and 9
as regular as the sun
in a wild cacophony
of sounds and alerts

hoof beats and
tire beats
engines roaring
bass thumping

Pavlovian dings
for here! no there!
over there!
and here!

Cursed notifications
and incoming calls
and speech bubbles
that

pop! pop! pop!
bang! bang! bang!

Headlines
and Bylines
and Subject Lines

It’s mischief
and madness
and mechanisms
seeping through
the heavens of morning
that only
the most wicked
could fashion

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Poem ©2024, Jen Payne. IMAGE: Wikicommons. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.

some will say the rain

come again some other day —

not spring buds (or me)

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Poem ©2024, Jen Payne. IMAGE: 1933, Kawarazaki Kodo, woodcut tulips. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.