Risible Haiku / Selvas de Santana


The shooter enters:
Deadly earnest in resolve.
Laugh heartily, friends.

 


PROMPT #5

write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment –
or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.
O.K. I did the prompt.  Now here is one I had in my drafts:

Selvas de Santana

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.
Baudelaire
 . . . Be ye therefore wise as serpents,
       and harmless as doves.
  Matthew 10:16

Eternal in divine recurrence,
Wisdom summons to her feast.
Harmless dove as wise as serpents;
Meets the singing crying beast.

Rhythmic vision’s dark assurance
Made symbolically complete.
Borne upon upon nocturnal currents:
Comes the undulating beat:

Fabulous jungles of her love
Are glimpsed—as apes, excited, howl.
Dazzling plumage from above:
Cloudbursts startle tropical fowl.

I wait, that white Abraxas dove,
Poised in delight before her gate
And ready to partake thereof,
Entranced in wild hypnotic state.

Now metaphor’s dark humid heat
Is loosed with her cascade of hair.
Black magic beckons:  Take and eat.
That all taboo may tremble there.

Red chiles drying in the sun
Distill the thatched-roof village fire.
Rhythm’s laughing children run
Then plunge in pools of pure desire.

IMAGE CREDIT: Annunciation 
http://www.matiklarweinart.com

Burning of the Midnight Lamp

Jimi Hendrix 1967  BMG Rights Management

While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.
And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.
But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you:
but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.
And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came;
and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.
Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.
Matthew 25:5-13

Woke Triolet/Wokesplanations

 

The wokeness is so deep: they’re sleeping.
Clueless legions are on the march . . .
Ignorance has Wisdom weeping;
The wokeness is so deep they’re sleeping
Through the harvest, and the reaping.
Behold the view from Titus’s arch:
The wokeness is so deep they’re sleeping—
Clueless legions are on the march.


PROMPT #4 

try writing triolets. A triolet is an eight-line poem.
All the lines are in iambic tetramenter (for a total of eight syllables per line),
and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines.
This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet.

 

   Wokesplanations

Set your alarms, y’all. I’m mad WOKE.
Order Chinese—send in the clowns.
(General Tso, you know, was white . . .
Africa’s in on the corporate joke)
And every lion-tamer frowns.
Sleeping late on Sabbath morning
You might miss my woke-ass warning;
Time for you to get it right.
Soccer moms talked on, inept
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

Hoping lion’s would not bite’em,
Lambs were roaring, panthers leapt.
(Lamb-chops are a pricey item…)
Blind-men too, received their sight,
Discovering new shades of white,
As one young sheep, determined, kept
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

War on Whiteness! Dark the night.
Time to dis-empower their light.
Pull the plug on those Caucasians;
Afro-centrify all Asians!
Full-court press, seconds remaining
Final quarter: there’s the game
Light-skinned Latins start complaining
People of color hold no grudge;
Whitey look for who to blame.
Take notes, brother. Here come the judge.
Fools held court. The jury prepped:
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

Then— the basketball was ended.
Cross-country skiing now the rage.
Black was under-represented;
Social justice facts presented:
Winter sports now turned the page.
Nordic culture was up-ended.
Pride makes possible all, except
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.

St. George Floyd is celebrated
Neighborhoods get burned to ashes
Racist rioters compensated
Whiteness hits the brakes—and crashes.
Mary murmured . . . Jesus wept
Wokesplaining Blackness to the slept.