This week a wrote a trio of poems for d’Verse challenges but I didn’t post any of them because I was engrossed in Dan Antion’s Thursday Doors Writing Challenge. I am posting them all together with some photographs.
Poetry Form Magic 9
Thank you to Grace for this Magic 9 poetry prompt described as follows:
The elements of the Magic 9 are:
a poem in 9 lines *meter and line-length at discretion of poet *rhyme, a b a c a d a b a, with c and d=unrhymed
Lone Elephant
Rainwater puddled in a shallow basin
Glistening – to the light addicted
Surrounded by luscious vegetation
It attracts a single, male elephant
Trumpeting, he delights in the sensation
Of droplets splattering his muddy back
Dissipating the heat induced irritation
Trunk dipping, he sucks up the liquid
Expelling it loudly, in joyous celebration
Picture caption: the lone elephant that inspired this poem. I am currently painting a different version.
Picture caption: a herd of zebra. Do you think their stripes are black on white or white on black?Picture caption: a herd of Cape BuffaloPicture caption: Giraffe tourists watching the lions – oops! I meant a tower of giraffePicture caption: a herd of elephants playing in the river.
Left in the Lurch
Thank you to Dorahak for the challenge as follows:
Now we have arrived at your challenge, if you’re up for it. Using the above poems as examples, write your own in the voice of one who has been stood up in no uncertain terms on a meaningful occasion. You can find out more about this challenge here: https://dversepoets.com/2024/05/14/poetics-left-in-the-lurch/
Picture Caption: One of Teagan Geneviene’s fabulous picture compilations featuring a house, a girl walking towards the house, and an old-fashioned caravan. This picture is created by Teagan and no AI was used in its creation.
When I saw this collage of Teagan’s, it brought to mind a computer game my sons played years ago that featured old fashioned caravans. That thought led to how lovely Teagan’s collages are, so much more beautiful than what I’ve seen in the way of AI generated art. I also thought about the recent strikes in LA relating to the use of AI in the movie and animation industries. These thoughts all culminated in the song parody below.
Artificial intelligence has the industry in a stew
The work of many being replaced by just a few
Makes me wonder where our world is moving too
***
Oh-a oh-a
My sons both love it
Oh-a oh-a
Think it’s a great fit
***
AI’s killing the movie star
AI’s killing the TV star
Machine generated images holds sway
Oh-a-a-a-oh
***
And now the youth sit glued to computer screens
Parents scratch their heads and wonder what it means
From the box comes gunfire and screams
***
Oh-a oh-a
The world is upside down
Oh-a oh-a
It makes me groan and frown
***
AI’s killing the movie star
AI’s killing the TV star
It’s far too late to close that door
Impossible now to even the score
Oh-a-a-a-oh
Oh-a-a-a-oh
*** AI’s killing the movie star
AI’s killing the TV star
It’s far too late to close that door
Impossible now to even the score
The kids sit playing and begging for more
Learning how to conduct virtual war
***
No more movie star
No more TV star
AI’s killing the movie star
AI’s killing the TV star
AI’s killing the movie star
AI’s killing the TV star
AI is killing the movie star
AI’s killing the TV star
This is my last song parody for Dan Antion’s Thursday Doors Writing Challenge. It is based on Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles which you can watch here:
Hi everyone, today I am hosting a fun literary quiz over at Story Empire. I’ve featured quotes and a clue form four love stories (classified as romances on Amazon and Wikipedia). Do come over and join in the fun. I’ll add in the answers tomorrow.
Dan is holding a writing challenge this month as part of his Thursday Doors Challenge. This is my second entry and is based on two of Resa’s gorgeous contributions which you can find here: https://nofacilities.com/thursday-doors-writing-challenge-2024/
Perfect setting for a ‘Day of the Triffids’ reality show Note 4
Note 1 – We’re painting the roses blue is a twisting of the song from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. Painting the roses red didn’t have a good outcome for these ‘card people’.
Note 2 – Haldane’s rule is important because it talks to the preferential sterility or inviability of hybrids of the heterogametic (XY) sex. The rule states that if one sex is ‘absent, rare or sterile’ in a hybrid population, then that sex will be heterogametic (the sex which has sex chromosomes that differ in morphology – in humans, the heterogametic sex is the male sex where the gamete’s sex chromosomes are X and Y).
Note 3 – I know that agriculturised is not a recognised word – wink! – I made it up.
Note 4 – The Day of the Triffids is a 1951 post-apocalyptic novel by John Wyndham. The novel centres around an aggressive species of plant, ‘breed’ by humans, which starts killing people following a natural disaster which leaves most of the world’s population blind. The novel is a pessimistic view of evolution and natural selection, where mankind is no longer adapted to survival, and the upper hand passes to the triffids.
Picture caption: Banner for the WordCrafter Book Blog Tour for Sarah depicting the cover of the book against a background of a Western homestead
The Ute Indians in Glenwood Springs, Colorado & The Legend of Chapita
Sarah is a seventeen-year-old girl who has been through a lot in life already. In Delilah, she was abducted at fourteen and sold to the Ute Indians near Telluride, Colorado. Now, in Sarah, she has found acceptance in the tribe and become Hair of Fire, but a rogue Sioux warrior steals her away from her tribe and takes her to a sacred place hidden away deep in the Colorado wilderness.
This fictional place was created from an actual place which exists just outside of Canon City, Colorado, where one can hike back into a box canyon, where the water from above has worn away the rock of the canyon wall over time, making it easy to believe that the native tribes of the region might have held this place sacred. The real place is not in a location where the story would take my character, but I wanted to use it because the legend associated with it was an inspiration for the fight that transpires when Sarah’s mate tries to rescue her, so I moved the setting deep into the wilderness of the Colorado Rockies.
I read about that legend back in 1985 in the local paper, The Canon City Daily Record, and it stuck with me, perhaps because it is a place that I had hiked to frequently with my husband and kids. It is a tragic love story. I could not access that article when I was researching for the book, but I’ll recount it here to the best of my recollection.
The Legend of Chapita
Chapita was a beloved Ute squaw, mated to a Ute chief who adored the ground she walked on. Torn from her home by a ruthless neighboring tribe in a violent raid, she was taking her to the location mentioned above, where her own tribe caught up with them and there was a great battle. As the chaos of battle unfolded around them, the chief of the neighboring tribe took her forcibly to the sacred circle above, holding her captive on a perilous ledge, threatening to kill her if the Ute warriors didn’t stop fighting and leave the canyon. The Ute chief, consumed by love for his mate, faced an impossible choice – to abandon her or sacrifice everything. In a heart-wrenching act of desperation, he chose to end her suffering with a single arrow through her heart. The echoes of their tragic love story reverberated through the canyon as the Utes emerged victorious, but at a devastating cost.
Picture caption: Chapita, called Queen of the Utes
*Note: More recently, I learned this legend couldn’t be true. Called “Queen of the Utes”, Chapita was the mate of Chief Ouray, and she survived him after his death in 1880 and went on to called a peacemaker. as she continued to strive toward peace in his footsteps. But it is still a cool legend and inspiration for my tale.
Glenwood Springs, Colorado
Lost and alone in the wilderness, young Hair of Fire doesn’t know what to do. Her tribe is on their way to their summer hunting grounds and she doesn’t know how to find them. Determined to find the place called Yampah, the young white squaw sets out through the treacherous mountain terrain in search of the place called Yampah, the place of sulfur springs believed to be big medicine by the Ute people, in hopes of being reunited with her people when they return to their winter lodgings in the fall.
That place is Glenwood Springs, Colorado, distinctive with its shimmering sulfur pools filling the air with the pungent sulfur odor and ethereal mists from their steam, creating a mystical atmosphere of the landscape. It is no wonder the Utes attributed healing powers to bubbling sulfur pools, making it a stopover to soak their weary muscles on their long journey.
Picture caption: a family of Utes outside their teepee
The infamous Doc Holliday spent his last days there, in hopes that the vapors of the sulfur pools would ease the symptoms of tuberculosis. We know today that the vapors may even have exacerbated his condition.
Today, Glenwood Springs is a tourist destination, where people soak and swim in the Glenwood Springs mineral hot springs pool, breath in the misty air of the Yampah vapor caves, and eat or have a drink at Doc Holliday’s Saloon, and visit the place rumored to be Doc’s final resting place in the Linwood Cemetery. For me, Glenwood Springs is the place where the elements of my story come together to tell the tale of Sarah.
Picture Caption: Promotional banner for Sarah by Kaye Lynne Booth
About Sarah, Women in the West Adventure Series book 2
Picture caption: Book cover for Sarah, featuring a young woman with red hair against a faded background of Ute teepees.
Sarah is a young girl trying to make a place for herself in the world.
Sarah is not the young girl stolen away from Delilah anymore. Now she is Hair of Fire, mate of Three Hawks, even as she blossoms into a young woman and tries to make a place for herself among the Ute tribe.
When she is stolen away from the life she’s made, she struggles to survive in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. A streak of stubbornness and determination take this tough, feisty heroine up against wild beasts of the forest and the rugged mountain landscape to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where she receives a less than welcoming reception by some.
Will this young woman find her way back to the Ute tribe, which she’s come to think of as family, or will she discover a place among the colorful inhabitants of the Colorado hot springs and mining town?
Follow along on her journey to learn who she truly is and where she belongs in this rough, and often hostile frontier.
For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets; Books 1 & 2 of her Women in the West adventure series, Delilah and Sarah, and her Time-Travel Adventure novel, The Rock Star & The Outlaw. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.
Well, I wrote a Bop poem, but I changed the repeated line a bit from the prompt.
Opening Pandora’s Box
This poem is another of my chaos nature poems that depict creatures in an unnatural nature setting. For this poem, I imagined a glass aquarium containing tiny tropical fish. The setting is a desert as what is more unnatural than ocean creatures in a man-made desert. Water is a very scarce resource.
A box overflowing with water
Clear and inviting – consumable
A mirage in this barren wasteland
An illusion – a refraction of light
from the sky, by heated air
Wicked distortion of reality
Pandora’s box once opened, cannot be closed
Temperatures soar, the box sweats
Its glass walls glisten with moisture
Flashes of bright colour disturb its clarity
Translating into thrashing tails, frantic fins
Tiny bubbles rise, pockmarking the surface
Heat saturated liquid starts to boil
Desperation leads to innovation – swarming
Colourful darts combine to thwack one side
Pandora’s box once opened, cannot be closed
Under onslaught, the box lurches
Precious fluid cascading over edges
River of water turns to a river of blood
Box tips! Creatures slither out
onto hot sand; they frizzle and fry
While vital liquid slowly drains into dead sand
Pandora’s box once opened, cannot be closed
Picture caption: brightly coloured fish. Picture from Unsplash.
These are the last of my photographs of doors from my recent trip to Ivory Tree Lodge in the Pilanesberg National Park. You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2024/05/02/back-in-oakland/
Picture caption: guests gathered for tea and snacks early in the morning at Ivory Tree Lodge. You can see the doors into the guest lounge in the background.Picture caption: Close up of the door into the dining area at Ivory Tree Lodge
These are photographs of some gorgeous hartebeest we saw during our trip. Hartebeest is an African antelope and belongs to its own genus, Alcelaphus. I don’t see them often as most game parks with high numbers of predators don’t keep them. They are expensive and tend to get eaten so they are a poor investment. I was very pleased to see this delightful herd.
Picture caption: Hartebeest from the front with its tongue sticking outPicture caption: Hartebeest from the sidePicture caption: Hartebeest standing with its head to one side and chewing grassPicture caption: Two young hartebeest
W3 prompt
This week’s prompt:
II. Destiny’s prompt guidelines
Compose a free verse poem of no more than 12 lines on the theme of ‘belonging’.
Each of us interprets this word uniquely, and its significance may evolve throughout various stages of our lives. Feel free to delve into your personal reflections and follow where your thoughts take you.
d’verse challenge: Quadrille #200: Today, your 44 word poem must contain the word “blaze” or a derivative. This challenge is hosted by Mish and you can read her poem here: https://mishunderstood.wordpress.com/2024/04/29/oasis/
Small bee-eater
On an angled branch of a tree
Unadorned by leaves
Sits a little bee-eater
It’s gorgeous; ablaze with colours
Green, yellow, red, and black
Bzzzz! Its head snaps forward
Sharp beak clicks
A tiny splash of yellow and black
Vanishes down its bright throat
Small bee-eater native to southern Africa. If you look closely, you will see the bee in its beak.Another picture of the small bee-eater.
roberta-writes.com 