Category: Haiku & Other Poetry

Haiku & Other Poetry, History, Random Rants, tutto e niente

A Haiku of Hope

Tina Stewart Brakebill

Like so many of you, I am reeling. Dread keeps washing over me wave after wave after wave. Dan Rather encourages me to stay #steady and keep up my #courage. John Lewis reminds me of the importance of #goodtrouble. And Rebecca Solnit demands that we not fall into despair. Instead we must ACT and create that “Hope in the Dark.” I value those voices and I am trying to heed them. Still, I woke at 4AM with my brain spinning. Sleep refused to release me from the turmoil in my brain. So many bad things happening already. And so many bad things that seem certain to come. I’m trying to see that hope in the dark! But all I  can manage today is a humble haiku to hope.

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Present Becomes Past

A River of Fortitude

Can Sweep Hate Away

 

Prompt Thanks to Putting My Feet in the Dirt

Haiku & Other Poetry, Random Rants, tutto e niente

It’s Haiku Time Again!

Tina Stewart Brakebill

Sometimes when my anger and frustration over the state of the world gets to me, I write haikus. They soothe me for some crazy reason. So here’s my latest. Enjoy. Despair. Rage Against the machine.

HAIKU TO THE END (IN THREE PARTS)

Part One

He, as a False King

Dictates False Flag Bows to He

Democracy Weeps

Part Two 

A Nation Cries Foul

A Fox Cries Victim to Its Prey

Democracy Flops

Part Three 

A World Looks Aghast

A Man Child Rages and Sulks

Democracy Dies

 

Haiku & Other Poetry, History, Random Rants, tutto e niente

Poem in your Pocket

Tina Stewart Brakebill

Today is National Poem in Your Pocket Day. I love the idea! I don’t write poetry (except for the occasional silly haiku) but I’m often inspired by other people’s work. So I’m sharing a poem by a poet I just discovered: Genevieve Taggard. Ms. Magazine did a piece on her last week. In it, Julie Enszer notes that Taggard (who was born in 1894) was “fierce feminist” and her writing, like the poem The Quiet Woman, sometimes “exposes the physical and sexual degradations that women endure as well as offering visions of feminist futures.” I’m carrying this piece in my pocket today. It reminds me of the universality of women’s experiences across space and time.  It moved me.

The Quiet Woman

I will defy you down until my death
With cold body, indrawn breath;
Terrible and cruel I will move with you
Like a surly tiger. If you knew
Why I am shaken, if fond you could see
All the caged arrogance in me,
You would not lean so boyishly, so bold,
To kiss my body, quivering and cold.