Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

Chicken Problem

They live free from lust and fear and anger.¹

I waste resources taking precautions against what I fear and nothing happens. It is what I don’t anticipate that messes me up. For example, while walking Fred that half mile we usually take through the forest I stay within view of the path so I won’t get lost. I don’t think about the problems Fred has been having with those chickens whom I allow to range freely near the cabin and who torment him chained to his doghouse. So when I unchain Fred, out of kindness, because we are buddies and all, and I see him turn back up the path briefly looking at me with scorn, I realize that I’m an idiot.

By the time I get back, Fred’s anger resolved his chicken problem. He is gnawing on one of them when he sees me and begins part two of his plan for domination. He rushes into the cabin defending his castle growling and baring his teeth. At this point I guess I felt fear, but mainly it was anger which is what fear turns into when it doesn’t care any more. I kneel down bracing for his charge with the chain in one hand and the forefinger of my other hand touching the floor beside me, “Get your ass over here.”

Fred is smarter than most animals I’ve met including myself. He bowed his head and submissively accepted the chain.

follow forrest trail
trees prepare for new spring growth
winter dying’s past

Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday hosted by Toni Spencer with the topic fear.
¹A quote about fear is required. Mine comes from the Bhagavad Gita, Eknath Easwaran translator.
Linked to NaPoWriMo2017 Day Seventeen.
Photo: “V” by the author

One Rose

This simple story that is theirs to tell
Is older than the darkness of the night
And truer than the Sun’s new morning light
And deeper than the deepest magic spell.

Between them stood tall mountains none would cross,
A river that ran rapids through their dreams,
A forest that lay dense where one rose beamed
And warned them they could suffer every loss.

They followed Love no matter how they’d fall.
Then mountains bowed to open up the sky.
The river calmed. The forest lifted high.
What fear they felt they now could not recall.

Their tears took root, went deep. They understood
That darkness charmed by light transforms to good.

Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar: Pop Sonnets hosted by Kim of Writing in North Norfolk with the prompt to convert a pop song into a sonnet.  I am not supposed to tell you which pop song I selected.
Linked to NaPoWriMo2017 Day Thirteen.

Photo: “Watching the Light” by the author

Yum Yum

There are so many monsters dancing everywhere.
Some are purple like those peacocks bopping over there.
Some are people like those penguins who do not dance right.
Every eater will get hungry so stay out of sight.

Linked to dVerse Poetics hosted by Lillian with a prompt to pick a song that hit number one on the year you were born, or five to ten years after you were born, and incorporate that song title into a poem. The song I picked was Sheb Wooley’s number one hit from the summer of 1958, “Purple People Eater”. I was eight seven at the time this hit number one, so you can do the math.
I also linked this to NaPoWriMo2017 Day Eleven.

Here is a recent version of the song since the lyrics are clearer.

Last Draft

A little rain, a little wet
A little sun we won’t forget
A drizzle, drazzle, druzzle there
A frazzle frizzled up somewhere
Mushy, splushy, gushy kiss
Happy dragging worlds through bliss
A liftoff love crash lands with pain
Healing hearts light dance in rain

Linked to dVerse Quadrille #30 hosted by Mish with the prompt word “drizzle”.
Linked to NaPoWriMo2017 Day Ten although I realize actually writing one poem a day is beyond me.
Photo: “First Draft” by the author.  This was my starting point.  That whitish background is the desk I made myself out of a sheet of plywood decades ago and still use.

Trying to Make Sense out of Space-Time in the Here and Now

Increase your speed away from here,
Your time to me would disappear.
Your beauty stays a mystery
While I grow old so rapidly.
Although you’ve left me we still find
Our memories do not unwind.
Eventually it seems we die.
We won’t need space or time to fly.
Mass unwound takes us back there
Where love moves here and everywhere.

Linked to dVerse Open Link Night hosted by
Linked to imaginary garden with real toads hosted by Björn Rudberg with the theme of space-time.
Linked to NatPoWriMo2017 Day Six.
Photo by the author.

Crows Talking about Humans Experimenting on Them

“Those humans think our brains are for the birds.”

“They think they’re talking but they just use words.”

“Those idiots drove poor, old Jeb insane.”

“They trapped him once and monkeyed with his brain.”

“They’re uglier than humans often get.”

“Let’s have fun. They ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Linked to dVerse Poetics hosted by Lillian with the theme of “anthropomorphism”.
Linked to imaginary garden with real toads hosted by Marian with an open theme.
Linked to NaPoWriMo2017 Day 4 and I almost didn’t get it finished today.

The topic was motivated by imagining what crows might have thought of John Marzluff’s research on crows which I find fascinating.  Given this research, I wonder just how far off I am from what they’re really thinking.

Tree Shadows

As a shadow moves it leaves little behind except a slightly cooler temperature that lasts briefly, but it will be back.

I enter Chipilly Woods looking for trees and finding their sharp shadows crossing the trail. I see the muddied path ahead from recent spring rains and so I turn back. I don’t mind the wetness but by returning now I would leave no more than a faint footprint behind.

footprints on the path
water filters through spring soil
shadows turn with day

Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday hosted by Toni Spencer with the theme of “The Shadow Knows”.
Linked also to NaPoWriMo2017 Day 3. My Day 2 poem was a limerick posted yesterday on Madeleine Begun Kane’s Limerick-Off.
Photo: “Shadows and Footprints” by the author.

The Fool Card

I trust when the monsters appear
They’ll be friendly and want to calm fear
And I trust that I, too,
On this trail I move through
Will not frighten the ones who come near.

Linked to Saturday’s Image Write #9 hosted by Bekkie Sanchez. The image is a picture of the Fool Card in the Tarot. The original artist of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck first published in 1910 was Pamela Colman Smith.

Linked also to imaginary garden with real toads who have the fool card as part of their prompt to start a month of writing one poem a day hosted by Brendan MacOdrum.

Markets Moving Up and Down

It’s maddening to hear someone
So wrong who thinks he’s right,
Who says the market’s going down,
Who gives my bullish hopes a frown,
Who paints bright day as night.

It’s true: I do not have a clue.
There might be danger there.
The herd I follow faithfully
Has got its mind made up for me.
Why fight it? I don’t care.

And when we can’t avoid the cliff
Stampeding to the fall,
I will rethink what he had said
At least before I’ve landed dead:
He’s wrong still after all.

 

Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar.
Photo: “Wings Go Up and Down” by the author.

I am hosting today and for some odd reason picked the theme of “irony”.  Hopefully you will find what I wrote above understandable enough and yet ambiguous enough to be at least remotely ironical.  Stop by and link up some of your own ironical poetry.