Haiku – Page 2 – M J Mallon YA Author and Poet

Ronovan Write’s Haiku Challenge: Rein and Quest

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I have to say I was struggling with Ron’s prompt words this week: rein and quest… until I began cooking the dinner. I asked my daughters what they’d like to have with their chicken and they said skinny chips. So I thought no problem, just bought them today, they’ll be in the freezer. WRONG!! Could I find those skinny chips anywhere …. no I couldn’t, somehow I’d misplaced them, they were so skinny that they’d vanished, evaporated into thin air. Along with my evidence – my grocery receipt- had I bought them at all or had it just been a wicked figment of my imagination? Who knows. Anyway, to cut a long story short I had to find an alternative. Of course there were big fat chips, potato croquettes, and two healthier options: new and sweet potatoes in the fridge. In other words every combination of potato known to man was present and correct apart from the much desired skinny fries! I suppose I could have made some triple fried chips… what on earth, maybe not. So as a consolation, I chopped up the sweet potatoes and added some herbs and a touch of olive oil. Much more healthy! So our quest for skinny chips became a quest for healthy eating, with the added bonus of a salad too!! Luckily no one complained, everyone loves sweet potato chips.

So here’s my haiku with that in mind:

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Photo courtesy of Freepik: Freepik.com

Sweet Tatty Fries!!

Rein it in darlings,

Quit that quest for skinny chips,

A ‘Triple fried’ please!

Mum’s lost the chip plot,

Rein in your greedy tummies,

Quest: sweet tatty fries!

Do pop over to Ronovan’s blog to join in the haiku fun:

Ronovan Writes Haiku Challenge-98- Rein and Quest

I’m currently reading – Amber Wake Gabriel Falling, oh I do love a pirate adventure… how exciting, more about that soon …. review to follow…. perhaps it might have been our pirate captain who stole my skinny fries… maybe Ronovan will have an angle on that? I hope I won’t have to make him walk the Kyrosmagica plank for his misdoings!
Amber Wake

Hope you enjoyed my haiku.. keep on smiling pirates!! It’s Friday tomorrow, doesn’t that sound good? Oh dear do take care watch you don’t succumb to too many glasses of vino…. or you might hear man overboard!

Bye for now,

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Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

My fun (totally not serious but nevertheless 90% true,) author bio on Wattpad – Link below.

Marjorie Mallon was born in Lion City: Singapore. She grew up in a mountainous court in Hong Kong. Her crazy parents dragged her spotty soul away from her exotic childhood and her much loved dog Topsy to the frozen wastelands of Scotland. There she mastered Scottish country dancing, haggis bashing, bagpipe playing and a whole new Och Aye lingo.
As a teenager she travelled to many far flung destinations to visit her abacus wielding wayfarer dad. On one such occasion a barracuda swam by. It stopped to view her bikini clad body, longing to take a big bite. With dogs' fangs replacing barracudas' teeth, she returned to her mother's birthplace: Kuching, Cat City. There, Blackie, a black-hearted dog sniffed her frightened butt, whimpered and ran away! Shortly after this extraordinary event an angry female Orang-Utan chased her unfit ass out of the Malaysian jungle believing that she was a threat to her babies! She still monkeys about, would love to own a cat, or a replacement Topsy but refuses to entertain murderous dogs, or over-protective monkeys.
It's rumoured that she lives in the Venice of Cambridge, with her six foot hunk of a Rock God husband, and her two enchanted daughters.
After such an upbringing her author's mind has taken total leave of its senses. When she's not writing, she eats exotic delicacies while belly dancing, or surfs to the far reaches of the moon. To chill out she practises Tai Chi and Yoga on the crest of a wave. If the mood takes her she goes snorkelling with mermaids, or signs up for idyllic holidays with the Chinese Unicorn, whose magnificent voice sings like a thousand wind chimes.

She is a child of the light and the dark. Her motto is simply this: Do what you love, stay true to your heart's desires, remain young at heart, and inspire others to do so, even if it appears that the odds are stacked like black hearted shadows against you...

My Links:

Ronovan Writes Weekly Haiku Challenge

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I really feel in the mood for a Haiku Challenge this week. It’s been ages since I’ve joined in Ronovan’s challenge, sigh, I seem to be struggling to keep up with all the things I want to do, such is life. Never mind I’m here now at this present moment ready to write some haiku. Yippee!!

The challenge words this week are rain and lightning. Very fitting.

On one day this week I was on playground duty in the local primary school supervising the kids at lunch time, except it started raining so we had to have wet play… no this isn’t some kind of water fight as the name would suppose … it’s when the kids have to stay inside when it’s raining. Not the most desirable outcome for us adults or the children. Children need to let off steam… Especially, when the Year 6’s have their Sats…So I was really pleased for them and for myself!!! Ha Ha ….that it stopped raining and they were able to go out and play ball and run around a bit.

The first haiku is with the kids in mind:

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Puddle Temptation

Enormous puddles

Draw kids near sweet temptation

Lightning burst they run

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The above photo is of my hubby getting very wet in Brighton – he’s very fond of thunderstorms so this haiku is for him!!

Rain Cleanses The Soul

Rain cleanses the soul

Lightning palpates heart’s desires,

Thunder struck we yield.

Hope you enjoyed my haiku.

To finish off here’s a word spiral that I discovered how to do via Vashti – Do pop over to her blog to see her fabulous word heart graphics and haiku from last week: Vashti Vega Haiku and Graphics! and also Ritu did a post too : Ritu – Creating A Spiral Word Graphic

Festisite Text Layout – Spiral

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Here’s the link to Ronovan’s Blog to join in the challenge: Ronovan Writes Haiku Challenge

Have a lovely Saturday.

Bye for now,

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Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

My Links:

Easter Eggy Limerick

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I’ve been having some computer problems and I’ve re-written this post twice. (I lost my first attempt!) So Mr Erase Limerick Pencil is laughing at me… how foolish can you be?

Anyway, perhaps losing the plot like this was meant to be as my first attempt was most probably worse than this one….

This is all new to me – I have never written a limerick before. As I had no idea how to write a limerick I resorted to a kids website, (thought a basic approach would help me!) :

Here’s the link:

http://www.poetry4kids.com/blog/lessons/how-to-write-a-limerick/

There are some rules -:

Limericks, like all poetic forms, have a set of rules that you need to follow. The rules for a limerick are fairly simple:

They are five lines long – keep it short….
Lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme with one another … Tricky.
Lines 3 and 4 rhyme with each other…. More Tricky.
They have a distinctive rhythm, oh my goodness!!

That goes da dum-ing along like this:

da DUM da da DUM da da DUM
da DUM da da DUM da da DUM
da DUM da da DUM
da DUM da da DUM
da DUM da da DUM da da DUM

They are usually funny. I hope …..

Here’s my limericks with and without the word chocolate in them!

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EGGY LIMERICK No. 1

Pink egg is so big it is vast,

So vast it is such an egg blast,

I eat it in one,

Seems a lotta fun,

Oh them hiccups come kinda fast!

Esther’s challenge was to write the limerick with the word chocolate in it so here goes:

EGGY Limerick No. 2

Pink egg is so big it is vast,

Chocolate is such an egg blast,

I choc it in one,

Seems a lotta fun,

Them Choc Hiccups Come Kinda Fast!

That’s my effort, (ha, I tried!) for Esther Newton’s writing Challenge, do check out her blog to find out more.

Here’s a link to Esther’s blog : https://esthernewtonblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/my-weekly-writing-challenge-93/

Happy Easter, don’t eat too much chocolate!

Time for a bit of da dum da da dum Chillin’ Kyrosmagica Style… What you doing this Easter? Da dum da dum….. munch, munch..

Bye for now,

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Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

Ronovan Writes Haiku Challenge#87 Class and Firm

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Ronovan’s prompt words this week, class and firm seem to be very appropriate judging by my new part-time role working in a primary school.

It’s been quite a week. We’ve had rain, fog, cold days, mishaps, sharing issues, arguments, little fights and then…. one day this week the fire alarm went off during the lunch break and the little ‘uns were very upset. They thought their school was about to burn down, and they wanted their mummies! So I did my best to reassure them that this was not the case and it was just the kitchens getting too hot!! Poor wee mites, when you’re little every drama ends up being a major crisis of disproportionate proportions.

It didn’t help that just before the fire alarm went off one of the little girls hurt her lip, adding even more drama to an already raging inferno!

So the Monkeying Around haiku below is with them in mind…. sometimes, I’d advocate a fair old dousing of over imaginativeitis – only in extreme cases you understand! But if all else fails a big hug from mum is always a good idea:

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MONKEYING AROUND

Raging school drama,

Classes monkeying around,

Firm, but fair dousing!

Oh and today I came across one of many little cherubs. This one with curly blond hair and the brightest blue eyes, but even little cherubs can be challenging! This little fellow only responds to the words kind hands when he’s been a bit naughty – kind hands involves putting your little hands up in the air and proposing kindness to your fingertips… miraculously it seemed to work, perhaps he is a bit theatrically inclined. I hope when I ask him to do it again his hands oblige!

I mentioned it to my youngest daughter and she laughed and admitted that she was really naughty in reception!!! In fact she was so naughty that she used to have to stay in sometimes as they wouldn’t let her out to play! And I thought she was an angel, us mothers, huh!!! She sounds like a cherub too….

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BE KIND

A little cherub,

Not naughty just challenging,

Firm words then kind hands.

Do pop over to Ronovan Writes, to join in with the haiku weekly challenge fun:

https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-87-classfirm/

Hope you liked my haiku.

Have a lovely weekend, have fun, but remember no monkeying around!

Bye for now,

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Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

Ronovan Writes Haiku Challenge No: 86

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The prompt words this week from Ronovan are Flash and Dance.

I’ve just started a part-time job in my girls’ old primary school, a bit of a change from my last job working in John Lewis over Christmas! On Monday I was on supervisory duty in the playground mainly keeping an eye on the kids playing on the climbing frame. On my first day there were kids leaping on kids, a boy with two scrapped knees, a girl who got bark in her eye, and a group of year four girls who came and introduced themselves to me and told me all about the play they were in. They were telling me about their parts, how many lines they had or proudly boasting that their part was a baddie! How outrageous! All in all it was quite entertaining… So I said that my two children used to go to their primary school too and I asked them to guess my daughter’s ages. The first one said, ‘ twenty five! ‘ I said, ‘Do I look that old?’ Then of course the next girl said,’forty five,’ but after that the numbers started to come down, thank heavens! Cheeky devils !

It brought back a conversation I had with my youngest daughter recently. I asked her what she liked to do in the playground when she was at primary school, she said skipping, and playing games but she mainly just danced with her best friend! How very theatrical, and artistically inclined, she’s not changed a jot – she still loves to dance. Her friend likewise is still keen on performing, just recently I watched her acting, and singing with The Young Actor’s Company in their sell out performance at Cambridge Junction. Jack Drum’s Entertainment will be playing in Oxford on the 5th of March, and London on 7th March at Bloomsbury Theatre. To find out more about this play being performed by such a talented group of young actors, follow the link:

https://www.facebook.com/JackDrumsEntertainment/

I can’t say that I saw anyone dance in the playground apart from a tiny hint of a dance when one of the year four girls did a little bit of dancing from the show, just before she got called to have her lunch. That was the moment I was waiting for…… but it was gone in a blink of the eye.

So this week’s haiku is inspired by my daughter’s love of dance:

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Primary dancers

Playground extravaganza

A duo flashdance

Here’s the link to Ronovan’s blog so you can join in the haiku challenge:

https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-86-flashdance/

It’s good to know that there are some theatrical types in the playground, but perhaps that’s enough melodrama for now!

Bye for now,

bitstrips melodrama

Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

Haiku Horizons: Monkey

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In honour of the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Monkey I thought I’d join in Haiku Horizon’s prompt which happens to be Monkey.

https://haikuhorizons.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/haiku-horizons-prompt-monkey/

I watched a very interesting TV programme last night, Chinese New Year The Biggest Celebration on Earth. I hope to complete a children’s book about Chinese New Year so I was drawn to watching this. It featured the Snub Nosed Monkey, such a charming fellow. These monkeys are an endangered species. They have been hunted to near extinction. That is beyond horrible……. but the good news is there is a rescue operation in hand. A dedicated man looks after these charming fellows and collects their nuggets of poo so it can be analysed to check their health. That must be quite a job, plastic gloves are a prerequisite, but he takes it very seriously. In fact he is so skilled that he can glance at each sample of poo and tell exactly which monkey produced it! Quite an unusual skill.. He must love those monkeys..

Do find out more about the snub-nosed monkey, he seems to be a delightful monkey full of character:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_snub-nosed_monkey

More than one billion people travel from the cities to the countryside at Chinese New Year to be reunited with their families at this all important time. Can you imagine? That is a huge migration of folk, involving all manner of transport: plane, car, motorbike, and police car…. The Hairy Bikers couldn’t rev up in their usual style in China without the necessary documentation so they ended up travelling in the back of a police car! These Hairy fellows learnt how to make Congee, a warming porridge made of pork, rice, and spring onions, served at the roadside to travellers returning to see their families at Chinese New Year.

This programme continued to fascinate me with its commentary on the Ice City, a massive winter wonderland carved out of massive slabs of ice in Harbin, the largest city of Heilongjiang province, in China. It is so cold in this province of China that the elderly locals are acclimitised to the extreme cold. These hardy pensioners dive into a swimming pool to engage in a spot of …… ice swimming! The thought just sends me into an extreme shiver ……

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbin

My haiku:

The snub nosed monkey,

Forest high flier, cool dude.

Keep him protected.

Hope all you Monkeys out there are having a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. I’m a rabbit in the Chinese zodiac…. I like to hop about and put my feet up with a good book. What about you?

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Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

Ronovan Writes Haiku Prompt Challenge: Crystal and Hope

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Well with a prompt like that from Ron there is just no way that I wouldn’t join in with the Haiku prompt challenge this week. Who could say no? Not me for sure.

Here’s a link to Ron’s blog if you’d like to join his weekly challenge:

https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-79-crystalhope/

I just love Crystals, and they feature in my writing.

Hope and Crystals kind of go hand in hand don’t they?

But perhaps with light there is always a touch of darkness, so with my haiku I am going to focus on the idea of unrequited love.

We all have at some time in our lives experienced differing degrees of unrequited relationships. In my experience I remember one such case when I was very young, it wasn’t love, it was a touch of infatuation. I fancied this young chap, and to be honest I kind of made it pretty obvious that I liked him. We did go out on a date but it was no fun at all, he just dumped me in the middle of the night in Edinburgh not caring how I got home or if I got home. In his eyes I think it was a bit of a prank to play on me, he must have thought I had been chasing him and perhaps he didn’t even fancy me. Anyway it was very upsetting and the memory of it still remains with me to this day. But it did teach me one thing, anyone that behaves in such an uncaring and unpleasant way can’t be worthy of my attention let alone of a relationship with me. So this curly haired young chap did me a favour in a way, his behaviour made me a little more reticent perhaps in chasing after a boy. I never went out with curly haired boys ever again! Instead I chose dark haired guys with straight hair, played it cool, let the boys do the running and the boys seemed to like that! So girls, take a tip from me, keep an aura of mystique and let the guy do the chasing.

Thereafter nobody broke my heart, not that he did, but he dented my pride. I have been lucky in love, and for that I am very blessed, so the haiku at the end of this blog post ends on a positive note.

So with that in mind let’s return back to Ron’s prompt words Crystal and Hope, by introducing you to a photo that I took of a very special crystal grotto, isn’t it spectacular?

get-attachment Kyrstallos picture

I wrote a post way back about this amazing place called Juniper Artland where I photographed this grotto, “The Light That Pours Out Of Me,” by Anya Gallacio, so perhaps if you’ve been following my blog for a long while you will remember it. If not, then here it is, (it’s always worth a multiple visit, so do click on the link):

https://kyrosmagica.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/jupiter-artland-the-light-pours-out-of-me/

Juniper Artland is a must see recommendation f you are ever in Scotland, it really is an amazingly inspiring place, here’s some of the other links on my blog in which I feature my response to sculptures at this wonderful Artland (via my photography and poetry) :

https://kyrosmagica.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/my-friday-image-juniper-artland-sculpture-firmament-by-anthony-gormley/

https://kyrosmagica.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/my-friday-image-and-poem-landscape-with-gun-and-tree-cornelia-parker/

https://kyrosmagica.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/my-friday-image-and-poem-a-worldwide-web-shane-waltener/

https://kyrosmagica.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/my-friday-image-and-poem-the-weeping-girls-laura-ford/

So this is my haiku inspired by Anya Gallacio’s magnificent Crystal grotto:

The Grotto of Unrequited Love

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His promise ring sits,

Crystal bright on my finger,

Mockery of hope.

In tearful pieces,

Hope’s sweet embrace lost in stone,

Cruel, a clear cut edge.

Pain’s ocean rages,

Knife to fortune’s longing heart,

Hope’s pathway crumbles.

Crystal deep ridges,

Bury far inside my soul,

Desire groaning.

Luminous moment,

Lips lock hope’s tomfoolery,

Final kiss goodbye.

Fool I, to want you,

Curly haired lover,

Hope’s cheeky prankster .

Reverberating,

Darkness fills my soul, echoes,

Past sorrows return.

Transient moments,

Now, forgotten, forgiven,

Replaced by love’s light.

In Crystal Grotto,

Forever, hope, sparkles bright,

Love finds its sweet way.

Do comment and let me know what you thought of my haikus, and of course the amazing Juniper Artland.

Today I’m off work, so I’m doing a bit of blogging this morning, then off to Tai Chi, later in the day I have lots of chores to catch up on, sigh, if only I could do them like this!

Bye for now,

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Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

Ronovan Writes Haiku Prompt Challenge: Vast and Clear

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This week Ronovan’s prompt words are Vast and Clear let’s see, what can I come up with…. tricky… I’m feeling melancholy today, not a usual state for me, but one that often follows the aftermath of all the Christmas festivities. I tend to be prone to a large dollop of the New Year blues!

Instead of fighting against this like I usually do I thought it might be interesting to try to focus on this sense of sadness and despair because like an actor, an author has to get into role and use feelings to good effect!

I intend to utilise this in some of my New Year writing so please do forgive the less humorous approach! Kyrosmagica blog is all about the lightness and darkness in life, in my experience both go hand in hand, and the interplay between the two fascinate me.

I’ve called my miserable haiku Nothing New, Kills Me.

I made a mistake when writing this I thought the prompt words were vast and new instead of vast and clear so apologies Ronovan, I’ve edited most of the haikus with the word clear!!

Nothing New, Kills Me

Your words lodge bitter,

Vast oceans of clear sadness,

Nothing new, kills me.

New heartbreak lodges,

Vast cruel, unsurmountable.

Terrors playing friends.

A new morning comes,

Light Trickling through clear windows,

Whispering vast nonsense.

New and old mingle,

Clear, lengthy fragments, spoken,

Vast, unstoppable.

New light promises,

Vast, clear, illuminating,

Ruin of darkness.

New guilty footsteps,

Clear no one will find me love,

Vast oceans away.

Hope you liked the angst laden haiku! I feel a lot better, writing sad haiku is so therapeutic… enough melodrama for one day, now it’s time to do the washing…

Bye for now,

bitstrips melodrama

Marje @ Kyrosmagica x

https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/category/haiku-prompt-challenge/

RonovanWrites #Haiku #Poetry Prompt #Challenge #74 Cake&Wolf

Ah, Ronovan you have me well and truly stumped this week. Whatever can I write about using the prompt words cake and wolf? A difficult combination, this calls for a bit of wolfish humour and gluttony methinks……

Somehow I can see a wolf turning up at a fancy dress party in a cake costume…. Could be a shocker.. A party with a creamy strawberry, mousse, santa bite! Look at those eyes, it’s a dead giveaway. Okay, that’s totally daft, a cake wolf a la mousse, but that’s alright because it’s cute and cute works for me… especially combined with contrasting nasty Mr. Wolf.

Cake A La Sharp Fangs Santa

Wolf in mousse costume

Every creamy slice bites back

Ouch! Cake fangs Santa

And more cake humour……. with a feminist twist.

No Wolfish Sexism Allowed

Wolfish sexism,

Splatter cake on windscreen sign,

Feminism rules.

Link to Ronovan’s blog:

https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-74-cakewolf/

And his excellent advice on how to write a haiku, I like to refer to this from time to time to refresh my memory:

https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/how-to-write-a-haiku-poem/

Hope you liked my double dose of cake haiku with a Wolfish theme!

Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

Ronovan’s Haiku Challenge #72: Life and Give

This week Ron’s words are Life and Give. I was struggling with these two words but this morning I had a eureka moment, which was quite strange considering I had a few too many glasses of wine last night and I didn’t expect to wake up full of ideas! Amazingly I didn’t have a hangover, in fact I felt quite clear headed, strange indeed. I made myself a cup of tea and then I looked at my birthday cards sitting by the windowsill, and my friend Christine’s card caught my eye, with these cheeky words:

“The Older you Get The Better You Get Unless you Are A Banana.”
www.urbangraphic.co.uk

Typical Christine she likes to have a giggle! Well I’m grateful for her funny card reminding me that I’m getting on a bit, as it has given me an idea for this week’s haiku words, Give And Life. Her card is very appropriate too as I happen to love bananas, but having said that there is nothing quite as unappealing as an overripe banana. This squirrel knows he’s munching away at a very tasting looking banana, but could it be his last banana? Do any of us know when our time will come? So enjoy every mouthful of life that’s what I say, don’t just nibble half hearteningly go at it with a big bite!

Banana Love

Give me one big bite
Before your jaws clench honey
Adios sweet life

Poor squirrel I hope I didn’t knock him off his happy munching spot, he looks pretty healthy so I’m sure he will munch his way through many more tasty bananas.

The next haiku is not cheery in nature perhaps its the result of my reading The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King, my current read.

If you’re interested in writing a short story here’s a link to the Stephen King Guardian Short Story Competition, closing date is 18th December, 2015.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/oct/30/stephen-king-short-fiction-competition-send-us-your-stories

Car of death

I can’t embrace life

This car gives death bites

I’m a murderer.

My mind really does work in mysterious ways! All this from a birthday card, it’s amazing where inspiration can take you to, so keep an eye out for those unexpected sources lingering everywhere.

Here’s the links to Ronovan’s blog to join in the haiku fun:

https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-72-lifegive/

And his excellent advice on how to write a haiku, I like to refer to this from time to time to refresh my memory:

https://ronovanwrites.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/how-to-write-a-haiku-poem/

Bye for now,

Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

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