Summer-into-Fall Prose. Wrap-up Challenge

In five haikus, tell a story about the cycle of life. Start with being born, then so forth. Because this is absorbing the entirety of all Prose. Challenges until October's start, we're giving the winner $250. Winner is decided by a combination of likes, and our panel. And...Go.

ChrisSadhill

• 269 reads

The Current

…Yanked from the grotto.

Flung into the torrent sea.

Unable to swim.

Dark water teaches

young lungs how to pressurize

the deeper they fall.

Yet, you equalize,

and learn to bring extra air

to roam the trenches.

Some stay down too long,

some are sucked by the riptide.

Few breach the surface.

But, if you’re lucky

You’ll find a grotto on shore

to die peacefully…

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Challenge

Summer-into-Fall Prose. Wrap-up Challenge

In five haikus, tell a story about the cycle of life. Start with being born, then so forth. Because this is absorbing the entirety of all Prose. Challenges until October's start, we're giving the winner $250. Winner is decided by a combination of likes, and our panel. And...Go.

rlove327

• 114 reads

Searching (five haiku)

We and the sun, high

as lords, as our frisbee, white,

whirling to my hand—

volleyball, cap/gown

cake, pavilion, dogs, friends, a

baby, relatives—

Another photo:

my grandparents and me, one

final time. Happy.

Photographs are leaves:

colorful and aged, what was,

pressed into a book.

Through my window, snow

frames cardinals, searching bare

vines for frozen grapes.

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Challenge

Summer-into-Fall Prose. Wrap-up Challenge

In five haikus, tell a story about the cycle of life. Start with being born, then so forth. Because this is absorbing the entirety of all Prose. Challenges until October's start, we're giving the winner $250. Winner is decided by a combination of likes, and our panel. And...Go.

ErJo1122

• 105 reads

The Passing Of Time

Brought into this world

With no say in the matter

many years ago

A child scrapes his knees

Treats the wound in a puddle

Friends laugh, so do I

No more jobs in town

Faithless are the once faithful

The lifeblood drained

I’m falling in love

Thirty hours of pain, and my

Wife births my whole world

An old man, am I

In the mirror, he looks tired

A flash, and it’s gone

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Challenge

Summer-into-Fall Prose. Wrap-up Challenge

In five haikus, tell a story about the cycle of life. Start with being born, then so forth. Because this is absorbing the entirety of all Prose. Challenges until October's start, we're giving the winner $250. Winner is decided by a combination of likes, and our panel. And...Go.

BJLeCrae

• 67 reads

Tripper

True love's conception

Perfection, by God's own hands

When two became one

She learned so quickly--

Absorbed with insatiable

Curiosity

Eventually

She would come to find her stride

School, driving... the boy

I thought him lacking

But she saw something in him

Eros and Ludus

I'm glad she found love

She lived life passionately

I miss her so much

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Challenge

Summer-into-Fall Prose. Wrap-up Challenge

In five haikus, tell a story about the cycle of life. Start with being born, then so forth. Because this is absorbing the entirety of all Prose. Challenges until October's start, we're giving the winner $250. Winner is decided by a combination of likes, and our panel. And...Go.

Mavia

• 113 reads

{aliento}

a concept, finite:

Sin Cuentas withheld in All

~ wave & particle .

I am I am I

in Palindrome lineage

---Río of Being

...Encantas, silence

the world in one thou' and song

Leaves and needles crawl

Metamorphoses

belong to the Corazón,

bottled, blot; sparrows

what clouds hold heavy,

(in wind all is traveling)

una bebida

*Translation of Spanish & Author's Note:

aliento means breath

(the foreignness I believe speaks for itself)

Haiku 1: Sin Cuentas is the Infinite

the thought is of all as a point in motion, one in many/many in one

we begin (and end) cellular, a spark of light as if--

hence Einstein's wave and particle, illustrating a duality of Existence

(Sin Cuentas is in fact the inspiration "point" of my poem. I ran across it in a children's book "Papi, How Many Stars in the Sky?" and was struck by the Sin in Spanish meaning "without" and Cuentas translates literally to "accounts," but idiomatically the translation is "the Infinite" and so this powerful (in my perception!) link to being born without account of Sin, and Infinitely so! --that is how my mind ticks---in strange gestalt :)

Haiku 2: The dawning of Awareness, I

I as a beautiful most concise Palindrome of thought.

To me it is redundant to say I am, as I is enough. It already exists once marked as line.

It can only grow, or stop, i.e. die. So, again in my perception, the continuity suggests age, and visually a lineage, as that line may be passed. Hence, the subsequent imagery of the river; and a nod to Leonard Cohen, inevitably, as he uses this metaphor liberally, and with apt sexual overtone. Río is River in Spanish, but it harkens to the ear like Royalty, a sound regal and proud. Thus, awareness as a life-giving force, internally, and in generations to come.

Haiku 3: Encantas is to sing.

In truth, I vaguely recalled it as Enchantas and was very hopeful that I recalled correctly, as might be obvious, for the "enchant us" that is alluded to-- I was wrong in that the h was not there, but that made me think of a gap of silence, and I was delighted with that insight! The contrast seems so fitting, as we grow to appreciate our ability to act, and to refrain from action. Thus, turning to the world inside oneself (thou) and outside (in song).

I was charmed by combination of one and thousand, as a single unit/ many simultaneously, and again how thousand can be abbreviated to thou, bringing in the notion of one "you," you, being either singular, or plural. Leaves and needles crawl, is an illustration mentally of the passage of time, evoking I hope, music, writing, visual arts, and in the changing of seasons from the emergence of these, literally, upon the trees in Spring, to their departure in the Fall. (*If you're picking up connotations of ink and vinyl, that is very astute! and intentional.)

Haiku 4: The key in this one is Corazón, meaning the Heart-- and I adore how much it reverberates in English as the core zone!! To me this the center, poetically, where all our changes personally occur. True growth, as it were, spiritually, emotionally-- our point of maturity. The content of our Hearts is bottled; it spills, like Rorschach blot tests, and we can let these visions fly as sparrows (i.e. like live arrows) if we let them go (from the cocoon). The incongruity of the release of a bird, rather than butterfly, did not escape me-- the idea is not to limit our Imagination.

Haiku 5: we are mostly air and water, and emotion, and this I hoped to convey in the verse, "what the clouds hold heavy," much as when we say the sky is pregnant, or the sky will break, and rain will come like tears, heaven sent in the winds (of change). And so, the suggestion of "bebida," which to the English ear suggests a baby, but is in Spanish in fact a drink, and in this case the sip of a final breath (of life/death). To optimistically end:

"Cheers!" to a life (well) lived.

*As a personal aside: I chose the Spanish, because my second Mom is in Mexico and her birthday is coming up so I thought I would share this with her <3

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Challenge

Summer-into-Fall Prose. Wrap-up Challenge

In five haikus, tell a story about the cycle of life. Start with being born, then so forth. Because this is absorbing the entirety of all Prose. Challenges until October's start, we're giving the winner $250. Winner is decided by a combination of likes, and our panel. And...Go.