Writing prompt for tinywords 17.2

Photo of Mars Landscape taken by Opportunity. Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Welcome to Mars. Plenty of room to roam and scout out that perfect picnic spot. Or maybe you see something entirely different.

In this writing prompt we share a scene from a rover’s point of view. No, not that kind of rover. The interstellar data-collecting kind on wheels. Check out this truly other-worldly scene taken by Opportunity, the Mars rover that has been roaming that desolate landscape since 2004. The robot sent back this image from its extended vacation.

We hope it sparks in you some untapped poem. Send it to us! Not any poem: In keeping with our?tinywords?ethos of course, we are looking for haiku or other tiny poems. Brevity, please.

Use the comments box below to share your response. We’ll share the best discovery to open the new issue of?tinywords?(17.2) due out in late September, 2017. Thanks.

Thanks for dropping by and for sharing your poems.

200 thoughts on “Writing prompt for tinywords 17.2”

      1. Thank you for reading–and taking time to comment. I thought I might counter the popular patriarchal view by asking readers to consider that the Red Planet might just be feminine in nature…

      1. Thank you for your comment. Yes, it could be applied to Mars, or one of its two moons.

        The haiku was originally published by Asahi Shimbun for the blood moon issue, October 2nd 2015, for the eclipse of 9/28/15

        Publication Credit: Asahi Shimbun (Japan 2015)
        the blood moon issue, Oct 2 for the eclipse of 9/28

        2nd magazine publication:
        Prune Juice : Journal of Senryu, Kyoka, Haibun & Haiga Scifaiku feature Issue 21: March, 2017 ed. Steve Hodge

        Anthology Credits:
        Heart Breaths: Book of Contemporary Haiku ed. Jean LeBlanc
        ISBN: 9789385945038 (Cyberwit March 5, 2016); Pegasus

        And forthcoming: The Haiku Anthology ed. Santosh Kumar (Cyberwit, Summer 2017)

        'Birdsong' tends to conjure up the First World War (1914-18) for British/Commonwealth troops, and alludes also to the novel of the same name by Sebastian Faulks.

        The ancient Greeks certainly glorified Mars as a symbol for war, which was carried forward by the Roman Republic and its later pre-Christian Empire.

        deeply appreciate your comment.

        warm regards,

        Alan
        co-founder, Call of the Page

    1. I really admire that within the imaginative, almost childlike perspective of this haiku is a sense of reflection and personal awareness, as well as a sense of personal responsibility. Let us hope we can all call upon our inner astronauts to keep those stars bright-shining!

      1. Thank you, that's very kind. We are all astronauts, as if we could travel just a few hundred light years beyond our planet, we'd see it spinning rapidly around, without politics and frontiers etc…

          1. Great!

            escape velocity
            the moon pulls oceans
            behind Apollo 11

            Alan Summers
            “Rocket Dreams” commission 2007
            Read/performed U.K. National Poetry Day October 4th 2007 with Space Historian Piers Bizony and NASA images, as part of World Space Week

          2. mars landing-
            a tendril of red dust
            shifts from a footfall

            Alan Summers
            Publication credits: tinywords (2007)
            eBook: Dylan Tweney “Practical Haiku: How Reading and Writing an Ancient Form of Poetry Can Change Your Life.” (ebook 2010)

          3. Great!

            I created a haibun around a sad futuristic version of the original Normandy landings called "Nova Normandy 3044". I think a simple internet search of the title should locate it for you.

            warm regards,

            Alan Summers

    1. their world so bleak

      instead of primes
      Martians visualize the lines

      _____________
      _____________________
      _____________

      1. Way to get right to the short-long-short of it all, Don (and in cherita-form, too)! I like how this visual poem mimics the rover's tracks in terms of the negative space between the lines. That idea of negative space seems particularly appropriate in this otherworld context.

  1. Discovery

    Traveler across desert wastes,
    Searching, ever searching,
    For that oasis rare,
    Sands that stretch forever,
    Winds that never were,
    Hill after hill
    and Dune after Dune,
    Is that an Omam's tent I see?
    Does Ozymandius spare his water?
    Where does this travail end?
    In Opportunity's grasp,
    Lands that never were.

  2. Enroute to Mars
    I take a devour
    through the moon land
    to keep my darling
    smile for ever.

  3. you
    were
    out of
    control when
    whatever chased you
    beyond its alien abyss,
    prompted your message:
    S O S
    p l e a s e b r i n g
    m e
    h o m e

  4. does my butt look big
    in this thin atmosphere
    wonders Mars
    who comes in fourth
    blushing those crater cheeks

  5. the retired astronaut
    asleep on his side —
    above his shoulders
    a smoke detector’s light
    burns red

  6. hemoglobin

    iron atoms
    binding vertebrates

    this taste for blood—
    we are the real Gods of War
    our own Earth, a casualty

    1. (I typed it with space between the words 'parallel' and 'universe,' like wagon tracks, but it didn't show up like that!)

  7. to news headlines

    “man may live on Mars”

    opened my eyes

    from deep meditation

    on leaving earthly pleasures

  8. people dreamt of walking
    in this dust world—
    had they only known
    what it is to live forever
    in a single shade of red

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