Winter is still in full swing here in the northern hemisphere but spring is on the way.? TINYWORDS 20.2?has now ended with Victor Ortiz?s haiku ?last light.” The submission window for TINYWORDS?21.1?opened on February 1st, so if you haven?t yet, send us your small poems, haiga, or brief haibun to be considered for our next issue: TINYWORDS?21.1.
Sending work to TINYWORDS is a simple two-step process. Just check out our?Guidelines?and click on the?Submissions Page?from Feb. 1 through Feb. 28th, 2021. One month window, as usual.
To keep things lively while we work on the new issue, we present a new writing prompt. This image from UK photographer?Matt Emmett, taken in Southern Belgium in 2015 is called “Ruined Chateau.” You can check out more of his work in his recent book called Forgotten Heritage; Rediscovering Forgotten Places and on his website here.?In the meantime, we hope this vision of grandeur even in decay sparks a poem or two. Maybe one of hope for the future.
Be sure to share it with us. Leave your best efforts in the comment box below (click here if you don’t see the comments below) and the TINYWORDS editorial team will share the best of the best in TINYWORDS 21.1, due out in late March, 2021.
Thanks again for dropping by. We look forward to reading what you?have?to say.
winter . . .
just around the corner
spring cleaning
Resplendent decay –
sunlight waltzes through
the empty ballroom
spider sanctuary
spinning me
a new halo
winter light
through the forgotten ruins
field mice
summer picnic
the portrait of Dorian Gray
goes al fresco
Alan Summers
Note:
In Italian, the expression al fresco usually refers to spending time in jail.
Il scrittore è stato preso e messo al fresco ? The writer was caught and sent to prison.
Oscar Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Michaelmas flowers we hide and talk with faerie folk
Alan Summers
Season: September (Autumn)
last light
a barefoot boy
finds a new home
clouds of dust…
how one dream gives way
to the next
midnight
the grand ballroom
again a dusty workshop
Long abandoned home
collapsing into itself—
still warmed by the light
patriarchal decay–
sunlight stirs
the old ghosts
daybed
no rest
for the incubus
dust
from another's life
falls down
Let's hope they bought insurance.
shadows reeled
the centre did not hold?
save innocence
priest song
one day in january
my father
dust devils
the House of Usher
implodes
last summer days –
the flight of teros
darkening the sky
as if time segues into dust faded light
sky-hung hall…
daylight banishes
a barn owl
house of cards–
time to reshuffle
the deck
snowfall
talk of raiding the stores
after the last bomb
house of ghosts
mouse droppings
and spider webs
sweeping
for bugs
the new administration
war moon ?
a locale recounts the cost
of the pandemic
*
ruined chateau . . .
the last charged wineglass
glistening in the sun ray
*
spring cleaning . . .
a tailless gecko enters
the sofa
stash of coins
in a marble jar
what we leave
dust –
all that
is ours
an old diary –
under the dust of time
the heart beats
Ah, Monsieur Poirot!
…better late
as they say
mid-life
at home
in my own skin
creak –
suspended in silence
old quarrels
first light
our new home full of
second thoughts
the moment
all else fails
sunbeams
palace moat
the last in a line
of mute swans
sunlight
discovering
long lost secrets
memories
sometimes long shadows
other times rays of light
trying to repair
so many layers
of our friendship
dappled sunlight
finding a darkened corner
to curl up in
after the war
the chateau and I
equally shell-shocked
breath of spring
the first butterflies wander
through my room
sunlight
revealing
possibility
in shafts
of light
the shift
of time
cancer…
death &
rebirth
abandoned nest
the hearts
no longer in it
dust and cobwebs
the sun sets
on abandoned ideals
dancing dust motes . . .
all that remains
of the music we shared
cathedral of stars . . .
a vagrant thanks God
derelict castle
the stray declares
himself king
abandoned
the chateau collapses
into itself
Remains of the remain still remaining in the present.
All that happened in the past,
now haunts me in present.
Time flies.
Memories fade.
Over a period of time,
it's realized
that a thing of past
is a thing of the past.
Better to be what you are
Also otherwise future remains uncertain.
winter light returning dust to dust
inner thrill
of mountings
toilet flushed
derelict mansion
the stories growing
wilder every year
Miss Havisham wakes
to taste the coffee–
hug each ray of sun
history
borders each days sun
times dust
faded script
memories crumble
in my hands
apparitions the colours i once knew
lifting eyelids
starts the system protocol
video online
all the -isms
which divide a house
against itself
Autumn Noelle Hall
each thought a new sneeze
searching through such ancient dust
yester's mmory
in the rubble
arrogance of an era
things set to the past