Scaled Back, Life & Poems

Yes, I currently have a very much scaled back life at the moment. I recently broke my right ankle, and am in recovery mode, having been told by the surgeon who operated on my ankle, to stick to zero weight bearing. This means I currently am spending most of my time resting my ankle, with it up high, to reduce swelling, and increase healing (I hope).

I could have been using this scaled back time to work on a larger writing project, but my brain and inclination are not heading in that direction, I’m feeling much more interested in poetry right now, so that’s where my writing is going. That and blog posts, such as this one. Oh, and some thoughts about Stoicism and how it can apply to life situations.

That is being kept to myself at the moment, with notes on my laptop that are definitely not for publication as they are, and not for quite some time later, anyway. They may appear in part in a much longer non-fiction tome, sometime.

Anyway, scaled back poetry interests me – I love Haiku and Senryu, the Tanka as well, and I have recently found (online), a scaled back version of writing sonnets. I love sonnets, a mere fourteen lines, in particular rhyming schemes, and beautiful thoughts can be expressed. This new (to me) form though has only one syllable per line, though if maintains the sonnets 14 line needs, as well as the rhyming scheme.

I wrote more about this on a previous blog post, here, If you wish to look more closely into this sonnet form, called the Monosyllabic Sonnet, visit the blog post. I write about sonnets in general and this form in particular, with an example.

I wrote a new piece of text today, based on something in this room, something that happens often in this room, the one I have been spending so much time in, as I work on recovering from my accidental fall and consequent broken bones. I have presented the words I wrote, again in a one word and syllable per line, and I think it looks and reads quite well. I could be delusional, who knows, and at the moment, amusing myself is my main desire …

So here it is, an new thing that may or may not be a poem, which I will call “My Obs”. The term “obs” loomed large in my life when I was in three different hospitals recently, with my obs being taken by nurses often during both the day, and through the night too. Their role is to make sure I’m OK, taking my pulse, heart rate, temperature, and oxygen levels (or I think that’s what they were doing).

Anyway, as a writer and poet, my observations are my ever ready sources of writing material, so I’d be a fool not to use them! and here is today’s “My Obs” poem, my first ever, THE first ever:

To my dog, Missy

Dear

friend,

your 

sleep

sounds

don’t 

seem

too

bad

but 

please,

if 

you 

must 

snore,

shh

keep

it

down

low,

please?

Good

girl.

 

 

^-^

\
o