Tanka – willowdot21

#TankaTuesday Poetry Challenge No. 66, Exploring Haiku, 5/26/26.

Hello and good morning everyone. This week’s host for Tanka Tuesday is Melissa from Mom With a Blog. here is what she has asked us to do. “Today I thought we’d (sort of) go back to our roots, and write with one of the most well-known syllabic forms: haiku.

I came across a really neat article about haiku by many authors, some of which adhere to typical conventions (kigo, syllable count, etc.), and others that do not.

For today’s prompt, I’d like us to write haiku that are a little edgy, a little offbeat. We can even call them “micropoetry” if need be. You don’t need to use a kigo. Have fun. Experiment. Take inspiration from the haiku I’ve shared in my post

PLEASE NOTE:

Our hosts spend a lot of time creating these challenges. Follow the directions carefully. Please create your poetry using the prompt suggested by the host. Remember, this is a challenge for you to create a syllabic poem using the prompt instructions. If the prompt doesn’t inspire you, that’s okay. Please don’t submit a poem that doesn’t meet the criteria of the prompt. Thanks for your consideration. ~Colleen~

Hubby and I are at the hospital this morning. While waiting I wrote this.

smelly corridor
everyone slowly passing
all human life here

#TankaTuesday Poetry Challenge No. 26, Multiple Meanings, 08/19/25 Season

It’s Yvette’s week to host Tuesday Tanka. She thought we would have some fun with words that have multiple meanings.

Yevette says: “This week, to encourage you to consider contributing poems to the Sunflower Tanka Journal, let’s practice writing a tanka form. You can choose from the traditional tanka, a tanka prose, Garland tanka, tanka puente, taiga, or bussokusekika. I look forward to reading all your poems! :-)”

Part of Tuesday Tanka

Today was out Wedding Anniversary we have been married now for fifty four years. So to celebrate I have chosen the word Season ..it’s dual meaning as in season cooking, seasons of the year and as time passes seasons of life.

Season life with love
Time is passing so quickly
Our spring was bright, new
Sprinkles of spice seasoned our
Summer. Slowly it mellowed

The chill of Autumn
Melts the heat in the kitchen
The boil takes longer
We still can spice and season
Our loves just as tasty

We enter winter
All spice, cinnamon, so sweet
Eyes wide with wonder
Dancing into the Winter
Seasons grow old together

We are not done yet 💜💜💜

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#TankaTuesday Poetry Challenge No. 12, Hainka, 5/13/25

It’s Tanka Tuesday again and here is what our host for this week has to say. “Hello, friends! Welcome to this week’s edition of Tanka Tuesday. This is Melissa from Mom With a Blog, your multitasker host. For this week’s challenge, I’d like us to try our hand at a new-ish poetic form, hainka. If you’re wondering what in the hainka that is”

Here are all Melissa’s rules and help here.

Well I believe this below is a Hainka ! My kigo words are Sun and showers, for sun I have used golden ball. Thank you Melissa this was a very interesting and may I say hard challenge!

what’s that golden ball
only just verdant grass sighs
gaia winks an eye

eyes heavy, itching
pollen laden air assails
what’s that golden ball
we are wilting like the plants
pitter patter come showers.

Coming soon so excited. Image from Dan Antion.

The Beginning Of Spring. Harukaze.

Colleen Cheseboro’s email arrived this morning, here is what she said: “A couple of weeks ago, I talked about following the 72 Japanese Micro-Seasons for poetic inspiration. I’m going to use the descriptions given in my poetry.“

If you’d like to join in, leave your blog link in the comments on Colleen’s Sunflower Tanka. This isn’t a challenge, just a bit of writing inspiration. 💙

Today is February 4, 2025, and we’re in the season of 立春 Risshun (Beginning of spring). I’ve written a tanka for the first micro-season, which is:

February 4–8

東風解凍 Harukaze kōri o toku

East wind melts the ice

Cold winds from the East
Chill me deeply to the bone
The bulbs still hiding
Reticent to emerge now
Spring is shilly-shallying.

#TankaTuesday Poetry Challenge Synonyms Only & a Specific Form, 10/15/24

Today Selma is hosting week three of #TankaTuesday challenge in this new
series. Selma says: “This week we are writing a tanka using synonyms for the two words provided. Instructions follow:”

🍂 Your Tanka Tuesday challenge invitation is to write a tanka, plus choose two synonyms using the two words:

Mindless and Humdrum

Please select synonyms for the two words a
Do NOT use the challenge words, only synonyms for them.

*****

Okay I have written two Tanka one about Nature and one about time. I have highlighted my synonyms in bold print. I have also listed them below.

Mindless. Without a thought, Uncaring, Careless , obtuse, unthinking, Immume

Humdrum. Monotony, Relative, The every day, The day to day , Workaday.

Drifting feather like
Escaping the everyday
Such monotony
Nature moves on uncaring
Of our repetitive trials

Time without a thought
Steals our lives, the day to day
Careless of outcome
It is obtuse, unthinking
Immume to our workaday.

#Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge, Specific Theme, 10/8/2024

Hello to Sadje who is out guest host for Tanka Tuesday.

Sadje says “October is a special month for me as it’s the birth month of my husband and my son. Being married and then having my children made a huge difference in my life. So I’d like you to write a syllabic poem about something that brought a big change in your life.”

I have written a “tanka sequence.” The Japanese use the word Rensaku for any combination of two or more tanka that are somehow related. This Rensaku is about how breaking my back for the second time and how

Alone in the dark
I awake to pain and cold.
As fear takes over
All clocks have stopped frozen
Crumpled like a broken doll

Hubby panics lost.
All logical thought flies off
Like a flock of birds
Help me, call an ambulance
Legs don’t work he carries me

Help arrived in twos
Reassuring they debate
I am slipping out
The big black birds circle me
Fear looms large like rain clouds.

Lights, noise,red and blue
Bright, white, people moving me
I float above them
Slowly tendrels pull me back
How the grip holds me, grounded

Is it years or weeks
Who knows it’s a morphine blur
Three operations
A long road not for the weak
As in all things I adapt.

Who’d like to chill out with me.

When the pain is stubborn let’s have some chill out 💜 featuring Imogen Heap, who else?

Day fades slowly out.

The pain refuses to rest.

Float away on notes.

The brain can over come this.

Give in no use to resist.

#Haikai Challenge #149 (7/25/20): Waterfall (taki) #haiku #senryu #haibun #tanka #haiga #renga

This is my first visit to Frank Tassone’s Haiku Challenge. I have written a Tanka about how waterfalls affect my soul.

Waterfall

Sparkling silver bright

Hidden from mind all danger

The urge to be free

Takes me through crystal waters

Drowning my soul in freedom.

Thursday photo prompt: Dream #writephoto

This week’s prompt ~ Dream

For visually challenged writers, the image shows a pale pathway meandering through a field of purple heather towards the green of distant hills.

Sleep would not come, just waves of fear and pain. There was no silence either. Voices discussing, the news, gardens, family, Covid… I can’t blame them this was their day. Their shift, they would go home and sleep.

The scariest thing was the voice that echoed through the ward of the disturbed patient who repeated and repeated “It’s the Covid cough, the Covid, Covid, cough gonna get you” If he was not sleeping that’s all I could hear. It was better during the day because he’d call out for “Tea tea” and the nurses would bring him one and then he would shout “Happy Birthday” and we’d all smile.

At night it felt like he was closer, he was not, he was on the male side of the ward but sound carries at night. I was frightened, unreasonably so by this prophet of doom. I was lonely and in pain.

Then the pain spiked I had to give in and use my buzzer, the nurse came I told her I couldn’t take the pain. She gave me some intravenous painkillers as an extra to the antibiotics and fluid IVs. She stayed a while and then thankfully I drifted off to a better place.

There lies the path

Through seas of purple heather

Morpheus lifted

Me off to the land of dreams

Fear and pain was then banished.

This is part of Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo Challenge, #writephoto