Shared with dVerse Quadrille #238 – hibernate.
The initial line is taken from Jae Rose’s poem ‘Coax’.
You Can’t See Me When I Close My Eyes – 17th December 2025
Tag: quadrille
It is hard to
From Zero – 3rd December 2025
I was zero before I was one
I will become
Zero once again
When my time is done
I was black before the light
I will be black
When the time is right
To go back
Now I must do
As I must do
Shared with dVerse Quadrille #237 Zero
A Little Too Much – 10th September 2025
When does so much become so little?
Believing it’s always your turn
Your debt to yourself is catching up
Your life is empty (as such)
Left with no thing:
Just sand slipping through your fingers
Tell me
When does too little become too much?
This quadrille is a reworking of my poem Taking Stock, a cascading poem itself based on the lyrics (italicised) from the Nomeansno song Stocktaking. Shared with dVerse Quadrille #231 – much
Tremendous Words – 13th August 2025
The chambers are a-chatter,
full of inarticulate babble
and words that no longer matter
to an uneducated rabble.
Yakking gibberish jabber,
frenzied servants are crowing;
scared that the constant blather
may leave them unknowing.
“Oh say! Can you see
death of freedom and democracy?”
Shared with dVerse Quadrille #229 – jabber
I Can’t Stanza Pain – 17th July 2025
Shared with dVerse Quadrille #227 – turn
My enforcer,
my metre maid
took a turn for the verse.
Free and blank cheques,
with a ‘haiku later, alligator’
When Rabbie rises, I reach
for my sonnet sunscreen;
Massaging my iambic pent-up anger
with all my opposable puns,
I will limerick my wounds.
Washington’s Post – 18th June 2025
Debated down the ages,
philosophers had their say;
politicians turned the pages,
honesty died that day!
Truth became a variable,
twisting ways to appear;
a virtue less valuable,
words became less sincere;
The Washington Post banner,
‘Democracy dies in darkness’?
Honestly, it never existed!
Shared with dVerse Quadrille #226 – honesty
Calm Applied – 21st May 2025
Shh…
she
said
quiet
your
eyes
silver
streams
presently
dried
quivered
lips
soon
satisfied
hot
words
held
in check
pacified
let
your
wonder
wander
trussed
and tied
red
blood
rumbling
undenied
left
unsaid
calm
applied
your
head
bedside
off to sleep
She said
Shh…
Shared with dVerse quadrille #224 – quiet
The Origin – 8th May 2025
What a mess was made
the day they decided
to rumble around in the roses.
Uncontrollable urges confound
all the wisdom one supposes.
Tho the event always exists,
a spark of sadness saw the spin,
Unwinding the troubled twists
to order again, the origin.
A quadrille shared with dVerse Quadrille #223 – tangle/untangle.
22nd Sep 2025 – Shared with W3 – beginnings/endings.
Gods Amongst Us – 29th January 2025
The most penetrating preachers,
hinting, they teach us.
Revered when stood alone
or their forest home.
Roots resting in infinity,
their own laws accordingly,
standing tall to represent.
When stormy winds relent
Nothing is more exemplary,
In nature growing free,
A beautiful strong tree.
Paraphrased a lot from a passage by Narayan Kaudinya on the Road to Nara blog and shared with dVerse Quadrille #216
Storm And Stress – 14th December 2024
When the beat of the drum becomes a banging
and frontlines full of dead men left hanging,
let’s raise white flags, redraw maps and decide
unstable future’s by inequitable divide
Wheels forever turn
Bloods boil and burn
Guns forever bang
Repeat sturm und drang
Shared with dVerse Quadrille #214 – bang
Today I’m feeling:
Ok but a little bit old man-weekendy. Having nothing in particular planned for today, beyond reading and playing guitar, without any externally imposed anxiety, means a deep unwinding which may fall into lethargy. A lethargy that doesn’t always make me happy.
At the same time, I realise that I also need to recover my energies.
Health:
Physical: 7
Mental: 7
Today I’m grateful for:
A new ice cream shop in the city that makes some nice homemade flavours, along with some cakes. I had Banoffee Pie ice cream with a piece of lemon tart and they were both delicious.
The best thing about today was:
Getting half price sushi buffet at Oshinei today. Typically, we ate too much, trying to get all the value that we could out of the deal.
We are both stuffed with just the one meal today!
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
We went to the new Bath and Body Works that has opened for the first time in Chiang Rai. It was a smaller shop and a little underwhelming and it felt like everything was expensive just because we were in Chiang Rai.
Usually, when we visit this shop, it is in Chiang Mai or Bangkok and we have an expectation of overspending here!
Something I learned today?
We will get a week off for the New Year holiday this year. Nice!
Aing called us today and told us that she broke up with Now (which wasn’t that big of a surprise to be honest) but she also said that she has found another guy at her workplace (not in the same team though) and she looked super, super happy again.
