It is we who maintain the freedom of all the residents in the U.S. to pursue the lifestyle to which each aspires, the dreams each envision for self, family and community.

We do this by our daily effort; we create and build. We are the line workers, the secretaries, the nurses, cashiers and foot soldiers the “support staff.” We are the writers, poets and artists. We weave the fabric of our society; through our daily efforts, WE make it all work.

Celebrate with me, this day, not merely our contribution to, but the very creation of these United States as she is and as she can be. Pay tribute to our fellows on this Labor Day; honor the creators of our nation’s strength, freedom and leadership in the world.

Celebrate the American Worker Bees!

To begin your journey, pick up the pen,
Write that prose or rhyme;
Though book or sonnet, each must be written
One word at a time.

Tune in the melody your ear does chime
‘Till harmony does float;
Each lullaby and symphony sublime
Starts with just one note.

Let palettes of vision your canvas coat
With hue stark or lush;
From sketch to masterpiece is not remote,
Take in hand the brush.

The spirit once seen and heard will not hush,
No more silent mime,
The dream once savored, muse’s nascent blush
Will but higher climb.

© 2006 Kate Sender

Prompt: “When asked, ‘how do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’” Stephen King

Virelay ~ Interlinking quatrains, 1st and 3rd line long, 2nd and 4th line short; linked by rhyming 2nd and 4th line of first stanza with 1st and 3rd of second; etc., final stanza, link the short 2nd and 4th lines to the rhyme of the same lines in the first stanza. Though no meter required, I tried to sustain a rhythm where I could.

With this brief senryu I invite you to give thanks to the service personnel, active, on call, and retired, who bear with honor the burden of maintaining our freedom; and share further, if you will, one soldier’s perspective in etheree form reprised from last year ~ Thank You

Fireworks
Bright
embers
burn the sky
with toxic flames,
searing flesh and mind;
‘till veiled by joyous cries,
mem’ries retreat, careworn eyes
open to see reflected light
glow with freedom’s joy in his child’s face.
For this sight with pride he served – soldier smiles.

© 2010 Kate Sender

http://kate2world.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/fireworks-a-soldiers-view/

***

This was my first post at Writing.Com 5 years ago ~ I still think the simple senryu is relevant.

Brightest Blessings for the New Year and success and joy for the New Decade.

Kate
***

http://manga_kate.writing.com/

http://kate2world.wordpress.com

Girls’ night in
four of us will gather
in my first apartment
to commemorate landmarks
propelling us into adulthood.

Beer in Looney Tunes glasses,
served with a dollop of friendly hazing
punctuating the white noise of Monday Night Football.
Each arrival will make her grand entrance,
take center stage to celebrate -
first apartment,
first real job,
first rock-on-third-finger,
first gallery exhibition.

Somewhere between the third and fourth toast,
somnolent droning of the television changed,
demanding attention, as
Howard Cosell, in his droll gravelly voice
announced John Lennon had been shot.

Eyes locked open in stunned disbelief,
compelled to witness the unfolding horror,
nothing could be more surreal,
nothing more senseless,
nothing, until I answered the phone;
learning over noisome trilling hospital bleeps
just how the night’s miasma of evil
had reached out to touch us more viscerally.

As music lay bleeding to death in the street
our fourth lay bleeding, beaten, raped;
her spirit broken, her art destroyed,
her fire quenched at its spark.

Girls’ night in,
we wept,
mourning the landmarks
propelling us into adulthood.

© 2008 Kate Sender
First Publication: Falling Star Magazine, Summer 2008

My response:

I don’t know if it’s happiness.  What I feel when I write is wholeness. When I sculpt letters into words, then read aloud the poem I just wrote, and I can perceive it with my eyes and ears and nose and skin; when I wrap up a scene or a story and it feels real (even though it be a fantasy or speculative fiction) – I feel connected and a part  of something essential, a voice in the lyric cacophany that began before we measured time and evolves through its essence with each note that rises melodic, each leaf that sips sunlight, each seed that reaches skyward, each sparrow that soars on a whistling zephyr. 

When someone else reads those words and says, ‘hey, I can see it, I can hear it, I can feel it’ that’s sublime; my eclectic solo evoking a response from another.

When I write I live in the moment, albeit one I inscribe with my essence.  If we need a label, then I guess when I write I am happy ~ Write On!

Kate

I give thanks to Pat Dale for posing the question and the writers who each raised a pen in response ~ do check it out here http://patdalesblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/are-you-happy-with-your-writing.html

And, fellow writers, Be Happy! ~ Write On

Sweet gnomes bring ripened nuts and grain
That Undines wash with healing rain,
And Salamanders call forth fire
For Sylphs to weave a glowing pyre.

Dragons guard the joyous gathering,
Greenman dresses the Muses’ ring,
Bloom of harvested dreams dance free,
Honoring the Goddess Three.

As above, life hearkens below,
In synchrony with Mabon’s flow,
On wings of perfect symmetry
‘Neath twilight’s cerulean sky,
From chrysalis tended with care,
Butterfly rises, takes to air.

© 2010 Kate Sender

Donny Daniels once stole an ancient book from an equally ancient hermit whom some in his small town called a sorcerer. The 14-year old athlete and his kid brother, Dallas, took it out one night and he opened it, to find words written in blood, blood that was not human. Donny, apparently mesmerized by the ancient tome, did not heed his brother’s cries as Dallas was mauled and bloodied by the beings that rose hungry, to feed. Donny put on his running shoes a couple years later and left behind the whispers of folk who surmised he had killed young Dallas, and the bloody shoe prints he saw in his dreams awake and asleep. Donny ran, and kept running, from the memories and visions and dreams, leaving behind him a trail of bloody footprints wherever he stopped for a spell. Were there demons following in his wake, or had he become the demon of his dreams, guilt destroying his own chances at happiness, love, safe respite, not giving him a day of peace.

The story is brief, with each scene in the 55 pages offering visceral, sensual impact. One flinches when Donny opens a closet door and one feels with Donny his need to run from the creatures that haunt his dreams and follow him into wakefulness. This reader ponders whether Donny is acting out his own destruction imposed upon him by the loosing of the ancient demons, or whether the demons follow in his wake and directly effect the horrific deeds that daily keep him on the run. Much of the story is related in back-story and several transitions are abrupt, but perhaps the intent is to instill in the reader the confusion and sense of urgency Donny experiences as each day he wakes from a dream made manifest, and understand his need to escape the bloody violence that follows in his wake, keeping him on the run.

The visceral imagery and psychological ambiguity through Donny’s Day call to mind the early work of Ray Bradbury, as in his October Country tales. The visual and sensory images further evoke in-your-face horror films. The author, Brandon Berntson is definitely a writer to watch, and run with.

Donny’s Day, by Brandon Berntson, is available in ebook and paperback from the publisher, Damnation Books

http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615720590

Review © 2010 Kate Sender

Bright
embers
burn the sky
with toxic flames,
searing flesh and mind;
‘till veiled by joyous cries,
mem’ries retreat, careworn eyes
open to see reflected light
glow with freedom’s joy in his child’s face.
For this sight with pride he served – soldier smiles.

© 2010 Kate Sender

The soldier’s recollections are those of a friend who served in Vietnam. ~ Think this Independence Day of those soldiers, sailors, marines, guards, who make it possible for us to take joy, not fear, in the light of flames dancing in the sky ~ and thank them for their service with honor.  Brightest Blessings.

FYI ~ the poetic pattern I used is Etheree ~ Ten lines, increasing syllable count line by line, from one to ten.

Write On!

Kate

“On freshly mown grass“

I lay on my back on freshly mown grass
for a moment to savor Sun’s setting foray
marking sibilant silence of approaching night;
no white noise encroaches my space to blight;
I give thanks for the gift of this one spent day
lyrical, not harsh, with but Nature’s own delight.

I wait for the silence to speak of times past
before venturing at last into Morpheus’ domain;
I listen for their music and watch for the lights
of crickets and fireflies commencing their repast
beneath moonlit skies, breeze kissed maple limbs sway,
each movement and breath plying Earth’s delight,
present and past in my mind blend and twist…

We lay on our backs on freshly mown grass,
he listens to my dream of being star bound someday
his eyes reflect moonlight, his words encourage my flight;
‘work hard if you believe and dreams do come to pass’;
believing, I weave him our story right away
of space bound adventurers on plumes of starlight.

I smile, memory for a moment recast,
I hum with cicadas, watch shooting stars at play;
whispers of fireflies give memories real might;
I believe for a moment that hope once so vast
lives on as I write down the story I cast;
dreams kept safe by one caring heart’s refrain
until past, present and future one day I greet in the mist.

© 2006 2010 Kate Sender

In loving memory of my Dad, who kept safe my first story written at age 6 (I learned more than a decade later) in his strongbox with other ‘important’ documents like his citizenship papers. He was the first mate on my starship, and his sage advice I continue to embrace along the voyage to my writing success.