writing exercises

A cinquain

Song
Bird Song
Chirping, trilling, warbling
waking me at dawn.
Listen


Suggestion: take a human emotion and describe it using five senses.
see, hear, feel, taste, smell.
Here are my efforts with some words I've been thinking about.

Impatience
The taste of impatience is sour apples.
It smells like a burning forest
Feels like loose threads all over me.
Sounds like Koinsquatsi
Has the look of my cluttered desk
Impatience--Must get over it.

Compassion
Squatiing against the brick wall, looking hopeful,
A whining request for spare change assaults my ears
A torn heart, closed mind and pocketbook. Passes by
Makes sawdust of my sandwich that smells homeless
Compassion doesn't breed generosity.

Generosity
Would the silent sound
of dollars dropping
into the dingy hand of
the unwashed person
Make my heart grow like the Grinch's?
Make my food taste like ambrosia?
Generosity for starngers.

Lojong Slogans: Tibetan Buddhist slognas used as reminders on how to awaken our hearts in the midst of day-to-day life.

I choose: ABANDON ANY HOPE OF FRUITION
The key instruction is to stay in the present. Don't get caught up in the hopes of
what you'll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future.
What you do right now is what matters. Be in the present.

After writing for fifteen minutes why I can or cannot abandon any hope of fruition; I write these senryus--three line Japanese poems similar to haiku but focused on human nature.

Abandon any hope
Of gaining control of it
Optioal return


My wandering mind
Refuses the present task
Abandoning it all.


Abandon any hope,
I can't do that; says my mind.
Stay in the present.

I wander away
Wondering how to focus
Abandon not hope

I wander away
Returning as an option
Abandon not hope.