Mine mother had 3 sisters and 1 brother
All of em’ had married young
Not because they hada
All of em’ had more than 3 children
Cept mine mama she had only 2
Mama N tem’
Cook ta gether
Mama N tem’
Wore them girdles wit the clasp
Mama N tem’
As children took ole creek baths
Mama N tem’
Made homemade cornbread and gravy
Soups and canned veggies, fruits, and meats
Baked apple pies N peach cobbler
And placed them on the window sills
OH! WOW still smell the aroma
All of em knew how to sew
And when they when out on the down boy did they glow
Dressed to the nine’s even past tens
Walk past all types of men’s
Better not cross Mama N tem’
They could be in the garage, you’ld be in the living room
They could hear a pin, a bobby-pin drop
Yeah! Even some of them as girls tended crops
A displenarian they would woop that butt
You be cryin they tell ya, to shut up
Now mama N tem’ would say their prayers
While combing, braidN, washN your hair
B on the porch watch ya walk to school
No one better bother her child, don’t be no fool
My mama knew ya mama betcha’ they do?
12/13/21
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2021©
Categories:
hada, analogy, character, family, mother,
Form: Dramatic Monologue
Giving
Haiku: by Miracle Man
11/15/2021
I do for others
because it makes me happy,
also makes God smile.
“The fragrance always stays,
in the hand that gives the rose.”
Hada Bejar
Categories:
hada, giving,
Form: Haiku
The task commissioned,
the black sand tested,
deemed worthy
of hard use.
A sword-smith's prayer
lifts aloft to the Shinto shrine
requesting his soul be captured
in the mirrored grain
of this, his finest blade.
An earthen furnace raging,
flames licking the entrance.
To smelt, to cleanse,
charcoal carbon to mix,
breathing strength
into raw tamahagane.
Shingane, kawagane,
one brick of each.
feeding the mouth
of a greedy forge.
Regurgitating and melting,
making pliable these.
Leathered craftsman hands
drive out flaws and sparks,
hammering, bending,
meticulously folding
thirty-thousand times.
Tired and spent,
black eyes linger
over the polished steel,
to inspect and examine,
acknowledging a masterpiece.
Now, commission completed,
his motive revealed.
with an unthinkable descent;
momentum for a sickening plunge,
as his own life force
runs red the reflective hada.
Categories:
hada, life,
Form: Free verse