This week I worked on poems that started off as phrases or sentences that I picked up here or there. I have been writing down 5-syllable phrases for a while and some poems started off with items from that list.

A couple of others that I did were derived from the autocorrect function of my phone. Try it:

• Type in a word, keep it.
• Type another one and select from the auto options.
• Keep going, filling in words of your own as you feel like it. Later, when you revisit the “poem”, you can polish it into a shape, I guarantee it.

All right. Before we get going, I will show you scenes of my basement re-do project. As I said in earlier weeks, since I don’t go out to do the Marathon anymore, I have no photos from the sites to show you. So, my basement project has been standing in.

Things are pretty much finished. I need to paint the steps into the room. I will do that after my husband does some minor repairs to a door frame. Otherwise, the room is as it will be. I had decided to move my painting/”messy” artwork set-up into this room. We are re-doing my upstairs studio area and putting in a new floor there. That room will be my desk area/clean art room now.

These changes came about since my husband is permanently working from home and the functions of the rooms needed to be amended to make things more comfortable for us.

Take a look. Here is a view from the steps:

• 

• 

Here is my husband’s beautifully-organized tool storage area:

And here are a couple of shots of the art area. I think the only thing I am now waiting for is a task lighting lamp I have ordered, for the work table. And I plan to hang some of my paintings on the walls, but that is for later. Right now I am enjoying the clean look the room has.

All right, let’s get to poems.

This is one of those phone poems.

The Question is Pestering Me

Why’d we have to get a little more comfortable
Ho’d we limber up our stiff joints
to habituate our shapes to the armchair
settle heavy into the cushions
circular in form
like cats
Why’d we do that
and us not even having the explanation of
actually being cats
Yes
why did we?

It got so comfortable so fast.
Everyone said
we hadn’t planned for
the boredom
though
to be honest
it never came along.

When exactly was it? when
we understood
what we are is

We are cats.

Two haiku about love. I think. The phrases that inspired the poems were “it can be arranged” and “a romantic man”.

6b.
it can be arranged –
a pint of ripe strawberries
a love triangle

6c.
a romantic man
like many others he writes
awkward poetry

I have been sewing – clothing, toys, quilts, curtains, pillows – you name it – for about 55 years. My mother was an accomplished seamstress and I learned from her. The pinking shears were, and still are, my favorite scissors. I love the cut they make and the sound of the fabric as it goes into the blades. Yes, it is a different sound than a pair of straight shears makes.

Anyway, to me, the sight of a pinked edge is very pleasant. In my childhood, before I learned to sew myself or could use these scissors, I had a prized collection of small fabric scraps cut with pinking shears, gleaned from the floor of the sewing room.

Now you know the background of this haiku. “Pinking shears” was the original phrase.

5.
pinking shears snip snick
serrated edges part ways
the floor claims the scraps

Thank you for reading!