Monthly Archives: February 2020

February 22, 2020 · 3:08 pm

The Bento Life – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

I find Asian cultures fascinating, and not least Japanese culture. There are a number of pop culture renderings of Bento, but it more closely means convenient, so a bento box lunch is merely a convenient lunch. The furishiki is a small cloth for wrapping the bento box in (these have found other uses in the west in recent years).

 

“Let things taste the way they are.”  Alice Waters

The Bento Life

Her movements were certain,
a well practiced art,
pre-prepared love in rice and duck,
she gathered all the pieces
as she gathered her thoughts
and filed them precisely
in slot after slot,
as yesterday, today, so tomorrow,
her love note
his lacquered bento box,
and as she wrapped it in the
womb of the furoshiki
and tied it well,
she knew that it was her love
alone that would hold it together.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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February 21, 2020 · 3:11 pm

Veneer – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

dVerse Poets – Open Link Night

Lillian at dVerse is hosting Open Link Night which means an opportunity to post a poem of your choice.

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Photo: Better Homes and Gardens, January 1951

 

“You can get the man out of the stone -age, but not the stone-age out of the man.”  Abhijit Naskar

 

Veneer

The old panels were tired
and out of place,
relics of the forties and fifties,
so we settled on a transformation,
new ideas, life, and colours,
it was simple really
but so effective,
though lately I’ve noticed
that the laminates are lifting
in some places and the
bakelite’s showing through,
seems that all the transformations
were just that,
insubstantial veneers,
and the laminates are surrendering,
giving way to the old once more.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

 

 

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February 20, 2020 · 2:55 pm

Time Doesn’t Matter – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

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Photo: istockphoto.com

 

“Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.”  Victor Hugo

 

Time Doesn’t Matter

Have you noticed how time doesn’t matter,
which is a truism in itself,
but not if you were hoping for
something better,
that a friendship might have meant more
by its investment of love and time
than a childish rebuttal,
a gainsay,
that bellwether of pettiness
given safe harbour in a corner
of the heart that
one day, it might sail forth
in a leaking untruth
and founder against integrity,
no, time doesn’t matter
when decades are dashed
and all that went before
sinks as if nothing had
ever existed.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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February 19, 2020 · 4:20 pm

Shred Of Life – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

dVerse Poets – Poetics – To Be A Flower

Linda at dVerse has invited us to write a poem about ourselves as a flower, what flower we do we most identify with? I have chosen a Spider Orchid.

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Photo: One of the several types of Spider Orchid found in Western Australia, Leda Reserve, 2018.

 

“The orchids grow in the woods and they let out their fragrance even if there is no one around to appreciate it.”  Confucius

 

Shred Of Life

Parched,
waiting for the sky to cry
and relieve my desiccated bones,
my rice paper skin,
a tenuous life in
an abundance of aridity,
the land of implausible possibility
where nature threatens its own
fragile existence so that
it won’t be disappointed
should its seed never smile
and celebrate a dawn,
yet here I am,
today, perhaps tomorrow,
a glorious struggle,
full of my colour
in a shred of life.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

 

 

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February 18, 2020 · 7:28 am

Falling Into You – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

dVerse Poets – Prosery

Kim at dVerse has invited us to write a prose piece of 144 words using the line “There are moments caught between heartbeats.” from a poem by Louis MacNiece titled ‘Coda.’

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Photo: http://www.wallpaperg.com

Falling Into You

There are moments caught between heartbeats, just as in those moments of solitude when one questions the point between the inward and outward breath. Or where the water I walked in earlier today, where will it be now? As to pinpointing any definitive moment, well, there is only a kind of knowing by doing, where there arise moments between seeing and feeling. Moments when time falls away and I fall into you and we float so lightly on the energy we so effortlessly generate, lighting our world with a felt glow. for a brief moment time speeds as yet it slows, a quantum of pleasure, like salmon forging upstream, we reach that point of no return, that precipice of tipping where we rise yet descend, and descend yet rise, bathed in an inner sunset, that warm glow between heartbeats falling into you.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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February 17, 2020 · 3:04 pm

Until – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

VJs Weekly Challenge – Sun

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Photo: unsplash.com

 

“Even the sun directs our gaze away from itself and to the life illumined by it.”  Eberhard Arnold

Until

The sun is just the sun
so far as the eyes are concerned
until the sun meets
horizon or cloud,
and every hue erupts,
bathing hearts with flutter,
even more so when the
sun meets your hair
offering highlights and
directing my gaze
to you.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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February 16, 2020 · 3:14 pm

Another Me – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Word of the Day – Young

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Photo: pixabay.com

 

“It takes a long time to become young.”  Pablo Picasso

 

Another Me

In the mirror I am older now,
the taut youthful skin a little sallow,
and at times my body cries to slow,
but there is another me
who resides behind my eyes,
looking out on the world
as I have always done,
the young me
who lives past age.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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February 15, 2020 · 2:46 pm

Samaritans – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

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Photo: kiisfm.iheart.com

“We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.”  Thomas Moore

 

Samaritans

They washed my fetid journey sores with
words of love and such intimate and warm
soothing smiles on their hands, that
to be held in that space without judgement was
so powerful, even the word friends is inadequate.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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February 14, 2020 · 4:13 pm

The Border Collie of the Apocalypse – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

dVerse Poets – Meet the Bar

Amaya at dVerse has invited us to write a poem as one sentence about using three rules: (1) The poem must tell a story in one sentence; (2) the poem must explore the theme of the end of civilisation, and (3) the poem must be improvised; all around the theme of the end of civilisation, while including an embarrassing moment.

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Photo: newshub.co.nz

 

“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.”  T.S. Eliot

The Border Collie of the Apocalypse

I walked the lake
as the four horsemen gathered,
portent of distance conflated,
the future was here
but we’re handing it back,
too bleak for our eyes to adopt,
but the dog cared not for an ending,
and treated himself to this walk,
the water was lower than ever before,
fewer birds than last year,
and just as I’m contemplating a
parousian finale
the dog found a friend,
and with his lunge
I’m suddenly airborne
split seconds pass me by
and I land with a thud
pride spewed over the path,
I rise with aplomb and
dust off my ending
as the young one
enquires of my health.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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February 13, 2020 · 11:12 pm

Therefore I Am – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

VJs Weekly Challenge – Product Placement

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Photo: brandchannel.com

 

“Now, product placement, whichever way you look at it …. it’s what it is.”  Daniel Craig

 

Therefore I Am

So carefully placed as to catch your ego,
normalising, vindicating, validating,
for the lost and lonely
who need a sign
from the prophets of
inspired mammon
in red and white,
or sleek carbon black,
it makes a difference to
those starving for identity
who, in the end, become
the product placed.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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