Our world is alive with public declarations, territorial admonitions and artistic explorations, scribbled, scratched, stencilled and daubed, bombed and tagged on toilet walls, buildings, trains, bridges and the underground. Simple words chipped on ancient tombs, elaborate murals sprayed with paint, angry political cartoons drawn with marker, some in monochrome, others fluorescent, we leave semi-anonymous traces […]
Leap of Faith
so many haiku between cliff and eternity into the unknown Kim M. Russell, 12th November 2019 My response to Carpe Diem #1779 Cliffs of Moher: a tribute to Jane Reichhold Today our inspiration comes from a haiku written by Hamish Managua Gunn (a.k.a. Pirate), a tribute to Jane Reichhold: the temptation at the chalk cliff […]
Dark Chocolate
The day was blackly overcast, rain fell steadily, and Alice hadn’t seen a soul all day, not even her nosy neighbour. She’d almost given up hope, when the doorbell rang. In the hallway, she screwed up her eyes, trying to identify the silhouetted outline in the patterned glass of the front door. The bell rang […]
I could never get the hang of perspective
As a child, art was my first love; I drew, chalked and painted freehand, thinking I knew it all. Then came the lesson on perspective. I couldn’t see the point in the distance where all the lines joined up. My landscape of road and houses was lopsided, a landslide tumbling down a non-existent mountain. A […]
Haiku for Cats
Holding up my purring cat to the moon I sighed. Jack Kerouac rain on the window cup of hot tea in my hand purring with the cat Kim M. Russell, 11th November 2019 My response to Carpe Diem #1778 Free-styling haiku In a new episode of Carpe Diem’s ‘Never Change A Winning Team’ month, in […]
Basho’s Journey
coming to the eye especially at this time May’s Mount Fuji rising in a clear blue sky […]
At the crossroads of summer and autumn
between passing moons even the fish are waiting in cricket silence between passing moons constellations are clearer cosmic dot-to-dots even the fish are waiting beneath frosted leaves the pond hesitates in cricket silence autumn performs her striptease distant thunderclap Kim M. Russell, 9th November 2019 My response to Carpe Diem #1777 Classical and non-classical in […]
Burnished
How many brass lamps must be burnished before my wish is granted? Not even the golden lamps of autumn are furnished with a genie to do my bidding. And heaven has so many stars on which I’ve wished, all silver, like the moon, which gave me seven lines that rhyme, and this poem can be […]
Dark Future
You go to sleep and wake to a steady drip and wonder if it’s radioactive or pure and clear, like the streams you once knew. Above ground, no fresh water remains: no trace of rain or cloud or sky. There is just the twilight of your cave, the weak rays that find their way through […]
The Authenticity of Autumn
Woodland paths glimmer in the breath of dawn and shadows withdraw, musky miasmas of mulch. Leaves spin, dizzy helicopters, colours bright as fire, until they land in a dog-pile and rot underfoot. Wracked with weather scars, ancient trees slow, branch and root, their fissures adorned with fungus and spiralling mushrooms of sulphurous yellow, orange and […]
writing in north norfolk 