my burmese than-bauk

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with haiku line

yet with fine change

makes mine than-bauk

~ sld

 

Jason A. Muckley, Poems for Warriors, recommends “a simple and fun, epigram-like poetic form to try your hand at during National Poetry Month… the Burmese Than-bauk.” His poem, Everywhere, can be found here.

“The Than-bauk is a Burmese poetic form with simple rules:
– Three-line poem (Tercet), but you can string together multiple stanzas to form a longer poem
– Four syllables per line
– The final syllable of the first line rhymes with the third syllable of the second line and second syllable of the third line.

Here’s a visual representation of rhyming syllables for each line:

xxxa
xxax
xaxx

The poem is written traditionally like an epigram, so it is sometimes a clever or witty poem.”

 

a novel thing to do

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Thought I’d do something novel this month :o)

Decided it’s more than time to complete the book I began on November 1, 2017, if only to keep my promise to my dear friend, Ruth (of Silver Screenings fame).

So, as I make good use of my copy of The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing: A 16-step program guaranteed to take you from idea to completed manuscript, the adventure begins again.

Here’s a snippet from my nanonovel entitled, Pages . . .

Emily quietly slipped unnoticed from the living room, into the kitchen, towards the back stairs, away from the gathering of friends, family. So many friends. So much laughter. Yet another “do-you-remember-the-time-when-Sid…” story faded as she climbed the steep stairs. A smirk curled the left corner of her lips as the threadbare steps began playing their ancient melody.

Her aunt’s voice rose above the others. “Does anyone want more coffee?”

A chorus of cheering voices.

“And all the people said, ‘Amen.’”

More cheers.

It had been years since Emily stood in this house, in this doorway. Grandpa Sidney’s library remained the same, its compact quarters still stuffed to the gunwales with books, magazines, maps. It reminded her of the man himself. Comfortably neglected. He always seemed to have a button loose or missing, mismatched socks.

She squared the jumble of newspapers decorating the armchair, dropped them on the footstool and sank into the familiar comfort of the worn chocolate-brown velvet icon. Leaning her cheek against the wing of the chair, she could still smell his cologne. Wood. Spice. And of course, cognac.

On the oak table next to her, partially covering a water stain, rested a copy of “William,” the Conqueror! [I.E. W. E. Gladstone.] a Jubilant Jubilee [In Verse]. by “Jove.”. Gladstone.

A yellowed page of her grandpa’s stationery fell onto her lap as she opened the book. Puzzled, she turned it over. A child’s printing. A poem.

She smiled.

It was the first poem that Grandpa Sidney had made her memorize.

“If you’re cold, Tea will warm you.
If you’re too heated, it will cool you.
If you’re depressed it will cheer you.
If you’re excited it will calm you.”

The paper blurred.

He’d kept it.

What a dear, sweet man.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wonder what shall happen with Emily and her Grandpa Sidney’s books? You and me, both.

Stay tuned . . .

today’s good word is “stable”

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stable

I’m loving the sound of it.

This is the first time since June of 2016 that I’ve had that particular word spoken to me in the context of MRIs.

Nothing’s bigger, nothing’s new.

And nothing is quite like hearing my radiation oncologist talking about “in a year from now when you’ve been stable for that time, we can start spacing out your scans from every two months to four or more.”

In a year.

Someone’s talking about me and the future in the same sentence.

Nothing like it.

And there was nothing like laughing with my primary oncologist this past Friday when she smiled and joked, “So, you must be here for a well baby visit.” Have to admit she took me off guard and it took a moment – I’m certainly not with child – then I got it. We didn’t have any cancer concerns to discuss so I must be there for some other reason. :o)

Nope, nothing like it.

And there’s nothing like having this new reason to be carrying around the beautiful words, “thank you,” in my heart and on my lips.

minding my own isbn

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[front cover]

[back cover]

I created this collection of 25 chiropractic/health-related activity pages a few years ago as a pediatric patient education program. The original version was a digital file formatted so chiropractors could choose which individual activities they wanted to use when and be able to print as many copies as they needed.

That format seemed like a good idea at the time, but because of the challenges my own chiropractor had with it, I came to realize it was too complicated and time-intensive for his office staff to implement, to maintain.

After ruminating about it for longer than I care to admit, it occurred to me that if I could make it into a printed book that could be offered at a reasonable price, then the project might be salvageable. As a result, for the last three or so weeks, I’ve been redesigning it.

Voila! The Stratespines Activity Book is available as a 6×9 paperback on Lulu.com. (To see a preview of it, click here.)

And now for the “call to action” part of my post . . .

If you have/know a chiropractor, I’d love it if you would print this PDF flyer and share it with him/her!

Along with my lifelong gratitude, if you let me know you’ve done it (by saying so in the comments below), I’ll create some sort of arty thing as a thank you gift, probably a portrait of you and/or someone(s) of your choice, in doodlehead-style (to see an example click here). :o)

Here’s to new ventures! clink!