haikai

A Lycanthrope’s Confession: A #TankaTuesday #TankaProse (1/22/19)

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Ask your question. Go on.

Ask how I could do it. How I could shed my own skin, forsake my species and run with the wolves. Ask how I could rage under a blood moon, an animal’s growl erupting from me like a long-restrained geyser.

Are you certain you want the answer?

Perhaps you can bear the utter indifference, as though a frigidity of the heart were no more than a winter’s turn of weather. Perhaps you can endure the cyclone of desolation such apathy brings. I cannot. I’ve shattered my heart too often against these endless droughts of compassion, including those for which I was culpable. I’ve turned such a polite, blind eye to the suffering in my midst. No more.

You can go on pretending. I shed my skin and embrace the wild. It’s the last compassion left untainted by hypocrisy.

There, you have your answer. Now, leave me to my hunt. I hear the howl of my brothers. The moon shines bright along the snowy trail. I go and join the hunt. Go and join your own.

blood moon

and the panicked eyes

of hunted deer

the desperate cry

of an untended child

for Colleen’s 2019 Weekly #Tanka Tuesday #Poetry Challenge No. 120, “Cold & Storm,” #SynonymsOnly

RonovanWrites #Weekly #Haiku #Poetry Prompt #Challenge #237 Answer&Question

dVerse Poets’ Tuesday Poetics: Shed some light on this today (pubtended by lillian)

Categories: haikai, haiku community

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Published by Frank J. Tassone

Husband, Father, Writer, Teacher. American Haijin. Because Haikai matters!

36 replies »

  3. I think you and Toni are on a bit of a wavelength, Frank! That blood moon has inspired you both. I love that you’ve written from the werewolf’s perspective and directly address the reader. I love the sentence: ‘Ask how I could rage under a blood moon, an animal’s growl erupting from me like a long-restrained geyser’ and the phrase ‘winter’s turn of weather’. And such a chilling ending.

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  4. Wow! Just wow! The prose section is absolutely searing. The questions….the despair and then decision and resoluteness. And the ending…Kim is right…it’s just chilling. The innocent deer….and the innocent child. Humanity (or inhumanity) and natures survival of the fittest side by side. A powerful write!

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  13. “I shed my skin and embrace the wild. It’s the last compassion left untainted by hypocrisy.” Embracing the primal is a scary thought for most yet you embrace it with a feeling of purity. It is exhilarating yet frightening at the same time. Am I mistaken but are the wolf’s eyes and yours just a teensy similar?

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  15. Pingback: Colleen’s 2019 #Tanka Tuesday #Poetry Challenge Recap No. 120, “Storm & Cold,” #SynonymsOnly – Colleen Chesebro ~ The Faery Whisperer

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