Frank J. Tassone

Tag: Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

  • Recrossing the Water: a conversation with Sylvia Plath

    “It is better to light a candle then curse the darkness.” —Chinese proverb     I understand, Sylvia. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll recognize the blackness within. How it envelops us like a night sky at Mohican Center, far from firelight, where the crunch of gravel under our steps is our only evidence of…

  • For the Hunt: A Predator’s #Haibun

    Five means to meet my prey: Sight. Not my finest sense, but few match my eyes in the pitch black of a nightime jungle canopy. The slightest trace of light is all I need to make out my quarry. In spite of their vain efforts at camaflage! Hearing. The faintest crack of a distant twig.…

  • A Vernaltide Warning of my Vices and Virtues: A #TankaTuesday (on a Wednesday) #TankaProse

    Photo by Henry Be on Unsplash   “On a hot, summer night: would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?” –Meatloaf   Warning: Do not awaken my favorite vice.   For lust will pulsate through my trembling arteries with every quickened beat of a suddenly hungry heart. Do not let me imagine all of…

  • Near-Sabbatical Elegy: a #tankaprose

    Almost seven years I still hear you telling me, “grass is getting tall!” whether backyard or kitchen you knew how to work your space   The family still talks about the prime rib dishes you brought to cousin Lisa’s house Christmas after Christmas. Aquaintences I meet on the street still boast about your old restaurant.…

  • Gather Foolish Minds: A #Quadrille #haibun

      Gather, foolish minds! Never mind the fool saying, “Mind over matter. I don’t mind, so you don’t matter.”   Gather, you poets! Enscribe in fresh language that madness we call wisdom.   So gathered, we foolish minds shame the wise!     fired feast our dionesian wine awaits     for dVerse Poets Quadrille…

  • Unsurvived Life

    “One can live without having survived.” Carolyn Forche     “You’ve been living in a dream world.” –Morpheus, to Neo; The Matrix   I didn’t survive the second birth certificate. They killed me with official typeface and fresh signatures. Now, I live—shadowed within a new name. The un-memory of my only bottle feeding by my…

  • Coyote monologues Narcissus: a #TankaProse

      Don’t look at me like that! Geesh! The first time you tear your eyes away from that pond in forever, and it’s to give me an attitude?   Look, I’m a culture hero. I pulled a Prometheus, and stole fire from the sun for humanity. I practically raised the Crow myself, and I even…

  • Rebel Treatment: a #FreestyleFriday #sonnet #haibun

    photo by michael baumann, flickr     starlight listening to the frogs croaking   Revolutionary Hudson river The Dutch named your greatest width Tappan Zee. Your waters ever a generous giver, bearing fish and trade goods down to the sea. How many shots Red Coats and Patriots trade along your vast and everstretching shore? How many…