The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

Throw open the shutters, roll in the grass, double the whiskey in your coffee, raise your hands to the wind!  This is the thread to load up with every thought you have or may generate, deep into the warm blackness surrounding the festival fires.   No inhibitions – make the verse!!

 A four & twenty poem is NO MORE THAN four lines, and NO MORE THAN twenty words.  A biting three line Kerouac Haiku is perfect, a twistingly pristine American Sentence works as well.  A real haiku or senryu?  Yes.  And more – the form is loose enough to hold your mightiest condensed elucidations.  So get to it.  Experimental – you bet your bloomers.  

[For the gray-beard refugees from MWC, you might recall that 4+20 was the most successful Poetry Challenge in the history of MWC – 147 entries.  No shit.]

How about we set a MSPF goal of 100?  Who’s in?  Everyone of course.  I bet every taker that we set a new Tangled Branch record!!
 

'Loving you', Minnie Riperton
Summer 1974, her words were mine.
13, innocently adoring you
unsatisfied, you left, wanting more...slut. 


 

.


Khakis, he descends stone steps alone 
dark around his black hair
the night 
a compass twins appetites with survival smells.
 

Last August the lake sat piss-warm,
no rain. Bilious green, frog sex and e-coli.
This summer, chlorine winking blue.

    [psst -- two less carriage returns]

I fall behind when walking up
a spiral stair, my final daily destination
The cat is fed -- the dogs brushed.

Again

We open.

We soak oils to preserve our thinnest image—
a moment between young & old.

We crease, we fold.

Tracy Mitchell wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:56 pm

    [psst -- two less carriage returns]

Ha! Thanks T! So Rusty cannot even do a 4/20.

Got hung up on word count, forgot to format. Will edit, thanks!

Tim J Brennan wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 11, 2018 8:17 am

Again

We open.

We soak oils to preserve our thinnest image—
a moment between young & old.

We crease, we fold.

 

In desert states it's always hot
Arab Springs sprung, then
sprang back. We can protest here, and
keep our heads!