Hi and welcome to my Friday series The Hairbag Poet.

 

In the blogging world Fridays are known as Poetry Friday.  You can read about Poetry Friday here. I will plan on posting The Hairbag Poet each Friday.

You can read about the history of this series here.

Yikes, I know, I know, I have been MIA for quite some time now, but my grad school end of the year projects took up so much of my time, and to add insult to injury I decided to continue the craziness by taking an 8 week summer course.  I am a glutton for punishment. Now that school is finally out for the summer, we will be catching up with our winter aliens, but first we must catch up with our poetry, because as the Hairbag Poet, I still have so much to learn.

One thing I’ve realized about these alien characters, is what I’ve realized about most fictional characters we read about, which is, we tend to hypostatize them. For example, I have been living with Harry Potter in my house for years. My daughter has been pining to go to boarding school at Hogwarts, and waits patiently for her letter of invitation to shoot out of our fireplace. We often view our favorite characters as old friends, and believe in their existence. When Mulder and Scully of the X-Files came back on TV, it was like a high school reunion for me; we all looked a little older, but reveled in the good old days none the less.

This notion of truth in our fictional characters and stories is known as verisimilitude. Verisimilitude, according to the Poetry Foundation, is “the appearance of being true, or a likeness to truth.” It’s interesting to note that Veritaserum is Harry Potter’s magical potion of sodium pentathol. Ver, as you may or may not know, is the latin root word meaning truth or true. I think writers are often mixing truths or at least believable fiction into their writing, and we as readers love believing in them. I for one would not hesitate to touch the stones at Craigh na Dun to go back in time to meet the hunky, lovable, Scottish Highlander Jaime Fraser in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. Believable fiction is what often brings us all together at the water cooler, pining over characters that don’t exist in real life. I guess we can all dream a little…

I hope you enjoy these posts. Thanks for stopping by and reading, and please feel free to post your own poetry in the comments if you feel inspired by the photographs. I always love reading other peoples perspective on “art”.

The Hairbag Poet

Space Sled

My offspring and I
are still stranded in Maine,
in this snowy cold land,
with its icy terrain.

We fear that the double clawed creatures
are spies,
Led by a cold, creepy
smoking old guy.

They’ve been lurking about
at the shore,
on the pier.
They’re tracking our movements
with high tech spy gear.

Our Wand of All Knowledge,
that’s fixed with a chip,
has picked up a message
from our mothership.

Our spacecraft is coming,
the rendezvous’ far,
so we hijacked this space sled,
like human, snow car.

Our Wand of All Knowledge
will guide our descent
down the snowy cold banks,
over frozen cement.

The spies sense our movement.
We see them approach.
We fasten the reigns
of our horseless sled coach.

They are closing in fast
on my offspring and I.
If only this red, plastic, chariot
could fly!

We zoom down the hill
icy spray coats our face
our sled gathers speed
at a breathtaking pace.

This Olympic like race
draws the smoking man near
in this steeplechase, face-to-face
tense atmosphere.

Our ship’s up ahead,
but the sled’s slowing down.
The angry clawed spies
begin making ground.

My offspring is caught,
clamped in double clawed jaws.
My Wand of All Knowledge
fires magnetopause.

The clawed beasts scream out,
releasing my offspring,
but smoking man grabs him
and locks him in coiling.

The Wand of All Knowledge
takes aim at this foe,
and blasts him 10 feet
into piles of snow.

I uncoil my offspring,
and remount my sled.
These humans are crazy!
They want us for dead.

Two miles to go.
The ships lights are in sight,
but ahead I am blinded
by two bright flashlights.

“Stop! FBI!”
Come two voices
quite dully
from the X-Files two agents
called Mulder and Scully.

“We’ve been to your ship,
and we know who you are,
and we’d like to assist you
back home to your star.”

My offspring and I
were relieved to find friends
on this hostile, cold planet
of clawed beasts and men.

“Greetings to you
Mr. Mulder, Ms. Scully,
your kindness is felt
in my three chambered zulli.”

“We’ve heard of your work,
and we plead you take care,
in your search of the truth,
for the truth is out there….”

“Now it’s time we depart
back to X-241,
to our planet Ogda,
that is warmed by one sun.”

“One day we’ll return,
but for now we’ll take leave,
but we want you to know
it’s ok to believe.”