text
this body once lean and flat
has become hilly and fat
I am tired of stale advice
anything but fresh and nice
notes
Thursday's D'Verse Poets prompt requested couplets.
https://dversepoets.com/2022/09/22/mtb-two-by-two/
The Saturday Mix gave us the word pairings flat and hilly and stale and fresh.
Now, you might be thinking to yourself "how in the world is Ornery going to make that work? There aren't any Japanese poetry forms that use couplets!"
That's what I was thinking myself, but I did a little research, and there kind of is one. It's called the Kouta.
https://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/tag/japanese/
The Kouta 小唄 (little or short song) is a popular Japanese verse form of the Muromachi Period, 14th thru 16th century. The lyrical song was resurrected as a Geisha song in the late 1800s and is still popular today. The form has several variations, though always short in only 4 lines a 5th line is sometimes is added. The theme reflects ordinary life and often uses colloquialisms and onomatopoeia. The most popular are love songs. The elements of Kouta are:
a poem in 4 lines. (an occasional 5th line may appear)
a stand alone poem but often is accompanied by other Koutas with the same theme.
syllabic, variable odd numbered syllable lengths, the most common patterns are written in lines of alternating 7-5-7-5 syllables or 7-7-7-5 syllables.
secular, personal, themes of ordinary life
often includes onomatopoeia.
My brain is too tangled to think of even spelling onomatopoeia let alone trying to write a poem containing such. I also tweaked the rules a bit. Every line has seven syllables.
What's the poem about? In brief, about being a fat person just trying to live life and accept myself as I am in a society rampant with hateful messages about people who look like me, as well as all manner of unsolicited diet advice. I've written many posts about this subject so I will not go into it too deeply here, but diets don't work, in fact, for most people, they do more harm than good.
There's a place where people can put any unwanted diet advice they may have for me. It's called Where The Sun Don't Shine.
I created the Haiga with Pixlr.com and a free-use image by Bianca Van Dijk on Pixabay.
https://pixabay.com/illustrations/boho-art-female-body-woman-7450246/
It's amusing in a depressing sort of way to search for images of plus-size women. Many people seem to think that plus size means anything with more girth than a twig.
