The Coffee Shop is an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.
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This is an open thread. There are several hosts, each host being responsible for picking a “theme of the day” and starting the discussion. However, there is no hard and fast rule about staying on topic, especially if you have a personal story burning a hole in your pocket trying to escape.
Pictures and videos are welcome in the comments. If photos are used, please be sure you own the copyright. We would rather see your personal photos anyway, rather than random stuff copied from the internet. Our only request is that if you use pictures or videos, take pity on those who don’t have broadband, and don’t post more than two or three in a single comment.
This is an Open Thread. Grab your cup, pull up a chair, sit a spell and share what’s on your mind today.
One Sentence Poems
One Sentence Poems is a website that showcases – you guessed it – one sentence poems.
Here’s how they explain it:
“This site publishes one-sentence poems every other day. Please send us your one-sentence poems. All poems are copyrighted by their respective authors. Once published here, rights revert back to the authors. If they appear elsewhere, we ask for acknowledgment of first publication by One Sentence Poems. Ask your doctor about One Sentence Poems. If any one of these poems lasts more than 4 hours, go to your local emergency room.”
I find it really remarkable how much poetry you can get into a single sentence. Here are some recent examples:
Iowa Gourmet Coffee Shop
.
Nose rings
in poetry slam
meet
seed caps in
pinochle game.
- by G. Louis Heath, who teaches at Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa.
Discovery Channel
.
Whale dreams chart
our Earth’s curve.
- by Brent Goodman, who is an MFA poet turned haiku poet turned invisible poet living in Wisconsin’s Northwoods with his foldable mountain bike and three rescued cats.
Early Buds
.
Slow
footsteps
stop
.
just
outside
the
door:
.
anti-
terror
units
.
in half-
face
masks
and
bulletproof
vests.
- by Howie Good, whose eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards.
American Insomnia
.
Sweet sleep, I know you
the way that a blind man is
said to know the moon
- by Abigail Johnson, who is a student at the University of Virginia, and when she is not writing, she particularly enjoys drinking miso soup and identifying moss.
Black and White
.
If I told my three-year-old nephew,
the earth is square,
he’d believe in rotating corners,
the edge of the world,
and bounce plastic boxes
instead of balls.
- by Kristina England, who lives, writes, hikes, and sails in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Chinese Lantern
Pretty ball of red
burns from within—
unrequited,
unseen
- by Kay Pillai, who used to live somewhere in India every day, till she drowned in a fairy tale.
A little food for thought for a May Monday, which is Victoria Day in Canada, to go with your cuppa.
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
That one about sweet sleep rings my bell. I finally went to sleep about 3:00AM. Sleep has been elusive for me ever since my wife died five years ago, then losing Brandi last year has not helped. Cajun coffee is perking and maybe I can jump start my brain this morning after a couple of cups.
Wish I had a plate of fresh warm biegnets from the Café du Monde in the Vieux Carré (French Quarter of NOLA).
Sympathies Chuck on the sleep issue – insomnia has long been a problem for me too. I think mine comes from being a Night Owl in an Early Bird society.
Ah, the nightmares of diagramming sentences in fifth and sixth grade return.
LOL ghotiphaze – The worst part of any English class – and in my not-so-humble opinion, the most useless. I’m a firm believer that you learn how to write well by reading lots of great writers.
I had a 10th grade English teacher named Miss Bixler who was obsessed with diagramming sentences. I have always been a pretty good wordsmith, even back then, but never did learn to diagram properly. She could care less how a kid wrote. Her big thing was whether the student could diagram the sentences in the essay. She did not like me, especially after I pressed her to explain the purpose of diagramming. She said it was to make us write better sentences. I asked her if Shakespeare learned to diagram. That was probably the wrong question to ask.
I have had three truly bad teachers when in public school. Miss Bixler was one of the worst. She was a sour looking older woman. Looking back, I suspect she was OCD.
Chuck – I’ve had similar run-ins with less-than-stellar teachers – almost inevitable, if you have a working brain!
My first-ever “B” in English was from a HS teacher who didn’t like my response to the essay question on the semester exam. It was about “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” – Did I think it was Fate or Chance that those particular people were on the bridge when it collapsed?
I said Life gives us Choices, which are our “Fate,” but then we choose which path to take, so it wasn’t entirely Fate that they were there, but it wasn’t mere Chance either. She asked for my opinion, and then lowered my grade because I didn’t give her the either-or answer she wanted.