Poetry, Earthquake in Haiti and Relief Efforts

The news has been abuzz today with follow-up stories on the earthquake in Haiti. I wrote a Twitter poem about the earthquake:

Fragile ships
on waves of land.
Houses folded.
Fairy tales
fallen off the walls
& only we
can put Haiti
back together again.
~

You can view photos of the aftermath of the earthquake here and here.

For the latest updates on the Haitian earthquake relief efforts, visit the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies at http://www.ifrc.org/ or follow the Red Cross on Twitter at @RedCross.

In the US, to donate $10 to the Red Cross for the Haitian relief effort, text "HAITI" to 90999 . Or make a donation in the amount of your choice via the Red Cross website: http://american.redcross.org/haiti

It could have been any of us in a natural disaster. What if that was your home shattered and your family injured? If we don't help, who will?

a.k.a. Microscopic Stories

I decided I wanted to write books when I was in the third grade. My class was assigned the task of writing a one-page story using our spelling words. That's when I first realized that I could create these wondrous story-things that I enjoyed so much and share that joy with others.

I was in high school before I started dabbling in poetry. I had always thought poetry was mysterious and confusing, but in the 9th grade, I realized not all poetry was incomprehensible. Some poems were like little microscopic stories, and if I could write pages and pages of stories, I could write a tiny little poem!

So far this year, my poetry seems to have taken on a new life in the form of even smaller poems - Twitter poems. Updates on Twitter are limited to 140 characters, so I only have a few words to say everything in the poem. There is also a fairly active poetry community developing on Twitter. Followers of the Writers Digest Poetic Asides blog chime in on "Poetry Tuesdays" using the hastag #poettues and poets post their Twitter poems using #poetweet. You can find me on Twitter @anahbird. Here are a few of my twitter poems for those of you who do not use Twitter:


(1)
Red sun.
Pink clouds.
Purple sky.
Golden star.
Twilight
stamped with memory
like a fading aurora.


(2)
Ohmm -like a monk.
Words tumble from image.
You shroud yourself
in peace amidst shattering chaos.
But photos don't tell lies.


(3)
Funny little man.
Tongue tied in knots.
Loud, proud and arrogant.
Defeated by silence.


(4)
Heavy.
Like black iron fog.
Tiptoeing upon you.
Stealing the new-found sun.
The gravity of mortality.