New Born King -It was Not a Silent night

Carpe Diem Seven Days to Christmas New born King

oh holy infant

fulfilling prophecy

lamb to be slain

Choka for the Christmas Story from Luke 2:4-20

our dear savior’s birth

was not a very still night

no pristine setting

no comfort or family

young maid far from home

without mother or doctor

gives birth in a cave 

amongst all the animals

no clean fresh bedding

no towels or pain medicine

just a frightened maid

and her bewildered husband

angles from another realm

spoke to herders in the fields

shepherds came to call

spreading the news of his birth

not a very silent night

for our blessed king to come

fraught with filth and noise

amongst cold and poverty

blessed by maiden’s gentle love

Christmas Play

Carpe Diem seven days to Christmas # 5 Angels

Mary and Joseph

Enter from the side aisle

her toenails lime green

his arm gingerly offered

narrator recites

old familiar passages

rickety manger

enhanced by two wide-eyed cows

sheep noisily crawl

ears flop and tails waggling

followed by shepherds

hurrying to their own tune

sweet angel faces

unsure of their position

voices raise in song

quietly filling the church

Christmas story told

as so many years before

Silent Night echoes

on the lips of the parents

innocent smiles beaming

Choka - Fireside Thoughts

Carpe Diem Ghost Writer Post #39
I was not familiar with the Choka so I have excluded an excerpt from Georgia of Bastet and Sekhmet's Library and our hosts inspiration image.

Choka were long, commemorative poems (in fact choka means the long poem) and the longest ran sometimes over 100 lines!  They were usually sung.  There were about 400 choka copied in the 8^thcentury anthology of waka entitled Man'yoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves).

The classical choka is formed by writing 5-7 syllables couplets for as many lines  as you like ending however with an extra 7 syllable line.  

©  G.s.k. ’14

Fireside Thoughts

wet snow and ice cling

branches bowed from extra weight

winter sun rises

beyond the blue mountaintop

wrapped in threadbare coat

peasant woman shuffles by

head bent against wind

hands tightly wrapped in old cloth

cheerful morning lark

chirps his gay song from treetop

yellow dog limps by

fur lightly coated in frost

I squat by my fire
stirring a can of red beans

drinking in sunlight

thoughts drifting away on smoke

oblivious to the cold