Mixed News, Mixed Views

Hariga Oil
Strike

Bearing down
Armed Factions

Facility
Excessively dovish

Legitimacy
Wreathed in scaffolding and mystery

Cocktail circuit
Exchange programme

Stubborn inflation
Saudi Kayan

Taking some fairly negative results and putting them in a positive light.

Conveyor Belt

There once was a board with four legs
It wondered it's difference from pegs
It thought and It thought
Almost to drought
Now how would it confront the kegs?

It still tried but it couldn't
creaked loud but it shouldn't
ask they who abuse
what do they find in its use
It expected an answer but - they wouldn't

Here comes our friend the board
In a massive line of recycling horde
Broken and shattered
Bruised and battered
It laid there on its own accord

Writing Activity: What Didn't Work Last Year?

For our first activity of the new year, we thought about New Year's Resolutions. I suppose resolutions are a way to purge ourselves of one bad habit or another and try to start fresh. We thought we would write about what did not work over the past year--not necessarily what is wrong with us, individually, but, perhaps, what we expected would be different than how it turned out.

Anyway, here are a few attempts...

2014, A year filled with numbers, grades, calculus and cost
as empty from motion as a patrick starfish laying on the coast
could it be a sneaky snoozy virus with me as it's host?
or am I trying to put the blame on anything to run away from my self-roast?

I know for a fact that I tried to act against it
But apparently acting has many genres other than action.
I once read the sit-ups from sleep a person does in a lifetime don't give an ab to show for it
If that were the case, I'd have had man abs on my brain burning to just...show...for...it.

time didn't work

or not right
it ran out too much
or too often

work didn't work
or it changed
and i didn't

at home i tried to do too much
went to bed late reading
woke up early

three alarm clocks rang
at three different times
i hate

i did what i had to
i spent too much money
or my wife thought i did

i didn't keep in touch
with the right people
or the wrong

i went along with it
i remember one night
in particular

i had to prepare dinner
but the ingredients were wrong
or not available

so i did the best
i could
or thought i did

my wife looked at me
out of the corner of her eye
and laughed

or said something funny
which is usually not the case
so that didn't work right either

Writing Activity: Book Title Collage

For this week's activity, we went to the library and composed writing using only the titles of books on the shelves. Try it!

black dragon crusades

shock high pop
in the cartoon history of the United States
ethnobotany in the spiritual tattoo

in New Guinea
bones apples spiders and populations
enhance student noise

hip hop matters
in music society
in business

luminous things
journey to the center of the scandalous
the wicked

Writing Activity: Compose a Villanelle

Attendance has been small recently, but the few of us who show up still play with language and still wish you were here...

This week's writing activity highlights a form of poetry that we have tried  each of the past few years: the villanelle. Here's a famous example by Elizabeth Bishop:

Read more about Elizabeth
Bishop on Wikipedia.

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Hide and Seek!

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة [1]

Eyes closed tight, face against a palm tree

حلال دم الغزال [2]

Footsteps I heard, running away.

Wings flapped above my head.

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة

I'll search the farm for siblings and cousins

A giggle here, a whisper there

حلال دم الغزال

Cracking of sticks behind a tanoor[3]

A rustle in the fields

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة

Footprints by the river

An impatient head sticking out of hiding

حلال دم الغزال

I'll find them all, as I always do.

Run to catch one, call out "you are it!"

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة

حلال دم الغزال

---

[1] One, two, three, four, five.

[2] Ready or not, here I come.

[3] An oven for making bread made of clay.

We Could Have That Conversation (a villanelle)

We could have that conversation,
Three of us
In the afternoon silence

Waiting for more rain
At the end of the day.
We could have that conversation

Once upon a time,
That shaped our dreams
In the afternoon silence,

With what noise of a clock,
A footstep, a voice that said
We could have that conversation.

With what do we welcome
The eternity in not knowing?
In the afternoon silence

We didn't. We tried to.
We gathered together and laughed.
We could have that conversation
in the afternoon silence.

Writing Activity: I come from...

Last week, writers met and started with the phrase "I come from...." The challenge asks us to consider our influences, which is more than just a place. What made you? We all come from some place, but we come from much more than that, too!

I Come From...

by Haya Al-Mannai

I come from a family of 5 children,
with 3 brothers and a sister.
I may not be the eldest,
but I was the first to graduate high school.
I come from a house on a commercial street
in neighborhood with tall streetlamps and tiny roundabouts.
I come from a city called Doha,
where traffic either drives you crazy or kills you, literally.
I come from a country in the east,
where cultures and traditions matter more than anything.
I come from a planet called Earth,
like 7 billion others.
I come from the solar system.
I’m glad we have a sun;
otherwise, we’d be dead.

I Come from Superstition

How about that?

I come from a black cat
across your path,
a rusty horseshoe
nailed above the door,
salt over your shoulder.

I'm older than you,
Friday the 13th,
your birthday wish.

I come from a broken mirror
and a four-leaf clover,
cross my heart.
I'm over the moon about it.

I walked under a ladder.
What's the matter?

I come from a union of two
who stepped on cracks in sidewalks,
they were dreaming of fish
and someone was pregnant

Writing Activity: What is Your ABP Recipe?

How do you make a good / bad student? How do you pass a test? How might you impress a teacher or get kicked out class?

Read some of our recipes below!

How to Make a Good Student?

by Shahad Abdulla

- First, add 100 ml of hope and faith

- 1 cup of attention

- 2 teaspoons of notes

- 3 cups of improving

- 2 cups of organization with a sprinkle of time-management

- 14 ounces of mind maps

- Finally, enjoy the results