The Shaker Set

Inexhaustible sunshine
Intelligently southpaw
Ideas fountained
Improvised
In technicolor vision
I’m pepper—the cheery soul

Square like a box
Stealth like a fox
In gloom I think
On society’s brink
Quick to find fault
And hate rain—like salt

Why are the bottles doppelgängers?

 

Colin Lee

colin-lee-small

Time for the biweekly 44-word obsession. Spilling out a short quadrille seems one way of identifying the bottle at hand. It’s been about a month since the last “sunny side up”. With luck, this peppery prompt from dVerse’s Quadrille #35 might just be the kick I need.

Photo Courtesy: photobucket.com

 

28 thoughts on “The Shaker Set”

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    1. Thanks, Kim. I think the picture was meant for ebay. Interesting that it ended up as a supplementary photo prompt. I like how you visualise it too, that one is emotionally reaching out to the other … like a pair of yin and yang.

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    1. Thanks, Laura. In case you wondered, the lefty was me — well, one side of me, in the swinging of moods nevertheless too mild for clinical attention. The elation, interestingly, often turns me into a lefty. At those times, while my left isn’t practised enough to write, the right finds it hard to keep up. As you may imagine, from time to time, I got calls from the bank concerning the inconsistency of my signatures. Well, if I have a choice, I’d rather stay in the more cheerful mood, even though you’ll all have to excuse my handwriting!

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  4. I like the photo of those salt and pepper shakers with the salt and pepper coming out of what would be their eyes and nose. I also like how the poem presents salt and pepper and sad and cheery doppelgängers.

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    1. Thank you, Frank. I thought of how markedly different salt and pepper are yet they’re paired up as doppelgänger shakers, which inspired me to think how we bottle up entirely different moods within us while striving not to betray the content without a good shake. Anyway, thanks for dropping by!

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  5. I like that salt is “quick to find fault.” When I was writing my poem I was thinking about using it in that context but I couldn’t make it work. I have heard it said that someone who is angry is “salty.”

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    1. Thanks for sharing. Those used to its zest sprinkle pepper sparingly, whereas salt, on the other hand, seems awfully unexciting, used out of necessity, for just enough, and never too much. While both salt and pepper bring out flavours, they do so very differently. Salt looks for gaps, intrudes micro-structures, dehydrates its targets and sucks out the juices. The way it works and how it’s used thus appealed to me as a critic persona. Albeit the fault-finding and salty emotions, I guess that’s the bright side I see from the “darker side” of moods. It’s, after all, necessary.

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  6. Outstandingly brilliant look at a paradox! Showing the interconnectedness and the intrinsic need they have for each other with such grace; you have made grand statements and asked universal questions. I’m wowed!

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  11. The Shaker Set — title seems important to me as one without the other would be incomplete.. And then comes the photo — the entwining is there. And then the southpaw cheery pepper, written on the left appropriately. And on the right is written the salt who hates rain. And then the last line — brings it all together again. Such an interesting take on the prompt!

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