“Feeling Vegetal” for Let’s Hit Rewind

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This is what I wrote in my blog 10 years ago on this date. The prompt that day was “Vegetal” and this was the definition given: of or relating to that pole of the ovum or embryo that contains the less active cytoplasm, and frequently most of the yolk, in the early stages of development. “vegetal cells” But, I rather suspected it could also have another definition.  I was right, so:

Feeling Vegetal
You’re talking about ovum, embryo and yolk?
This early in the morning? I think that it’s a joke.
I thought that I’d collected every word to do my bidding,
but I’ve never heard this word before. Vegetal? You’re kidding.
Biology was never my favorite class in college,
so I guess it must have sort of limited my knowledge.
But now I know that vegetal means relating to plants,
I’m sure I’ll use it widely—every time I have the chance.
My grocery cart? Most vegetal, now that I’m on a diet.
My garden very vegetal, I see as I walk by it.
And if I get lazy, just sitting on my bum,
I’ll say “I’m feeling vegetal” to all my friends who come
to pull me out to walk or dance or just exit my door.
“Vegetal” is a handy word. Have you any more?

“The Awakening” for Classic Material

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This is what I was writing 8 years ago on this date..Nov. 9.

The Awakening

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The Awakening

She woke to a whiff of Darjeeling—that gentle caress to her nostrils that told her that Lorenzo had awakened early today. She could feel the press of his body on his side of the bed as he lay the tray there, ready for her when she was ready for it. He would not disrupt her, knowing all too well how she loved her Saturday mornings away from the press of the paparazzi and the demands of the fashion world.

On any other day, it wouldn’t be feasible to sleep in, but in addition to being a weekend, this was her birthday. She fell again into a sleep where there was no good reason for fantasy.  Her own life was fabulous enough to be replicated in dreams. Both children grown and off to their own fairytale lives: Francesca in Crete with her minor royalty husband, Sebastian a skillful artist flying from one country to the next to fulfill the long list of commissions that stretched out to infinity.

All-in-all, she herself had lived out all her childhood fantasies and only now had it become feasible to start to delegate tasks—grooming some of her most talented protégés to take over the designing and running of her couturier salon. Time to lie back and take it easy and let Lorenzo pamper her in all the ways he knew so well.

She stretched luxuriously, reaching her arm up to hit against the silk of her padded headboard, but strangely, hit instead against wood. Curious.  She opened her eyes. Light leaked into the room from between bent venetian blinds. Where was she? On the edge of the bed, a slightly paunchy old man with a day’s stubble on his cheeks sat studying the center foldout of a magazine he held at arm’s length. As she stirred, he looked up from it, his eyes widening in surprise. “Essie?”

She looked down at her own wrinkled hands, extending from the sleeve of a cheap pair of pajamas. She stroked her cheeks, dry and wrinkled , and wiped a small line of drool from the corner of her mouth. “Where am I?” Her voice felt as flaky and dry as her skin, her throat almost choking with the words.

“Yer here in Elm Gap,” he said, “where we’ve always been. Essie, do you remember what happened, yer slipping on the ice and falling sideways against the water tank?  Do you remember anythin’, Essie, of the twenty years since then?”

“Twenty years? I’ve been asleep for twenty years? What of Lorenzo and Francesca and Sebastian? Where are they?”

“They’re right here, Ma, waiting for you as usual,” a straw-haired woman said from the corner of the room. She, like her father, was rounded and nondescript—a thirtyish childlike frumpy creature much like the girl Essie had been. She was patting a tall pile of romance novels. “I been reading them to you for twenty years, Ma. You woke up just in time, cuz Ladonna LaRue, their author, just died and there won’t be any more.  But now you won’t be needing her life any more, because you’ve returned to your own. We always knew you’d return to us, Ma. This is your lucky day. And ours.

 

The prompt words today were skill, disrupt, whiff and feasible. Matt’s prompt was to create a simulated world.  Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/rdp-friday-skill/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/09/fowc-with-fandango-disrupt/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/whiff/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/daily-addictions-2018-week-44/feasible
For Daily Inkling’s Simulation Theory.

“A Hospital Visit” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle, Nov 8, 2026

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A Hospital Visit

A cluster of wildflowers stuck in a jar,
partially withered, though the words never are.
“To Mommy with luv,” forms a bridge from the heart
of a boy who’s been wicked––naughty from the start.
Now he waters the flowers and winds up in the bed
that’s the realm of his mother, and where she is led
to plant on his temple those rewarding kisses
to remind him that he is the terror she misses.

 

For The Sunday Whirl, the prompt words are: stuck water words winds wither still cluster bridge spell wicked temples realm. Illustration created with help of AI.

“Other People’s Children” For Blast from the Blog, Nov 7

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Other People’s Children

Rowdy jostlers—twisters, hoppers.
Shouting loudly, upsetting shoppers,
they run up aisles and spar with hangers.
Turn shopping cart races into bangers.

They bark our shins, assault our ears,
yet no one stops these mannerless dears;
for the behavior others find so irksome,
the parents merely view as quirksome.

 

This is what I wrote on this date ten years ago!

Universal Cure, for The Throwback Edition

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Universal Cure

For all the world’s diseases and all life’s little ills
they’ve been inventing medicines, elixirs, syrups, pills.
But those crafty bacteria, viruses and germs
keep running on ahead of us as we come to terms
with ways to counteract them. They’re crafty little mites
who somehow slip inside of us through food or air or bites.
So in spite of all our science—our test tubes and our beakers,
all that malevolent mini-world just don their little sneakers
and keep on evolving a little bit ahead.
Enough to keep us sneezing or roiling in our bed.
And as for a panacea—a cure to conquer all—
although you have not asked for it, still I’ll make a call.

I’m rather sure that there will never be a
panacea.

 

What was I doing 9 years ago today? writing the above poem. Here reblogged for today’s Throwback Edition.

 

“Sharp Ending”” For dVerse Poets

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Painting by Georgia O’Keefe

Sharp Ending

My sharp edges here revealed
are products of wounds left unhealed
by one once foremost in my heart,
accepted from the very start,
who recently reversed direction
and withdrew the fond affection
he’d professed for countless years,
now classified as in arrears.

The corner streetlamp has lost its light,
like that affection, now out of sight,
circling around its plight
and bleeding scarlet in the night.

The dearest love is thus allowed
to hide itself behind a cloud
that provides the night’s collusion
in this act of dissolution

In which I have not played a part,
except for furnishing the heart
that you have left with sharpened edges
from those broken former pledges
created not from knife or swords,
but rather from those stabbing words
with which you faded out of sight
on that rainy autumn night

when you gave a snort and cough,
and then decreed I should fuck off!
Hardly a kind parting word,
but like the rest of you––absurd!!!

oops.. the timeline for posting this ended while I was writing it, so here it is for 

Open Link Night

 

 

Big, Big World: WP Daily Prompt, Nov 5, 2016

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Big, Big World: for “Let’s Hit Rewind” Nov 5, 2016-2126

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Big, Big World

Remember when your world was new
how in the world surrounding you
everything seemed bigger then?
It often seems that way again
when we see things nostalgically,
for memory boosts them mightily.
Our mother’s lap or father’s knee
becomes a world–a rolling sea
as we remember rocking there—
a child traveling in their care.

The rooms of childhood were immense,
and all the traumas more intense.
Curtailed play and spilled ice creams
were tragedies expressed by screams.
Time stretched out like a highway then,
however short time might have been
for parents, who saw us grow up quickly.
Time surrounded us more thickly.

The days of summer passed so slow
from sunrise up to candle glow.
Voices echoed in failing light
as we took that last long flight
down the road from England’s hill.
It seemed to last for hours until
we reached the bottom and pedaled home
under that vast dimming dome
that soon the starlight would fill in
until the slow sun rose again.

The night was darker and longer then,
as we contemplated sin
that our prayers brought to mind,
and that inevitably would wind
into our dreams to swell and swell
until they became a hell—
our terrors spreading in the night
until our moms turned on the light,
still maintaining they weren’t there at all
as they followed her back down the hall.

All things were large when we were small–
those tiny cuts, that minor fall.
A childish spat heartbreaking when
you could have been where they were then
but couldn’t because you’d had a fight.
and they were wrong and you were right!

And though  rage hadn’t lasted long,
they had to say that they were wrong!
And so you sobbed and fussed and pouted,
while outside, the others shouted
gleefully from swings and slide.
The pain more than you could abide.

When we were eight or six or three,
the whole world was hyperbole.
And now that we are fully grown,
living free and on our own,
hopefully we’ve learned to season
ire with pardon, dreams with reason.
And before it all blows up,
let us hope the world grows up!

Almost Ready to Stand-in (For Classic Material)

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Almost Ready to Stand-in

If I had a bit more moxie,
I’d be Kardashian by proxy.
I’d be less studious, more frocksie
and trade these garments long and boxy
for a mini dress that’s foxy,
wear heels less Oxfordy and soxy,
hang out with girls named Tess or Roxie,
more cool and definitely less poxy.
I’d be a cockette of the walksie!

This is what was going on in my blog on today’s date, Nov. 4, 2017

Dirge, for dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge

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For dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Sing.

Tete a Tete for Cracking Open the Content Time Capsule

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For Cracking Open the Content Time Capsule, this is what I was up to ten years ago today, Nov. 3:

Tete a Tete

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dscn1069

Tete a Tete

She seems to have made a career
out of practicing “sincere.”
Her trembling lip, her balanced tear
as she murmurs, “Oh, my dear,
I’m sorry, I know how you feel,”
work better when they’re meant for real.

In fact, she only lends an ear
because of what she hopes to hear––
shocking, scandalous or queer.
And oh, my dear, she’ll persevere.
Huddled over a drink or meal,
she can hardly hide her zeal

as she brings up your greatest fear––
your erring child or spreading rear,
the lover who’s been gone a year,
that bank loan that’s now in arrear.
She only asks because, you know—
just because she loves you so!

In patience, she is without peer.
She’ll face you, rapt, her face thrust near,
and ply you with another beer.
She is your confidant—your seer.
And though she says her lips are sealed,
her oath will too soon be repealed.

Her parting kiss, it would appear,
is offered to the ionosphere.
It makes no contact.  Does not adhere.
It seems like she’s shifted a gear.
The next time she dines out, it’s true,
she’ll be dining out on you!!

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The prompt word was “sincere.”