Monthly Archives: January 2015

Home from the Sea

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The Prompt: Re-springing Your Step–Tell us about the last experience you had that left you feeling fresh, energized, and rejuvenated. What was it that had such a positive effect on you?

The Answer: Two months living on the beach in La Manzanilla really did leave me feeling energized, relaxed and a bit nostalgic. I posted some words and photos earlier here and here and here. Below is the rest of the story:

Home from the Sea

That good old salty sea air combined with grainy sand
defined my beach vacation and went great with being tanned.
Felt great under my bare feet and squished between each toe.
And left footprints behind me, wherever I chose to go.
It crusted up my toenails and powdered all my floors.
Seeped into my keyboard and creaked up all my doors.
It told the upstairs neighbors when I’d gone and got back home.
It sneaked into my ear canals and caked up brush and comb.
In spite of all the nuisance of the sand within my bed,
those memories of beach life still swirl within my head.
Yet I needn’t wax nostalgic, for I find behind each knee,
in pockets, luggage and the floor—the beach came home with me!

Rocky Balboa and Uriah Heep Meet on Rodeo Drive

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The Prompt: Write a post in which the protagonists of two different books or movies meet for the first time. How do  they react to each other? Do they get along?

I was a witness as Uriah Heep just happened to stumble upon Sylvester Stallone gazing at his reflection in the front window of a chichi little shop on Rodeo Drive.  I admit that I loitered nearby, eavesdropping. I knew this was going to be good!

Rocky Balboa and Uriah Heep Meet on Rodeo Drive

Uriah sidled closer to get an autograph,
but he was intercepted by a member of Sly’s staff.
“Please do not loiter here, sir,”  the officious flunky said.
Her expression was most haughty. Her eyes just cut him dead.

Uriah’s voice was cloying as he said, “My esteemed sir,
I’m just an ‘umble man. I didn’t want to cause a stir.
But it would be so gratifying for a worm like me
to get to touch the pants hem of a real live star like thee!”

Sylvester spun upon his heel, surveyed the quivering mess.
“It won’t hurt to please the little man one time, I guess,”
Sly thought as he bestowed a smile meant to relieve the tension,
at the same time, putting out his hand with condescension,

thinking he might kiss it, but instead that low man’s knee
was brought up to make contact with Sylvester’s fabled vee,
causing his pitch forward ’til in the street he lay.
And this is what Uriah said as he walked away:

“I may be sly and unctuous–a real pain in the ass,
but even a lowlife like me still has a little sass.
My humble’s spilling over ’til it doesn’t seem quite real,
and so I thought I’d show Stallone some of what I feel.”

How the great man is brought down to eating humble pie.
For once Uriah can look down to meet him in the eye.
As he writhed in agony, the star made not a peep.
Now Uriah is the Sly one while Stallone’s become a heap.

Note: Okay, I’m sorry. For the poem. For the sick pun. Everyone has an off day now and then.

That Does Not Compute

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Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Pens and Pencils—When was the last time you wrote something substantive — a letter, a story, a journal entry, etc. — by hand? Could you ever imagine returning to a pre-keyboard era?

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That Does Not Compute

The last time that I used a pen?
I don’t know when that would have been.
Pencils are cheaper when I’m broke.
Pens don’t quit when doused in Coke.
My Chiapas string-wrapped pen is cuter.
Still, I prefer my Mac computer!

Unopened Rooms

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The Prompt: Brain Power–Let’s assume we do, in fact, use only 10% of our brain. If you could unlock the remaining 90%, what would you do with it?

Unopened Rooms

My working thoughts live in a mansion, restrained to just ten rooms.
When the unused rooms grow cobwebs, they must sweep them out with brooms.
They cannot see their pleasures, for they enter with eyes shut.
Sealed chambers filled with many things, but we do not know what.
It is exhausting just maintaining all these extra spaces.
No wonder that I lose my keys and forget most new faces.

No telling when we’ll let our thoughts roam free in other rooms.
For all these years they’ve been sealed up like dark and unused tombs.
Perhaps we’ll find they’re portals to other times and places.
Perhaps they lead to other worlds in intergalactic spaces.
They might allow a journey into the minds of others.
Would extrasensory perception make us enemies or brothers?

I’m sure the reason that we use small portions of our brain
is because if we knew of them, we’d use them all in vain.
We’d journey through the cosmos to plunder other spheres.
React to them like enemies, guided by our fears.
If there is any entity guiding how things go,
perhaps they recognize that Earth’s evolving sort of slow.

Our energies put into things instead of who we are.
Instead of love? Investments. Instead of aid? A car.
If perhaps we aren’t allowed the full use of our brains,
it is because we have not learned to use them for our gains.
How we look’s important. How much it costs the point.
We’re ruining our planet by cluttering up the joint.

Our brains we use for warfare. Weapons we can’t control.
They wind up in a child’s hands or on a grassy knoll.
They’re used for entertainment on a computer screen
in games that build agression. We win by being mean.
Shows they call reality prefabricate each role.
The lowest denominator seems to be their goal.

True, other things are in our mind: poems, music, art,
dance and social functions, a few of them with heart.
So we stage elaborate galas to raise the money for
children who are hungry, adults chewed to the core.
And yet some of us still balk at giving medicine to the ill.
If they are not wealthy, they must chew the bitter pill.

No doctors and no dental care. No succor for the poor.
If they would work, they’d have health care. Complaints are such a bore!
These things we fill our minds with. There’s no need for more brain space.
In the ten percent of brain we use,new thoughts we cannot face.
This E.S.P. is hogwash, and U.F.O’s are fiction.
Even the thought of universal health care causes friction.

For every room within the mind that’s used, there are nine more
filled with mysteries we won’t know until we try the door.
Some enter and return to tell of wonders they have spied.
Yet unenquiring minds respond by saying they have lied.
We’ll never leave these sealed up rooms unless we learn to dream.
Let creative thoughts flow out in an uncensored stream.

To seep beneath closed doors into our mind’s more spacious realms.
Be adventurous voyagers standing at the helms
of ships of mind that sail the wilder seas of consciousness
regardless of the ones who try to censor and to hush.
Turn off the TV sets and games of war and violence.
Let Honey Boo Boo slip back into former innocence.

Lay Kim Kardashian to rest, pull out your skeleton key
that just might let you in to all the rest that you can be.

Perfect Excuse

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Perfect Excuse

Today I won’t be posting a tale funny nor sad.
But though I’m busy packing, it’s really not my bad.
I got up extra early to see my daily topic
and when I couldn’t see it, I feared I’d gone myopic.

Yes, I refreshed my browser and took a look again.
10:30 and still not a prompt. It really is a sin.
I think there’ll be no prompt today. The prompt guy has gone fishin’.
His sin is not so huge,  but only a sin of omission.

I’ve got to hit the road right now, and leave this lovely place.
I’m sweaty from the packing and fear I’m red of face.
It’s not ’cause I’m embarrassed nor ’cause I am unfit.
Let’s blame it all on WordPress. I think they’re used to it.

 

(Update: Ah, the Daily Prompt is finally available.)

Answered

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The prompt: Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow. (The book nearest to me and its quote is given below:)

What happens to someone like her as she gets older?
–from Luck, by Joan Barfoot

Answered

She loses her balance, starts to fall.
Once in the kitchen, three times in the hall.
Finds it harder to remember, spends more time alone.
Speaks her mind more freely, less likely to atone.
She starts attracting cats that come inside and do not leave.
Wears frays in her clothing–hemline, neckline, sleeve.
Starts forgetting passwords–sometimes the names of friends.
Her search for keys and glasses never really ends.
Starts waking in the nighttime to contemplate her death.
At midnight, has to go outside to try to catch her breath.
Counts the years before her instead of those behind.
She could live to one hundred if fate is being kind.

Will she live her last years with sister, lover, friend;
or will animal companions help her meet her end?
Will anybody mourn her? Does she want them to?
Will she be remembered by a poem or two?
Will anybody read her after she is dead?
Will all her future poetry die here in her head?
Will her blog named “lifelessons” finally cease to be?
Will they give the name away for a modest fee?
Will they erase her blog spot, burn her files of poems?
Cause a glut on EBay of her leftover tomes?
If she sells a book or two every other year
where will Amazon send the money when she isn’t here?

One day in the future in three thousand two
will Zee, (some bored teenager, with nothing else to do)
go onto the internet connected to her head,
close her eyes and throw herself backwards on her bed
and stumble on an errant line that floats through cyberspace,
and Google it to try to find its author, time and place?
“What happens to someone . . . ?” are the words that Zee has found.
Her fingers start to twitch as she is driven to expound.
The printer prints the words she says without her further action.
Tied into her speech and thought–spontaneous reaction.
” . . . like her as she gets older?” is printed on the wall.
For there’s no paper in the world. No paper left at all!
Her face is flushed, her eyes dilate, her eyes first squint, then blink.
This random line floating in space has provoked her to think.
First she’ll finish cyber school, then link her living pod
with a blowout sort of guy with a gorgeous bod.
They’ll make links with other blogs and party with their friends
for a couple hundred years before they meet their ends.
She thinks back on the interbrain to look for thoughts and links.
Lets her mind go soft as into cybermind she sinks.
Looking for her future job. She knows it’s there to see.
Time being just a concept to wander through for free.
She plops onto a webpage from two thousand fifteen,
all the information still there and easily seen.
The line Zee thought jumps out at her. She sees it’s not her own.
It’s been used two times before and now it seems it’s flown
into her thoughts to sort her out and give her a direction.
As she reads on, she catches on to this writer’s inflection
in every word she writes and when she gets to the post’s end,
she goes on reading through her life and starts to make a friend.
After two days of reading, she winds up at the start
knowing every detail in this blogger’s heart.
Then she goes back to where she started and sees her doubts and fears.
It’s then that she fast-forwards to the blogger’s final years
and sees the truth of everything that’s going to transpire.
The failing health, the hopeful mood, the ad, “Wanted to Hire
an interesting friend to talk to while I fall asleep.
One capable of caring and thoughts that wander deep.
Someone to be there some nights when it seems that I might leave
for one last time this life that’s loosening its warp and weave.
No heavy lifting needed–a weighted thought or two
is all that I find necessary. Weighing thoughts will do.”

Zee zoomed back to the entry that had drawn her thoughts at first.
The very sentence that had caused her gloomy thoughts to burst.
January was the month and 14 was the day
The year 2015, when she’d been second to say
those fateful words and now Zee, too, was thinking just the same–
moving to the comments to add her words and name.
“Dear Lifelessons,” she’d say to her, and then add her assurance
that everafter she would be her safety and insurance.
That she would never die alone or be bereft of friend
for Zee was vowing here and now she’d be there at the end.
She’d looked ahead and so she knew that she would keep this pledge.
She’d known the center of this life and now she knew its edge.
She knew the dates that she’d be needed in the years ahead.
She made a list and filed it in a clear spot in her head.
And then she went on thinking what those words meant in her life.
Would she be a scholar, an actress and a wife?
Would she produce children and would they be there for her?
That sentence found in cyberspace created quite a stir.
But all her dreams it prompted came true enough, what’s more
she kept her date with Lifelessons in 2054.

                                                                            –Judy Dykstra-Brown, Lifelessons, 2015

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Connect the Dots.”

Leavings

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Photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Leavings

Do I walk the long kilometers of beach
to look for the next shell
or stand stable, like that woman
casting and recasting her hook,
patiently waiting to pull her world
in to her?

I’m gathering things
that I’ll collect into stories–pinning them down
to use like words.
Nothing wrong in finding meaning
through a piece of driftwood, a stone or shell.
Objects are only things
we cast our minds against
like images against a screen–
a shadow glimpsed crossing a window shade.

My shadow cast in front of me
is such a different thing
from one I cast behind.
In the first, I am constantly hurrying
to catch up to what I’ll never catch up to.
In the other, I am leaving behind
what I can only keep by walking away from it.

I take this place along with me
in clear images–
not as they were,
but as my mind has cast them;
so every picture
taken of the same moment
is different,
each of us seeing it through our unique lens.

We cast these things in bronze or silver-gelatin,
stone, clay
or poetry.

A grandma
holds out pictures of her children
and her grandchildren.
See? Her life’s work.
And then this and this,
without further effort on her part.

I share stories of children I don’t know
who gently unwind fishing line from a struggling gull,
hearts found on the beach
or other treasures
nestled in a pile of kelp.
I find my world in both these findings and departings;
the leaving each morning to go in search of them
the part I find most exhilarating–
perhaps teaching this
woman of the death-themed night-terrors
not to worry.
That longer leaving is just a new adventure.

People who do not remember
let me slip away
when I would have held on,
given any encouragement.
Yet fingers, letting go, flex
for that next adventure.

Life is
all of us letting go
constantly–
taking that next step
away from
and to.

A white shell.
I have left it there
turned over
to the brown side,
so someone else
can discover it, too.

Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Image Search—Pick a random word and do Google image search on it. Check out the eleventh picture it brings up. Write about whatever that image brings to mind. (Although the eleventh image was of a shadow on a beach, I’ve elected to reproduce my own photo here.)

Envy

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I had already written a response to today’s WordPress Daily Prompt, so I’m writing to a prompt from August 3, 2013: Green-Eyed Monster—Write an anonymous letter to someone you’re jealous of. (I changed this a bit, still writing about envy, but changing it to whom I might like to become if I could become anyone else on earth.)

Envy

At first I’d love his riches, but soon I’d hate it so
that there were no limitations in the places I could go.
Venice, perhaps for luncheon, and Rome to take a dip
in the Trevi fountain, and then I’d have to zip
(in my private jet, you know) off to Katmandu
to have my favorite holy man tell me what to do,
because I’m bored with all these riches. I find they’re running me.
It seems a waste of money to just sit and let it be.
It’s piling up by minutes and I’ve so much yet to spend
that getting rid of money just never seems to end.
So I guess I really have to say that Carlos Slim is not
the person I have envy towards. I crave no golden pot.

I think about another who is clever, pert and slim.
Her face and figure beautiful—attractive to each “him.”
Men voted her the girl they’d most like growing up next door—
the one they’d like to run into in a convenience store.
She’d never be the one who is left sitting at a party
looking just intelligent, albeit sort of arty,
while other women beautiful have circles all around them,
wine glasses filled each sip they take, refreshed up to the brim.
I must admit I might enjoy the beauty and the fame,
but I wouldn’t want the hordes that show up when they hear her name.
And so I’ll let her keep her looks, the parties and the fun.
I would not choose to live the life of Jennifer Aniston.

There is another actress, though, whom many must admire.
Intelligent, attractive, lit by internal fire.
With all her heart, she slips into each role that she is given.
Once she finds a part she wants, it seems that she is driven
to do the best that she can do to represent that life.
Then afterwards she slips back into mother, friend and wife.
Her home life seems most balanced. There is no scandal there.
The press seems to leave her alone, as though they do not care
because the drama she presents is always on the screen.
At other times it seems that she prefers to go unseen.
But because she does so well at it, her identity she’ll keep.
I would not take the life she made away from Meryl Streep.

I’d like to save the world but I couldn’t take the stress
of all the catty comments about my hair or dress.
No matter what diplomacy I practice or what skill
I display in my negotiating, still that bitter pill
of having what I look like be the thing that is reported
instead of how I handled or debated or comported!
I wouldn’t want the limelight directed toward my kid–
where she went to school, how she looked or what she did.
I wouldn’t want those whispers of my husband’s private life.
Or why I am still with him—the compliant suffering wife.
You’ve probably guessed the next one I wouldn’t want to be,
for although I do admire her, I could not be Hillary!

I could go through the alphabet of people I admire.
Aesop and Boccacio, Chaucer, Dylan, Eyre.
But none of them had perfect lives that I would want to steal.
Some of them had to face the plague, and others are not real!
So though I may have envy for some writer’s craft and mind,
her life might not accomodate a person of my kind.
Her husband might not like me, even placed within her skin.
Some essence of her missing from the body I’m now in.
Or I might find I miss myself—my dogs, my friends, my house.
All the things I chose to leave when I chose to espouse
this life change that I really didn’t think out very clearly,
and now I find I wake up every morning feeling queerly.

I can’t have those pancakes if I am now Jennifer.
And if I’m Carlos Slim, my former friends would call me sir.
If I were Hillary, I fear my talents would be nil;
and then the worst of it is that I’d have to sleep with Bill!
If I were Meryl Streep, I’d want to befriend the old me
to see what I was really like before I became she.
I’d journey off to Mexico, but what is my excuse
for seeking out this writer who’s a bit of a recluse?
And when I went to meet her, just who would she now be?
Would the woman that I visit still be her or us or me?
If so, would we be happy or would I/she be real pissed
for my stealing her whole life, for I’m sure it would be missed.

I know that there are others I might envy for awhile
before I slipped into their shoes and limped along a mile,
but I really feel the reason that I’m not already them
is because I am not worthy to even touch their hem.
I’m not good enough to be anyone but me.
Now wait!! Before you think that I am humble as can be,
I have to say that none of them are worthy enough to
slip into my skin or slip one foot into my shoe.
For all of us are unique in one particular way
and I have a feeling  you know what I’m going to say.
Each of us is perfect—the best one on the shelf
at simply doing one thing—at being our best self!

A Letter to One Who Does Not Follow

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt “Audience of One“, which asked me to write a letter to the one person I wish were reading my blog who isn’t already doing so.  Here is my answer to that question, which I had already answered earlier this year, and my answer has not changed, so I am choosing to follow a different prompt.

You can see my new poem written today HERE.

(It took me 5 hits of the “Try Another Prompt” button to find one I haven’t already written about.  Like others, I don’t like this new system).  Finally, they gave me one from 2013 that I haven’t written about before.

Good Librarians Are…

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Loved this. Sounds like you’d make a very good librarian yourself…Judy