The Halloween prompt today is blood. Here are some sugar skulls made by kids for the Day of the Dead that reflect that theme to a small degree.
And finally, no blood posting is complete without a posting of a blood moon.
For Jennifer’s Halloween Challenge.
In the Glow–Click on first photo to enlarge all.
These pesky little flowers are taking over my yard. I had to build a patio over one patch of ground they’d infested. It was the only way to get rid of them. They are sorta pretty closeup and much enlarged, but still, a pest is a pest.
Brave New World
We must be brave to face a world
where so much pain has been unfurled,
such scathing words, such vitriol
that we’ve already built the wall
that separates brother from brother,
that keeps us all from one another.
Too many guns and too much hate
until we fear that it’s too late
to ever form a world united.
Too many creeds have been recited
based on fear and hate and greed
instead of what we really need.
True bravery is based on giving—
assisting others in their living.
Where is the leader with a belief
that there’s a way to bring relief?
One able to bring unity
to build a world community.
The prompt today was brave.
“I”nsects
Click on first photo to enlarge all. By the way, that cute really big insect is a flu bug, urging us all to get our shots!
For Cee’s Challenge, “The Letter I.”
The Second Coming
*Today I received a Facebook from a gallery owner/artist Jesus Lopez Vega that he would like to have me display in a show he is staging in November. I replied that I’m in the States, but he could stop by my house and pick some pieces up from my house sitter, then emailed her this message:
Patricia, Jesus Lopez Vega is coming to house to pick up some retablos for an exhibition. The ones in my room on the desk and chair have labels and prices on them––one label on back and one stuck temporarily on front that can be detached and put on the wall beside them. There is also one new one on the credenza next to table in the dining room. It is the middle one. The name is on the back and if there isn’t a price, it should be priced at 3,000 pesos. He just contacted me to see if I wanted to participate in a show next month, but I won’t be back before then so he said he’d come pick them up. These are pieces I had priced for a different gallery but didn’t get taken in. He should call to say when he is coming. If there are other pieces he wants instead, he can choose others and let me know the names and I’ll give prices. Thanks.. Judy
*Then I sent her a message saying he’d be by sometime in the next two weeks.
*Not remembering I’d sent her this message, a half hour later I sent her this message:
Jesus will be coming this week or next!
*A short while ago, I got this email from her:
Subject: Re: Jesus? This was an interesting email to get. “Jesus will be coming this week or next!” I read this first then the others. Funny. Patricia
Autumn Schmautumn
The only colored leaves I see are going to be faux,
for autumn never visits in my part of Mexico.
In fact, those piles of autumn leaves are far back in my past.
Green on the leaves in Mexico just lasts and lasts and lasts.
It’s true that each leaf everywhere must one day be defeated,
but down here where I live, the only way leaves are unseated
is not by frigid temperatures. There’s no cold to unglue them.
Our only leaf-removal means is cutter ants that chew them!
The ones who cut them down are all the bravest and the best.
Their comrades wait below to carry them all to their nest.
Their robberies completed without the slightest peep,
their piles of leaves depleted in the nighttime while we sleep.
Our guard dogs doze on soundly as ants pass by in the dark,
letting all these thieveries go on without one bark.
And so I fear that this far south no autumn colors are viewed.
Our trees create no spectacle. They go from green to nude!
And though ants harvest all our leaves—just chew them off and take them,
at least they grant us favors in that we don’t have to rake them!
Risky Business
How have you found your way into my dreams,
ripping my comfort apart at the seams?
I thought I’d escaped to back rooms of my self
but still I find thoughts of you stacked on a shelf
carefully obscured both in front and above
by other less perilous memories of love.
You walk nonchalantly into the room
that I have just cleared with a cloth and a broom
of other dangers and sadnesses not
knowing that I have been once again caught.
Now I hide out behind walls at the back
where all of my worst fears reside in a stack.
Cowering here as you stride through the place
that your very presence has turned dark and base.
How could I have loved such a frightening soul,
the box of my heart turned into a bowl
with all of my secrets and weakness revealed—
things that I now know I should have kept sealed?
There you sit quietly, perched on a chair,
one hand on the desk top, one hand on your hair
writing cruel words—I know about me.
I ease my way over, hoping to see,
but the paper is empty, your ink has turned clear
making improbable all that I fear.
As now I remember that I let you in,
forgetting all else in the charm of your grin.
The joy of your hand as it guided me sure
across the dance floor—all that allure
that kept me involved in the surface of you
overlooking the risks as most of us do.
If I’d had an x-ray taken of you
when our romance was shiny and new
I might have seen sooner your dangerous zone
and taken a detour and left you alone.
And perhaps now my dreams would be placid and calm
so I’d sleep without worry, sleep without qualm.
I might not have moved off to the edge of the world,
might still have been sleeping, never unfurled.
Perhaps it’s these dangers that make us let go
of all of the comforts of worlds that we know
and send us out elsewhere to discover a self
we’d have never found sitting safe on a shelf.
This again is a rewrite of a poem written three years ago. The prompt word today was risky.
Insomnia
I’m lying awake when I should be snoring,
but falling asleep is simply too boring.
Lying here quiet with nothing to do
with nothing to listen to, nothing to view
just makes me restless, unable to snooze.
I need some amusement, a snifter of booze—
something to make me forget to recall
that falling asleep’s not the end of it all.
I cannot help but resent this time wasted
when things could be written or looked at or tasted
instead of just lying inert in my bed
with my eyes shut but images filling my head
that tend to confuse and to fill and encumber
this time that good sense says should be spent in slumber.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 