Monthly Archives: April 2018

Techaffection

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Techaffection

All types of loving have their seasons
wherein we love for different reasons.
When we are young lads and misses,
loving mainly starts with kisses,
whereas loyalty and pleasure
later count in equal measure.
But as we age, love changes, too,
as some things get harder to do.
And as our brains grow more ecliptic,
screens get smaller, apps more cryptic.

So simple tasks–perhaps to clone
old data to a new iPhone
become more difficult to do
until in time you have no clue
and thus it is you call a tech
to get your puzzlement in check
and in an hour or two he solves
your problems and your fears absolves.
You thumb your phone to make a call
and find it’s not so hard at all.

You have your contacts here with you.
Your photos, and your camera, too.
Calendar, iTunes and maps––
all the necessary apps.
Appreciation starts to grow
for that young techie who helped you so––
a type of loving, in its fashion,
not so much a thing of passion
as a Luddite’s fond affection
for a techie’s apt detection
of that complicated mess
that I fear I must confess
I never would have solved alone.
You won my heart, Chad, via phone!!!

This young Apple Tech worked with me for an hour and a half, then, when I had to leave for an appointment,  called me back a few hours later and worked for another half hour to wrestle two computers, an old nearly dead iPhone and a “new” used iPhone into sync.  I promised in appreciation that I’d write him a poem, so Chad, I hope you see this.  If you do, leave a comment.  Apple techies rock!!

Kitchen Chores and the Art of Divination

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The art of divination need not be limited to tea leaves. Was I scraping the bottom of the barrel or merely scraping dishes when I wrote this odd ditty three years ago?

Washing Up

The churning water brings them up.
The grounds of coffee in the cup
rise like saints to water’s top
while water runs, they do not stop.

I read their shapes like tea leaves now.
I see the future but know not how.
They swirl and change, revealing lives––
swarm like hornets from their hives.

The one I wait for comes unstuck,
careening towards his future luck.
The one that’s me caught in an eddy,
stuck for now, but holding steady.

Other remnants of finished meals––
carrot shards, potato peels––
rise up and circle, forming dreams.
Reality, or so it seems.

I see a heart and charm and lies,
a future lover in disguise,
a plane, a knoll, a tree-lined path,
a woman bound in senseless wrath.

She sends out waves that push you here––
the very thing that she most fears.
I know not who or where you are.
Are you near or are you far?

As all goes rushing down the drain,
I feel a sense of loss and pain.
And so I fill the sink again.
Will I see you one time more,
or was my vision only lore?

The prompt today was churn.

Fallen Beauty: Flower of the Day, Apr 4, 2018

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Copa de Oro

 

For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.

NaPoWriMo Day 4: Lost Weekend

Lost Weekend 

Trapped within this living Hell,
no guardian angel  breaks the spell.
Colored tan or gray or brown.
Elevator music, sound turned down.

Slow as molasses or legs in splints.
It’s windows smudged by fingerprints
so not one ray of light gets through.
Caught fast like velcro, stuck like glue.

Pointless conversation tending
to go on without an ending.
Tasteless food within the fridge.
Endless hours of contract bridge.

TV blaring with contact sports,
Fox News and stock market reports.
Boredom swells like a balloon.
Would that it were over.  Soon!

NaPoWriMo Day 4, The prompt was to express an abstract idea through Concrete Images. I chose “boredom.”

“Set to Music” Naughty Little Pleasures

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My talented friend Christine Anfossie just surprised me with a musical rendition of my poem “Naughty Little Pleasures,” a poem I wrote for day 1 of NaPoWriMo 2018. If  you’d like to hear it, click on the arrow below:

https://judydykstrabrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/naughty-pleasures-new-2.wav

If you like to read along, here is the poem again:

Naughty LIttle Pleasures

Naughty little pleasures, secret little games—
they are our private treasures, these solitary shames.
We never can admit them to family or friends,
for fear that doing so would  bring about their ends.
Childhood is when our private pleasure starts—
not stifling our sneezes or holding back our farts.
Eating the last cupcake or hiding Grandpa’s teeth.
Watching skirts on windy days to see what’s underneath.
Torturing sister’s Barbie Dolls and kidnapping her bears.
Reading Daddy’s magazines underneath the stairs.
Guzzling ice cream from the carton and milk right from the spout.
Opening sister’s love letters to see what they’re about.
Telling mom you’ll help her because she’s running late,
then licking all the cookies you’re putting on the plate.
If being perfect were more fun, then probably we would,
but there’s little pleasure in always being good.

NaPoWriMo

Dianne Hicks Morrow/ Day 3, NaPoWriMo

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My friend Dianne Hicks Morrow is doing the NaPoWriMo challenge this year but doesn’t have a blog, so I asked if I could post her List poem here and she agreed.  Fun.  We were asked to make a list of imaginary “somethings” and then to make a poem of them.

Harlequin Detective Novels—Day 3 NaPoWriMo

Tit for Tat
Smell a Rat
Ballarat
Vallarta
Your Hearta
Must Go On
Swan Song
An Inch, A Mile
A Crooked Smile
A Stricken Heart
A Sickened Tart
She’s Too Smart
For Her Own Good
Life in the ‘Hood
The Purple Snood
The Cost of Rude
No Golden Rule
The Champagne Pool
Make Me Drool
Make Me Droll
Make Me, Doll
Make Me
Then Again Maybe Not

Hard to Teach
Beyond Her Reach
Bongo Beach
The Peach
The Screech
Snorkel Empire
Crossed Whale Lovers
What Angelfish Know
Beware the Stingray

Capsized by Desire
Stoking the Funeral Pyre
Wisdom of the Dolphin
Beyond the Lace Veil
Beneath the Bed
Dust Bunnies on the Easter Rabbit
Single Men Swim Free
Beyond Wrinkles
The Death of Spider Veins
Listless in Seattle

—Dianne Hicks Morrow’s wild mind for 10 minutes this morning
For NaPoWriMo list poem prompt.

Pink Copa de Oro: Flower of the Day, Apr 3, 2018

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For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 3, List Poem

Truth is much stranger than fiction. Today, when the NaPoWriMo prompt was to make a list poem, I drew a blank, so I used the WordPress prompt instead.  But, when I went to Facebook to see if my poem had posted there, I found a very strange thing. There, dated April 3, was posted this “List Poem!”  It turns out that it was posted as the Five Years ago Today feature on Facebook. In short, five years ago today when I was making my first NaPoWriMo posts, the prompt on April 3 was the same prompt they gave us today on April 3 five years later!  Go figure.  I took it as a sign, so I’m publishing this one (which had one “like” five years ago when I was new to blogging and had no followers) again.

“When Life Gives You Lists, Make Poetry” 

The poem in a nutshell:

A poem a day might be more possible
if only I were not so bossable.

Or, The unabridged version:

I had the best intentions when
this morning I picked up my pen;
but then the phone began to ring
and all day long, thing after thing
presented obstacles to rhyme,
ate up attention, devoured my time.
First, the printer who needed pay
of course, lived 15 miles away.
Two hours later, home at last,
I had to cook a light repast
for company who now have left
me feeling not a bit bereft.
My laptop open, my mind about
to function, I was beckoned out.
My mood was less than  joculant
as the gardener asked for flocculant
for pool algae gone amuck.
When? Now? It was just my luck!
He made a list, demanded more
since I was going to the store.
He added chlorine and algaecide
as I considered suicide.
Finally home, I yearned to go
devise some verse, but to my woe,
my propane tank had just run dry.
We made the call. They said they’d try
to make it out within the hour.
My mood grew crabby, dark and dour.
From then on, things just kept on being
averse to my poesy-eeing.
Thing after thing came up to do.
If I know you, maybe some from you!
I‘m just a girl who can’t say no
so this is how ‘twas bound to go
until I figured how to make
adversity a piece of cake.
Make the best out of the worse.

Let interruptions become the verse!

NaPoWriMo 2018, Day 3: “Explorers”

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Explorers

When the first man dipped his oar,
entering geographic lore
to journey out to some new shore,
he opened up a certain door
that has been open evermore—
that need for mankind to explore.

The current’s swell, the ocean’s roar
has entered into every pore
and permeated to the core
that man who is adventure’s whore.
Each journey craves a new encore.
Each return one leave-taking more.

When Viking wanderers of yore
set sail, their fortunes to restore,
and shield and sword to battle wore,

staying in place became a chore.
Mankind was meant to sail and soar.
The journey is what life is for.

 

For NaPoWiMo 2018, Day 3
The WordPress prompt word today is explore.

New Faith

I really started blogging exactly five years ago today, when I wrote my first NaPoWriMo poem, having little faith in my ability to make it for the whole thirty days.

In the end, day-by-day, I did it.  A year later, I did it again and when I came to day 30, I didn’t stop.  Since then I’ve exercised a different sort of faith by writing every morning—doing  a number of writing and photo posts, including at least one poem or story, every day for the past 1,460 days. (This post will be my 4,074th one.)

The pool exercises I once did faithfully in a water aerobics class three mornings a week at the clubhouse pool,  I still do at midnight in my own pool under the stars and moon, surrounded by the blossoms that fall from the tall Washingtonian palm trees that rise like giants in the night air above the pool.

I swim with the moon,
stars strewn like wedding flowers
in this midnight pool.

For dVerse Poets Haibun Monday, Faith.