Blogger’s Lament



I do not want to bait a hook,
do the dishes, write a book.
Don’t wake at 6 or make my bed.
Most of my time’s spent in my head.
In two weeks, I’ll be seventy-one,
so when all is said and done,
I’ve earned the right to just obsess
on what I wish to. I confess
I’m up at eight or nine or ten,

with laptop or with notes and pen,

fulfilling all my blogging jobs,
and I must say that there are gobs
of prompt sites since

(and here I wince)
WordPress quit, thereby unleashing
scads of prompt sites without teaching
Mr. Linky or other ways
to try to ease our blogging days.

Now hours are spent just trying to

link up to that frog that’s blue

or finding where the prompt is hidden
even after we’ve been bidden
to come post on someone’s site.
So what was once our day’s delight

now seems more like one of those things

that paid employment always brings.
What once called out for “More time, more!”
now seems to me to be a chore.

It’s 2 p.m. and still I’m writing,

complaining, whining, jotting, citing

all the woes that blogging brings,
so why don’t I do other things?
Pot some plants or solve that pile
that’s filled the table for awhile

of bills, old poems––a dish of butter?
What’s that doing in the clutter?

Needless to say, I have a life
apart from blogging’s stressful strife.

Yet at 1:30, still at the keys,

lunch by my side, cat on my knees,
not quite through with all my griping,
but still typing, typing, typing.

Because in spite of present ills,

there is a space that blogging fills.


It’s friends for whom you need not dress

to turn to in your worst duress
to brag, to rage or to confess,

and they could never ever guess

what you look like, what you’re wearing
or that you’re slightly over-bearing.


Blogs are one great soapbox where
you don’t have to comb your hair
before you mount the stage to say
what you want to say, the way

you want to say it, every day.


And so, though I won’t eat tomatoes,
polish windows, peel potatoes,

walk the dog or trim the trees,
I will do just as I please.

Don’t do pilates. Don’t do jogging.

All I gladly do is blogging!

Dear Newepicauthor. Since I wrote this poet for all bloggers trying to fulfill all the prompts, I think it is appropriate to all. So I’m trying out your list to see if it will work for me.  Hope you don’t mind!

Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Sunday Writing Prompt – Teachers, for thehouseofbailey Destination Dreams Scotts Daily Prompt Gift, for Sheryl’s A New Daily Post Word Prompt: Languorous, for Daily Addictions by rogershipp prompt Disaster, for FOWC with Fandango – Literally, for Martha Kennedy Ragtag Community Antediluvian, for Teresa’s Haunted Wordsmith Three Things Challenge, where the three prompt words are “grandmother, daisy and wolf” and for Tales From the Mind of Kristian Word Prompt Moiety and for Swimmers the New Community Pool prompt – Clouds.