The dVerse Poets prompt today is to take something we’ve written on September 11 of another year and to take a word or idea from that piece and write a new piece. Here is my Sept. 11 essay from 2015 that I am going to draw from. There is a link at the bottom of that post that will bring you back to the poem I’ve written today based on that post from three years ago. Wow. Complicated. Here is my present-day poem based on the word “handwritten.”Panned by Hand
Words slowly written out by hand
will in future years be panned
as much as petroglyphs in stone
carved out by flint or sharpened bone
are an anathema today,
now that we have a simpler way
to write with pencil or with pen.
Will kids remember way back then
when moms and grandmothers and dads
wrote out notes on legal pads,
or will they only go to see ’em
in a history museum?Cell phones don’t run out of ink,
spew words as fast as you can think,
don’t use up paper, wood or lead,
just use up gigabytes instead.
Thus handwriting’s a bygone art—
i’s carefully dotted with a heart,
those flourishes at ends of lines—
those curlicues and hearts and vines
scribbled in the margins? Vanished.
All our doodlings soon banished.It is the truth that progress brings
technology to replace things
dear to our hearts we thought would be
carried on by progeny.
But, alas, it is not so.
Typewriters were the first to go,
then cursive followed recently,
and soon I’m sure the powers that be
will decide all writing’s out,
and soon technology will tout
communication via brain
and then my friends, once more again
the means we’ve used to share our thought
will be outmoded, no longer taught
by school or university.
Mere ESP will surely be
worked out so we need only blink
to transmit all that we might think.Imagine, then, the problems caused
by thoughts inadequately paused.
Words penned in ink can be crossed out,
or crumpled up and then tossed out.
Not so words received as we think them—
flirtings known before we wink them.
So long, subtlety and tact.
Hello, naked glaring fact.
No thoughts scrawled or written with care.
All meaning caught in truth’s harsh glare.
The truth is, friends, that each advance
may neither further nor enhance.
Some advancement only fetters.
All in all, I prefer letters!Here is the link to dVerse Poets Tuesday Poetics in case you want to see what others did with this prompt: https://dversepoets.com/2018/09/11/poetics-on-a-loop/
We Fill in the Blanks
I write notes three times weekly in my limping Spanish for Yolanda, not because I won’t see her, but because I probably won’t remember by then what I need to tell her. She has asked me to order more vacuum cleaner bags from the states. I use the words I know, and tonight the word for vacuum has escaped my memory. So I leave this note on the kitchen island, taped to a filter I’ve found in the laundry room:
“Is this the bag for the machine for clean the floor?”
Es este la bolsa para la machina para limpiar el piso?
Then, taped to the stove top:
I’m sorry, Yolanda, but a potato broke in my oven and it is very bad! I worked for one hour and a half but it is still bad now.”
Lo siento, Yolanda, pero una papa romper in…
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lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
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A potato broke in my oven? I laughed out loud.
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I was out of breath when I finished reading this. You can not read it fast!
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Hope the meaning came through in spite of that.
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Oh it did…and I really liked the rythm of it. I’m ordering a couple of books today and your new one is on top. It looks great and really peaked my interest!
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Please write a review on Amazon if you like it. If you don’t, you are excused.. ha.
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I’m sure it’s very clever, and cute and I’ll love it!
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Glorious! I love this poem so much.
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I know this exactly… and just imagine how hard it is to even find a pen these days… But sometimes thing works in reverse and we might see people writing with quills just to be cool… a bit like vinyl has made a comeback in music.
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I still have every vinyl I ever bought, but no way to play them for although I have my turntable, its technology is different than my sound system.
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the problems caused
by thoughts inadequately paused.
your entire poem held so much raw truth but this was the most brilliant line, the root of all our problems really, reckless thinking and speaking
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My own as well. I try to always put angry words away for the night before sending them… and never do.
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in time we learn to navigate this
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As writers I gather that you’re preaching to the choir, but lucky for us, we’re here to keep those letters alive. Oh, and I laughed out loud to Yolanda’s response to your mishap: “She broke a potato in the oven, tried to clean it, and then went to go write another poem.” Messes can wait. Muses cannot!
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Ha.. I often try to think of what she must be thinking about me. This I think was pretty close to the truth.
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I savored every line of this. Wonderful rhyming poetry, and thought-provoking and funny. BRAVO!
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Thanks, Beverly. I love it when people let me know they enjoy my poetry.
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Fifty years ago kids and parents could not imagine what the digital world of today includes. Brian communication. Yes, that just might be the thing of the future. Then everyone will know what we think.
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Unfortunately.
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Writing things down by hand give us time to think. I still carry a pen and small notepad in my shirt pocket even though I have a phone with me as well.
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Me, too.. but in my purse.
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Enjoyed this very much! For me….it is always pen in hand first.
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“Flirtings before we wink them” really made me laugh. This is fun!
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