Monthly Archives: October 2018

Emily

 

Emily

Picture a woman sleeping, words wrapped close around as sheets.
Syllables slipping to the floor, loosed from their midnight feats.
A whole new world evolving as she’s lost away in dream.
All those single actions spilling from the seam
of those reveries she’s wrapped in, meaning more than what they mean.

Click

Picture eyelids opening as light begins to dawn.
See the eyelids close again, her stretching and her yawn.
See the dreams she’s had all night pulled to consciousness–
all tightly wrapped, but wriggling themselves free from all the mess
of what they’ve been bound up in to become what she’ll confess.

Click

See the words all rising from the place where they’ve been sleeping.
See her brow remembering bits it struggles now at keeping.
See her form a paper sheet into a little sack
and use her pen to prod the words back into a pack,
sparring with belligerent phrases that fight back.

Click

See her herding each into its place with little nudges,
overlooking warring words that seek to live their grudges,
making words that don’t belong together somehow fit,
forcing the recalcitrant to want to do their bit
to turn their separate strands into a story finely knit.

Click

Now see the picture on the page where words have come to rest–
stretched out vowel to consonant, best standing next to best.
Brutal words relaxing, flaccid words now showing zest.
Brought recently into the world where they have met the test,
here they stand before you, shaken out and neatly pressed.

Click

Then see the floor around the bed–the words she’s thrown away.
The words that somehow just don’t say what she wants to convey.
See them rising in the air to hover up above.
Words of anger, sadness, envy, honor, lust and love.
They jump, they float, they kiss, they spar, they hug, they joust, they shove.

Click

Tomorrow night they’ll rain back down to form adventures new.
To form themselves into the curious plots that dream parts do.
Picture them assembling into order all their own
or forming groups informally, wherever they are blown.
Ready on the morrow to once more go where they’re sown.

Click.

 

Daily Inkling’s prompt is: You’re going about your everyday life when you happen upon the perfectly preserved head of a famous historical figure. Who is it, and why is it there? 

Do you know a poet named Emily, long dead but never forgotten? If we could resurrect that head, perhaps the above would describe her.

https://normalhappenings.com/2018/10/24/a-head-of-its-time-daily-inkling/

Empowerment

Empowerment

If you are prone to flinch and cower,
use this secret to empower
and to draw your wits about you.
So no one else will ever doubt you.

The secret to more confidence
and belief in your excellence
is very simple. Trust yourself.
Store all your self-doubts on the shelf.

Leave them there and shut the door.
They don’t describe you any more.
Lock the door. Discard the key.
Decide anew who you will be.
 

Ragtag’s prompt today was “empower.”

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/24/rdp-wednesday-empower/

Ducks in a Row

Click on first photo to enlarge all.

It was Duckie’s niece Hummie who first christened him “Duck,” when she was too little to pronounce “Doug.”  I complicated the matter by calling him Duckie and since then, Ducks seem to have flocked into his life.  From me, from our friends Gloria, Patty and Judy (posthumously) from another friend Nancy and from his friend Ann. Now, as you can see, he is being kept busy keeping his ducks in a row. You might recognize Little Duck of past blogging fame in this lineup.

Palmistry: Flower of the Day, Oct 24, 2018

IMG_0987

Yucca Palm against a blue Mexican Sky.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day

What is it?

All Dressed Up! Flower of the Day, Oct 14, 2018

IMG_2478

 

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.z

The Retirement

The Retirement

His retirement oration
was a clear manifestation
of his need for a vacation.
It had been long in its gestation—
a long-awaited incubation. 
Now, it was an education
to witness his mad excitation
over his final termination.
On view, his heart’s wild palpitation
celebrating the cessation
of the daily tedious ration
dished out at his working station.
Let it be an education
that one’s final maturation
need not be a castigation,
but is instead a satiation—
a sort of workplace masturbation
ending in this apt quotation,
“Even an end can bring elation!”

j

The Word of the Day today is manifestation.

Bogged Down in Blog

IMG_6766

Internet Infraction: Bogged Down in Blog

The only way I’d ever stop
is flagged down by a cyber cop
who says my blogging cannot last
if I continue to go so fast.
He’d give a lecture and a ticket
and then he’d actually stick it
across my screen with strict instruction
to cease this method of destruction.

If life had meant us to go on line
hour after hour––eight or nine
hours or more day after day,
with always one more thing to say,
why would it give us legs to go
and feet to walk on, heel to toe?

Day after day, it’s grown obscene––
my eyes plastered upon my screen,
my fingers stiff with my attention
over what I might next mention––
fingers drumming, tapping, bending
all the while sending sending––
typing out, first fast then slow
my life as a reality show.

Until I wonder if I log
its details daily on my blog
because I want to recall life––
its joys and sorrows, pleasures, strife––
or do I only move about
to give me something to write about???

My friends all say this can’t go on.
I’m growing flaccid, weak and wan.
I need some exercise and sun––
some movies, dancing or other fun
aside from snapping pictures of
each bougainvillea or mourning dove.

Life’s meant to live, not to record.
It should be shouted, screamed or roared––
not typed out softly on the keys
of a laptop spread out on my knees!
The truth of this I’ve clearly seen
now that this sticker obscures my screen.
“Do not remove” it clearly reads,
“Go live your life! Go do some deeds!”

I’ll put on sneakers and do some laps.
I’ll exercise ‘til I collapse,
then do more laps around the pool
‘til I’m an exercising fool.
I’ll call twelve friends up on the phone.
I’ll never ever be alone.
I’ll live my life until its end
without a single blogging friend!

My dedication will never lapse;
and yet, how temptingly it gaps–
that sticker, unstuck at its edge
so easy now to pick and wedge
my fingernail beneath and tug,
to drop its shreds upon the rug
and free my screen of its obstruction––
this taboo not of my construction.

To push the button, light up the screen––
to see its colors from red to green.
Black words on white, Cee’s daily flower––
no longer do I pine and cower.
I peck the keys, upload some pics––
once more getting my daily fix.
The truth of modern life leaks in.
To blog is not a major sin!
I’ll give up blogging, become a rover
precisely when Hell freezes over!!!

DSC06649

Daily Inkling’s prompt is: 

Has technology affected your ability to communicate with other people? If so, to what extent, and are there any examples of when it affected you for better or worse? (I confess, I wrote this poem three years ago but it meets this prompt so well that I’m going to subject you to it again, if you’ve been around this blog for that long.)

Here’s the link: https://normalhappenings.com/2018/10/23/social-outage-daily-inkling/

The Smell of Curry

IMG_2672

The Smell of Curry

Would that sentiment were only
positive and never lonely––
but all emotions of the world
in sentiment are tightly curled.
Every memory we cherish
is doubly edged with “live” and “perish.”
In every city, country, land––
bad and good go hand in hand.

The blend of cardamom and lentil
always makes me sentimental.
Odors of turmeric and its ilk,
garam masala and coco milk.
Curry spices being roasted,
degree of peppers being boasted,
chickpeas, carrots, potatoes, rice––
stirring in each thing that’s nice.

What do I think of when I smell
and taste that it is going well?
Bombay and wedding saris thin
sliding down my youthful skin.
Visions of a midnight ride
to cages with young girls inside
sold by their parents and then resold
nightly for a bit of gold.

Traffic, sitar music, fingers
scooping curry––all this lingers.
The beauty of that winsome song
that showed me where the world’s gone wrong.
His action, swift, unthinking, curt
of small coins cast into the dirt
to deflect those who beg and bleat,
surrounding us in every street.

Palaces and then the clash
of children in a world of trash,
the refuse of this giant city
the world they lived in—what a pity.
Back when traveling was new,
experiences were so few
that India changed my life forever.
So, will I forget it?  Never.

Since it was a journey that changed my life forever–both the physical journey through the streets of Bombay as well as that journey of the senses I go though every time I cook or taste a curry, I’m rerunning this poem written two years ago for the dVerse Poets’ Pub prompt of “Journeys.”

Early Morning Jazz

If you are viewing in Reader or on facebook, please click on the title or URL to view poem in its correct form.

DSC00081IMG_2706

                                                      Early Morning Jazz   


The scrape of your chair.

                     The gentle tap of keys
   as you, rhythmic early riser,
 rouse the day.

I burrow deeper, 
trying to ignore

Icicles
          beating 
           your accompaniment
        as
       
        o
        n
        e
       
        b
        y

        o
        n
        e

     touched
           by
       sunlight,
                   they
               loose
       their    
         h
         o
          l
         d       

      on the
frozen, silent
        night.

Version 2

For the  dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge.