All of these locations are just a few blocks or a few miles from where I live. Fun song, too! Tall Boys Band, Ajijic, Mexico.
This is Where I Live!
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Monthly Archives: January 2019
New Man at the Opera
New Man at the Opera
With his head held at this angle, in the cape of a magician,
it’s true that he looks noble, but he’s merely a technician
in a laboratory where I fear they are uncouth—
where they dissect small animals and magnify the truth.
They then sell us the results at an inflated price.
Although he looks a gentleman, he isn’t very nice.
They say his former conquests are piled to the roof.
You’ll be his next small animal if you don’t stand aloof.
He distilled all their beauty into a fine elixir
that promises eternal youth. It is indeed a fixer
of wrinkles and of attitudes gained throughout a life
of the constant labor of motherhood and wife.
Thus goes all the gossip at the opera today
as the local ladies inspect, dissect and weigh
the assets and the defects of the newest man in town.
They titter and they bug their eyes. They giggle and they frown.
And by the end of the first act, they still don’t have a clue
about the way that they should act. What is it they should do
if they attract his interest? Should they snub or should they charm?
Each single lady fantasizes clinging to his arm.
The gossip after all may be a slight exaggeration
based loosely on the truth but still with no verification.
By interval, they’ve thought it through and make repeated passes
past the box he sits in, or view him through their glasses.
And early the next morning, they begin their primping—
their lipsticking and powdering, their combing, curling, crimping.
They line up on the sidewalk, waiting for their turn
to enter through his doorway to have their chance to learn
the truth about his mystery. In all, they numbered ten,
those maidens who there entered, and were never seen again!!!
The prompt words today are angle, noble, laboratory and magnify.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/rdp-tuesday-angle/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/22/fowc-with-fandango-noble/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/your-daily-word-prompt-laboratory-january-22-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/magnify/
Still
In the Shelter of Trees, Jan 20, 2019
Time Temporal
This sonnet I wrote six years ago is an extended antonym of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet18,” written four hundred and ten years ago. I didn’t have many readers way back then at the beginning of my blog, so thought I’d repeat it here for the Sonnet challenge, along with Will’s original. Sorry, Will!!! And sorry. Although I often use enjambment in my poetry, I fear there is none here.
Time Temporal
by Judy Dykstra-Brown
Shall I contrast thee to a winter’s night?
Thou art less lovely and more tempestuous.
The lack of wind doth still November’s empty stalks,
Oe’r which the winter hath too long a power.
Sometimes the too-cold moon hides ‘neath the clouds.
Then rarely doth it’s pitted face shine forth;
And dark from dark can sometimes rise,
Spurred on by fate or providence’s static plan.
But thy short winter shall soon pass away,
Restore to thee the homeliness of death.
Nor shall that birth that brought you forth to light
Still claim thee when temporal time shall stop thy growth.
As men lose breath and eyes lose sight,
So dies this poem, and draws thee with it to thy grave.
Sonnet 18
by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
For dverse poets.
FOTD Jan 21, 2019
Sunset and Moonglow
jdbphoto 1/20/2019
Sunset and Moonglow
This moon is not derivative of any other moon.
If I called it a blood moon, I chose my words too soon.
It did not glow as brightly as that vivid red that flowed
when his heartbeat lengthened. When his breathing slowed.
It did not flow as scarlet as life lost by human hand.
It did not pool and sink into the all-obscuring sand.
It’s true that nature paints with blood when mortal creatures die,
but it casts a subtler color when painted on the sky.
The earth is not a marble. Night skies aren’t plastered with stars.
There’s no earthly equivalent for Jupiter or Mars.
When we use manmade metaphors to capture universal
beauties like the evening sky, it seems a real reversal.
When we dream of lovers’ eyes, they should shine like stars.
Stars should not merely twinkle like fireflies caught in jars.
Candy floss swells like a cloud, a sunflower’s like the sun.
Not the other way around. And when the day is done,
the sunset simply is itself and no artist can
duplicate its subtlety with pigments coined by man.
The prompt words today are marble, plaster, derivative and dream.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/rdp-monday-marble/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/21/fowc-with-fandango-plaster/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/your-daily-word-prompt-derivative-january-21-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/dream/
On the Night of the Blood Moon
Click on the first photo to enlarge all.
I just couldn’t stop taking photos of the moon on this night of a full lunar eclipse. These may not be the best shots, but I was out there for two hours and I’m soooo sleepy. Strangely, this poem I posted earlier this year to one of Mark’s prompts popped up with the photos in my media file when I posted them. Don’t know how its link got recorded as a jpeg nor how it got here, but it seems to want to be posted again, so here it is:
Lucid Moon
With half a life lived in the dark,
an owl’s hoot, an answering bark,
the moon across the water scattered,
ragged clouds, wispy and battered––
I float in night and solitude,
the night determining my mood.
I lie in darkness and I brood,
a nightly lucid interlude.
When sunlight comes in fits and starts,
The day brings out my other parts.
They rise in me from dawn to noon,
dispelling powers of the moon.
Thus balanced between dark and light,
each half consumes its daily bite.
I welcome each within its time
Life varied, balanced and sublime.
Matt’s prompt today was “Lucidity.” The common meaning of “Lucid” is “clearly expressed” or “easy to understand,” but another meaning is “bright or luminous.”
Poinsettias, FOTD Jan 20, 2019
Inevitable
Inevitable
When I cough, I sputter, and when I sneeze, I spray.
My pet pastime is muttering. I’m trite in what I say—
these candid confessions representative of all
the ways that I’m imperfect—the reasons for my fall.
Once I was a prima-donna—unique in every way—
put up on a pedestal, protected from the fray.
But as I aged, old father time reduced me with his cleaver.
My mind grew vague and spotty. I fell victim to hay fever.
All the glories of the past vanished over time.
It made a simple mortal of what was once sublime.
So, fair warning to young lassies with your skin like peaches.
One day you, too, will fall into Father Time’s cruel reaches.
The prompt words today are pet, cough, representative and unique.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/rdp-sunday-dog/Pet
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/20/fowc-with-fandango-cough/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/your-daily-word-prompt-representative-january-20-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/unique/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 