Monthly Archives: February 2020

Reblog: Blogomania

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Hello, LifeLessons readers, OkcForgottenMan here.

Most of you know by now that Judy is at a writers retreat in Colima, and I have graciously (maliciously?) agreed to fill in for her for the next several days, reblogging some of her older poems. It’s a fun gig for me as I stroll back through her blog archive, wondering which to select. I’ve done this twice before. The first time I arbitrarily chose to look only at her oldest posts, from 2013 (her first year blogging) to 2014. Next I looked at 2015 posts. Since I’m a lazy creature of habit, I’ll look at her posts from 2016 this go-around.

Judy almost always posts early in the morning. (We’re both on U.S. Central Time.) But I rarely crawl out of bed before noon, and I’m not reblogworthy until I’ve had my Dr. Pepper (my version of coffee) and digested the day’s news. Yes, my reblogs will usually be late, like this one, so please dispel the perception that I’ve regressed into becoming ForgettingMan. (Yes, Judy has already cast a faux chagrin in my general direction for not posting yet today!) I was wondering if there was a way I could work in some of the daily prompts Judy posts to. Then I had an epiphany!

First up is something she posted in January, 2016. It’s called “Blogomania”. Feels to me like a fun title to kick off my temporary tenure, yes?

FOTD 2/21/2020

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Today’s Hibiscus

For Cee’s FOTD

TTFN

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Under the Volcano

Tomorrow I will be driving toward the volcano for a one-week writing retreat with six other women in Colima. I hope to make progress on at least one book. During that time, Forgottenman has agreed to take over my blog, so I hope you enjoy seeing what he has up his sleeve. Although I won’t be home yet, I’ll be back blogging on March 1. Give Forgottenman your full attention, because there will be a test later!!  xooxox Judy

Orchid: FOTD Feb 21, 2020

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For Cee’s FOTD

Presidential Seal

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Presidential Seal

He’s an annoying sycophant, his screw loose in its socket.
One hand in the treasury, the other in his pocket.
What he may label progress is progress just for him
and his self-serving buddies. For the rest of us, it’s dim.
What’s seen as prosperity I fear is selling out.
How can it be that all cannot see what it’s about?

He’s selling off our parklands. Selling off our world.
The seas rise up to claim us. The hurricane’s unfurled.
The fires blaze around us. Nature has gone spastic
as it disgorges methane and chokes on all our plastic.
Lady Liberty’s in mourning. Our flags all fall to tatters.
Our leaders lost in their affairs instead of in what matters.

Our people, so short-sighted, will be called upon to pay.
The eagle on his office crest is but a bird of prey.
Both eagles and vultures are adroit at seeing,
but they are not equal when it comes to being.
I fear the presidential crest now marks what he will steal.
Its bird is now a turkey for a reigning monarch’s meal.

He claps his hands and purses lips–a barking preening fool–
as he does his silly act upon his circus stool.
He gives the presidential seal a different connotation
as he balances upon his nose the future of our nation.
Hoping that this earthly globe is one that he won’t drop.
Hoping his buffoonery one day soon will stop.

Prompt words today are annoying, progress, vulture, adroit and seeing.

She Used to Say

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                  She Used to Say

“How many loves, Senora?” she used to say.
“Perhaps twenty,” I  would tell her.
I was forty when I married,
and I had traveled the world.

She had married at fifteen
and was a mother at sixteen.
By twenty-six, she was a mother of five.

When he drank cerveza,
he had beaten her.
She had not missed him when he left.

No more men, her children had demanded
and she’d agreed,
for the young man from El Chante who courted her now
was handsome and had money
but was not in her heart.

Still, I could see her pining
over the tall Arab
who hired the men of her pueblo.

He neither looked at her nor talked to her.
But in the night, I imagine she pined,
Arabian nights unreeling in her imagination
impossible and foreign.

One day, returning early,
I found her asleep on the divan,
a Mexican novella
rolling out of the television
into the eyeless air.

What futile dreams superseded
all these vicarious heartaches?
What magnolia-scented air
slumbered heavy in the hot layers of her sleep?

“How many loves?” she had asked me
on the road home from Guadalajara.
“Oh, many loves, “ I told her.
“I was forty when I married,
and I had traveled the world.”

 

For dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night

Bird in Paradise

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IMG_5616 2.jpegFor Cee’s FOTD

First Step

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Click on photos to enlarge.


First Step

Looking out of your front door
there is a whole world to explore.
Standing here behind the glass,
you only need to choose to pass
into that world wherein your muse
will enter you to help you choose
which world you’ll hold within your hands.
Which foreign soil. Which country’s sands.
If you falter. If you sigh,
doubt yourself and wonder why,
feel yourself less fit and spry
and fear that you will not get by,
issue yourself a reprimand.
Pack your bag and take your hand
and lead yourself outside the door.
This leaving’s what a door is for.
Gather up your courage and
set off for that foreign land.

Prompts for today are looking out of my front door, glass, muse, spry and hands.

And, for Thursday Doors.

Mutter

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Mutter

Did you hear the scandal? Did you hear the “rumor?”
Did she break a fingernail? Does she have a tumor?
She isn’t going to write a poem. She doesn’t like one word
suggested as a prompt today. She thinks they are absurd.
Nothing to rhyme with “traffic.” She’d rather play in it
than try to think up any rhyme if “ruckus” has a say in it.
Her salad days are over. She’s too old to be this clever.
When she saw the word “cycle,” her muse just muttered, “Never!”
So for the second time this week, she’s whining and complaining.
But I see the prompt words tricked her, for she used them while explaining!

 

Prompt words today are traffic, rumor, cycle, ruckus and salad.

Sweet Clover

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Photo by my sister Patti Arnieri

Sweet Clover

Before our dad told us its real name,
we used to call it wild mustard.
What did we know about sweet clover except for its color
and that summer smell, cloying in its sugared perfume.
It filled the air and smothered the plains—
bright yellow and green where before
brown stubble had peeked through blown snow.

On these dry lands, what flowers there were
tended to be cash crops or cattle feed.
Sweet clover or alfalfa.
The twitching noses of baby rabbits brought home by my dad
as we proffered it to them by the handful.
Fragile chains we draped around our necks and wrists.
Bouquets for our mom
that wilted as fast as we could pick them.

Summers were sweet clover and sweet corn
and first sweethearts parked on country roads,
windows rolled down to the night air,
then quickly closed to the miller moths.
Heady kisses,
whispered confessions, declarations,
unkept promises.
What we found most in these first selfish loves
was ourselves.

The relief of being chosen
and assurance that all our parts worked.
Our lips accepting those pressures unacceptable
just the year before.
Regions we’d never had much congress with before
calling out for company.
That hard flutter
like a large moth determined to get out.
Finding to our surprise,
like the lyrics of a sixties song,
that our hearts could break, too.

Hot summer nights,
“U”ing Main,
cars full of boys honking
at cars full of girls.
Cokes at Mack’s cafe.
And over the whole town
that heavy ache of sweet clover.
Half promise, half memory.
A giant invisible hand
that covered summer.

The dVerse prompt today is to write  a poem about a flower. Nice coincidence that I was working on this poem for a book about growing up in South Dakota and had just asked my sister if she had any photos of sweet clover. She did–and here are both the poem and the photo.