Overextended

Click on photos to enlarge.

Overextended

I’m swamped with obligations, let alone what I like doing.
If it were Halloween, I would have no time for booing.
Gargoyles in the garden would have no satisfaction.
They could haunt me all they want, but they’d get no reaction.
I don’t have time for feeling, for music or for fun
until all of the tasks I face are finally through and done.
I can’t finagle time to merely mess around,
for I fear it is my habitude to be completely bound
by my check-lists and my calendar, and no, I don’t know why.
It’s simply in my nature to do and do or die!

 

A “friend” once told me with great irritatIon, “If you’re going to do all these things, Judy, just do them, but don’t for God’s sake talk about it!” I fear I’ve broken her injunction, finally, after all these years. This poem is tongue-in-cheek. All things I enjoy doing…but I do know how to make a mess.

Prompt words today are swamp, finagle, gargoyle, habitude, feel and music.

12 thoughts on “Overextended

    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      I was sorting through three years of letters that I had sent home to my parents and sister when I was living and working in Australia and Africa and backpacking through Indonesia and Asia in between. This was in preparation for a book I was writing on my adventures in Ethiopia for the year and a half that led up to the revolution.

      Like

      Reply
        1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

          I couldn’t believe how often I wrote home. No cell phones back then and calls too expensive to make. Especailly surprising because I haven’t written a single letter in the past twenty years, except for emails and Skype.

          Like

          Reply
          1. MarketGardenReader/IntegratedExpat's avatarintegratedexpat

            That sounds very familiar. When I left home to study, I wrote home regularly. Always 10 pages. I had to queue up for a pay phone, so I phoned once a week and my parents phoned back. By the time we came to the Netherlands, the letters had gone by the wayside, but we still had to go up the road for the pay phone. And it all tailed off once I was working full time. Now I wrote one letter a year to send round to family and friends at Christmas. We used to get many back in return, but that has dwindled over the years, as has the number of people sending and receiving cards. On the other hand, I’m in daily contact with people all over the world thanks to an online community, now mostly via Facebook. They often know more about me than my own family and we have fascinating converse about all sorts, just as I do with my own children, as long as they’re home. Once they move out, I suspect we will keep in contact with WhatsApp and never phone or correspond in long form. Sad but true. And no handwritten letters to read years later.

            Like

            Reply
  1. Lou Carreras's avatarLou Carreras

    Clean work surfaces – tables and workbenches- are signs of an idle mind. Creative people frequently have multiple things ongoing. Talking about them is just another part of the creative process.

    Like

    Reply
    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      That’s what my husband always said..and other friends have pointed out the same. To be fair, all of these messes didn’t occur at the same time or I would have been certifiable!!

      Like

      Reply

Leave a reply to Lou Carreras Cancel reply