Monthly Archives: April 2021

Empty Cities: NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 4 Liminal Poem

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Click on images to enlarge.

Empty Cities

The ghosts of hamburgers lurk in the air,
waiting for children no longer there.
All of their voices turned empty and spare,
waiting lines empty and every chair
devoid of bodies. Each table bare.
To where have they gone? Do you know where?
If people all vanished, would the world care?
Would the lynx and the bobcat, the fox and the hare

and deer from the forests and crocodiles dare
to enter our shopping malls and broach the stair
forever silent, frozen and still?
Would they climb the escalator’s metal hill
and move into spaces filled with our things?
Jackets and towels and soup bowls and rings?
Refrigerators, bicycles and shoes,
donuts and bagels and pretzels and booze?

Tip over displays and ponder just what
we ever accomplished with all of this glut?
When we are gone will the animals wonder
what they can do with all of this plunder?
Will they swim in our pools and loll on our greens?
Will they scratch their wild backs on our mowing machines?
Leap over our cars and stream over our bridges,
enter our houses and nose through our fridges?

Will they make a nest of the socialite’s mink?
Have dozens of babies in our kitchen sink?
Remove stuffing from mattresses to create burrows?
Tunnel under our lawns to make ridges and furrows?
Will monkeys swing from our huge chandeliers?
Chimps drive our cars and strip all the gears?
Cows graze through our parks and horses run free,
no saddles inhibiting their liberty?

Just imagine our world once mankind is vanished.
Once we’ve insured we are finally banished.
Clean air and clean oceans. No traffic or noise.
No cars and no airplanes. No rush hour noise.
No traffic or crowds. No exhaust pipes or trash.
No credit cards, coupons or coinage or cash.
What we saw as improvements will all rust away,
covered with vines, to slowly decay.

Mankind just a segment of time’s stony layers,
our music and art and headlines and prayers
all just one strata within the earth’s stories,
buried like all of her other brief glories.
After we’ve suffered earth’s most recent purge,
and we’re all gone, what else will emerge?

 

For NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Four, Liminal Poem

No Vacancy

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No Vacancy

Hurry your feet and speed up your caboose.
We’ve only minutes left to vamoose.
It’s a nuisance, I know, but our time has run out.
It will do you no good to object or to pout.
The antithesis to one’s arrival is going.
The fact this was coming was well in our knowing.
The details of our living here now are archival.
Just as we saluted upon our arrival,
we now must wave bye-bye and pack up our bags,
fasten their locks and attach our name tags.
You may strive to remain here, but we must be gone.
We’re a nuisance here. We must now move over yon.
That’s the thing with exotic weekend vacations.
There’s always someone with Monday reservations!

Word prompts today are caboose, antithesis, salute, strive and nuisance.

Cactus: FOTD Apr 3, 2021

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FOTD Apr 3, 2021

I went out to photograph flowers, but couldn’t resist the wonderful patterns in these cacti.

For Cee’s FOTD

Love’s Blindfold: NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 3

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Love’s Blindfold

The sunset painted you and me
against a bright raspberry sea.
My eyelash pressed against your lips,
I missed the passing of three ships.

Such freedom does enchantment bring
to cancel every other thing.
to pull the wool over our eyes,
all else but love to exorcise.

Here is the NaPoWriMo prompt that led to the above poem: 

And now for our prompt. This one is a bit involved, which is why I’m giving it to you on a Saturday. Today, I’d like to challenge you to make a “Personal Universal Deck,” and then to write a poem using it. The idea of the “Personal Universal Deck” originated with the poet and playwright Michael McClure, who gave the project of creating such decks to his students in a 1976 lecture at Naropa University. Basically, you will need 50 index cards or small pieces of paper, and on them, you will write 100 words (one on the front and one on the back of each card/paper) using the rules found here.

Don’t agonize over your word choices. Making the deck should be fun and revealing, as you generate words that sound “good” to you. The fact that the words are mainly divided among the five senses should be helpful in selecting words that you like the sound of, and that have some meaning personal to you. For example, my deck contains “harbor,” “wool,” “murmur,” “obsidian,” and “needle.”

Once you have your deck put together, shuffle it a few times. Now select a card or two, and use them as the basis for a new poem.

In lieu of choosing just two cards, I kept drawing more cards and choosing one of the words on it, front or back, to include in my poem.The words I chose were paint,  raspberry, eyelash, lips and sea. For

NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 3

Little Squirts

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Click on photos to enlarge.

For A Guy Called Bloke’s Challenge: https://aguycalledbloke.blog/2021/04/01/what-kind-of-squirting-are-you-into/

Squares Challenge: Moon Bright

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For Becky’s Square Challenge: Bright

NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 2 The Road Less Taken in a Modern Age

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The farther up the mountain we went, the smaller the road became. I was on the outiside and for most of the way the drop was severe–with no siderails or walls or shoulders. Vertigo? Yes.

The Road Less Taken in a Modern Age

Who wanders for pleasure, wanders alone
marking no boundary, barrier, zone.
The earth has no limits and time has no chime,
my steps undetermined by schedule or clime.

This used to be my modus operandi—
travel my sweet tooth and freedom my candy.
No email or Google, no iPad or phone,
without Internet service, I rolled like a stone.

But today I am traveling from town to town
with heavier luggage–more weighted down.
And though I go singly, I’m never alone
thanks to my computer, my Kindle and phone.

Right now I’m imprisoned and my progress is bound
by the cords of my ear buds confusingly wound
round my camera charger and Ethernet connector.
My GPS determines my vector.

No more do I travel unfettered and free.
Cell tower to tower is where I must be;
so every person that I’ve ever met
has me perpetually in their debt.

Birthdays to remember and twitters to answer,
queries of grandchildren, hip sockets, cancer.
Traveling with this extra weight is not pleasant.
I much prefer traveling just in the present

unfettered by email, phone calls or that voice
calling instructions at every choice
of northwards or southwards or eastward or west.
Yes, I know GPS directions are best,

but if I’m never lost and never alone,
I’d best just stay home and talk on the phone,
for most of adventure has come when I’m lost
from all of my past, whatever the cost.

Still the ways of the present make planning much easier,
finding my next destination much breezier.
These tricky freeways have changed in past years
and I find my memory much in arrears.

So perhaps for today I’ll turn on GPS
so I won’t get so lost and I won’t have to guess
which freeway to take: eight-oh-eight? Eight-oh-six?
Getting myself in a terrible fix.

Tomorrow’s the time to become vagabond,
using personal radar and my fairy wand
to maneuver through life by the skin of my pants.
Just for today, I won’t take the chance!

for NaPoWriMo 2021 Day 2

FOTD Apr 2, 2021

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I can never remember the name of this flower.

For Cee’s FOTD

The Wordsmith’s Divulgence

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The Wordsmith’s Divulgence

My story is a flamfoo, ornamented too excessively.
I always overdo it. I’m over-endowed expressively.

Why use one word with two in mind? I fear I’m never spartan.
Instead of wearing loincloths, my poems are dressed in tartan!

Instead of coming one-by-one, my thoughts come in a storm.
So many little busy bees, descending in a swarm.

I do not have the patience to select them one-by one.
When I seek to edify, I simply find it fun

to pile on word after word. The more the merrier.
Bald truth is not my forte. I prefer my grand thoughts hairier!

 

 

Prompt words today are patience, wordsmith, flamfoo, edify and storm. A flamfoo, by the way, is a gaudily overdressed woman or an ornament of her dress.

By All Means

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By All Means

Grandmother Air, Grandfather Tree,
forgive our eccentricity
in doing what we’ve done to thee.

The parricide that we have done
is more than just a smoking gun.
If it’s a war, chaos has won.

By burning, we’ve killed both of you.
Nature’s response should be our clue
that our end, too, is well in view.

No prankster when you make your threat,
you state explicitly, and yet,
still your message we fail to get.

An accurate interpretation
is that man’s manipulation
has resulted in great agitation.

Everything’s off-balanced and
gotten rather out of hand.
So nature has to make a stand.

Her arsenal is most minute.
and though mankind is most astute,
ironically, hard to refute.

Fools will say that we have won,
but still, when all is said and done,
we still hold the smoking gun.

If we don’t change our reckless course,
and solve our problem at its source,
she will respond with greater force.

Be it virus, fire or wind,
if our ways we do not mend,
we’ll be the means to our own end.

Prompt words today are eccentric, air, accurate, prankster and grandfather.