Monthly Archives: January 2022

Clown Face

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Clown Face

The majority of children, in fact every kid in town
would drop everything they’re doing to get painted by a clown.
In his coat of many colors and his distinctive rubber nose,
his ruffled baggy pants and his other funny clothes,
he’s bound to probe your funny bone and catch you in a smile.
He’ll paint your face like his if you’ll stand quiet for awhile,
and then the whole best part of it is up and down the street,
every door you knock on will provide you with a treat!!!!

Prompts for today are coat, probe, majority, distinct and drop.

Temporarily Shoeless

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Temporarily Shoeless

My mind is in a quandry and I don’t know what to do
about the most unfortunate loss of my new shoe.
I’ve retraced my footsteps and looked with hawk-like eye
and yet not any trace of it was I able to spy.

I find no consolation in the fact I still have one,
for dancing in a single shoe cannot be any fun.
The majority of those I know say to just forget it,
but they have not a notion of the way I came to get it.

I peep down through the curtains when I hear the doorbell ring,
and from my turret window, see the one who will be king
and in his hand he holds the shoe that is a perfect pairing
to the shoe that on one foot I happen to be wearing.

As I limp down the stairway, I hear my sister strain
to stuff her foot into the shoe, in spite of all her pain.
Then my other stepsister tries to do the same.
She offers to cut off her toes, but his majesty’s not game.

“Is there another sister?” he asks as I appear.
My stepmother says no but I step forward and say, “Here,
I have the other slipper,” and so the story goes
on with a happy ending, as everybody knows.

 

Word prompts today are hawk, quandry, majority, consolation and loss. Image by Ilina Ekaterina

Sue Bee Honey: Wordle 538, Jan 30, 2022

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Sue Bee Honey

Once a year, their trucks would leave trails through our fields of sweet clover and my father returned from the fields with  combs of honey still in their wooden frames, dripping rich streams that blackened the dust of  the sidewalk between the back driveway and the porch, where he propped them up against the porch railing to drain into huge clay bowls.

Sue Bee Honey, rich and golden and speckled with tiny corpses of the bees who made it. Those two purloined combs were the price he exacted for allowing them to put their hives onto our land. I swear I could smell that honey on the wind long before he brought it back to share with the family—our year’s supply that we would filter through screens to remove broken bits of wax and bee bodies and pour into bottles to line a foot-long space on the narrow shelves of the pantry.

I remember breaking off a piece of the broken comb to chew like sugared gum—sweet July memories of summer as well as later memories of the silken feel of that honey trailed onto hot buttered corn muffins in the morning. It solved my winter hunger for sweet and fueled me up for a morning of  books and chalkboards and sharpened pencils on blue-lined rough yellow paper.

 

The prompt words  for  The Sunday Whirl, Wordle 538 are: broken silk dust leaving truck family sign hunger wind books honey and black. Two of the images are by  Alisa Reutova and Mariana Ibanez  on Unsplash.

Memory Walk

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Memory Walk

Holding onto old-time love.
Fits like a glove.
Keeps repeating.
My heart beating.

What’s wrong with trying once again?
Go where we’ve been
Repeat old fun
that’s come undone.

Photos fall from hidden folder.
Getting older,
I put away
the bygone day.

For dVerse Poets Minute Poem

The elements of the Minute Poem are:

1. narrative poetry.
2. a 12 line poem made up of 3 quatrains. (3 of 4-line stanzas)
3. syllabic, 8-4-4-4   8-4-4-4   8-4-4-4 (First line has 8 syllables of each stanza.  Remaining lines has 4 syllables in each stanza)
4. rhymed, rhyme scheme of aabb ccdd eeff.
5. description of a finished event (preferably something done is 60 seconds).

Ponzi Scheme

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Ponzi Scheme

They say that you are struggling to be what you purport.
Meanwhille, your flame is flickering. You’ve little real support.
Although you gave appearance of being strong and wise,
you were only surreptitious—a serpent in disguise.
You claimed to be clairvoyant, so why didn’t you foresee
the crumbling of the pyramid of your prosperity? 

Prompt words today are flickering, clairvoyant, surreptitious, purport and struggle.

Aloe Vera Bloom Macro: FOTD Jan 29, 2022

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This is the first time I’ve seen an aloe vera bloom in this manner. It is a huge cluster which grew on the end of the flower spike that usually looks like this:

 

Does anyone know what is going on here?

For Cee’s FOTD

San Juan Cosala Women’s Invitational Writeup in the Guadalajara Reporter

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Thanks, Bethany Putnam, for your lovely writeup of the San Juan Cosala Women’s Invitational Retablo show in the Guadalajara Reporter!! The show will remain up for two more weeks. You can view it from 10 to 2 or 4 to 8 Tuesday through Saturday at Isidro’s gallery 1/2 block west of Viva Mexico on Porfirio Diaz in San Juan Cosala. That is the street that runs along the lake side of the plaza.

What Are They? Answers

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Harpo Marx’s sperm?

Yesterday I published photos of three objects and asked readers to guess what they were. There were some great answers. Go HERE to see the photos and funny (and sometimes correct) answers.

What they really were was 1. a cluster of thousands of Daddy Long Legs, banded together for protection and warmth. The blob was at least 14 inches long and 8 inches across and stuck out about 6 inches from the wall. When disturbed, they would all scatter, then cluster together again. Those hairy parts sticking out are actually their legs sticking out.  2. The second photo was a clear helium balloon with small LED lights wound around it on tiny wires. 3. The third were actual seeds from a Birds of Paradise flower. Surreal.  To see the answers folks gave to “What is it?” click on the link above. Thanks for all of you who played along by guessing.

If you want to see a video of the Daddy Long Legs from another year, go HERE. They are not, by the way, spiders.