Individuality
What you want for me to be
subtracts from “I’ to add to “we,”
and yet it does not set me free,
but traps me in normality.
You will not hear me make a plea
for rules of set society.
I simply choose to take the knee
and insist on being me.
For dVerse Poets: Peer Pressure. Image by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash
The Waystation
Prompt words today are half light, eschew, stomach and investigation.
Familial Disapproval
When he swears when the champagne cork hits him in the eye,
my brother’s new fiancee utters a “My, my!”
then swipes the bubbles from her upper lip with polite tongue.
(She’s squeamish about swear words and she calls the cork a “bung.”)
Her brow furls with referrals to anything unsavory.
(She prefers her history minus genocide or slavery.)
“If you can’t say something good, then don’t say anything at all.”
she says, and then says little but “Oh, really?” and “Y’all!!!”
She’s a proper southern girl with mild disposition.
She would not think to put you out or cause an imposition,
yet when I ask if she is hungry, she admits, “Yes, just a bit,”
and when I put the tea cake out, she eats three-fourths of it!
She never wastes her precious time when visiting by sitting
and conversing with the family. Instead, she brings her knitting,
and bottom lip between her teeth, she counts her knit and pearling.
concentrating on her knitting needles’ rhythmic twirling.
You might surmise she’s not my favorite, or second, third or fourth
girlfriend he has brought home from East and West and North.
This Southern girl sticks in my craw, I just cannot get used to her.
And you can bet I’m dreading the day my bro’ gets fused to her.
Prompt words on this Solstice morning are: hunger, disposition, squeamish, bung, referral and knitting.
Excessive Angst
He suffers not from nuance. His moods are all too blatant.
He bares his anger to display a violence once latent.
His colossal fits of rage reveal that he abhors me.
His reputation slips a notch, and in the end, he bores me.
Prompts today are colossal, display, reputation, bare and nuances.Image by Alessandro Bellone on Unsplash
Solstice Memory
One dark starless Solstice night
devoid of stars or moon or light,
cross my heart and hope to die,
I saw a blackbird flying high
with wings of flame that fanned the air
and rode the wind to spark the hair
of a woman, meek and mild
who stood beneath holding a child
who seemed to search the sky as though
it held a creed for those below.
It passed two times and then the bird
spiraled higher, but not a word
escaped the lips of those beneath,
pinned below to earth and heath.
The flames that fell sparked out and died.
The mother took the child inside
and combed the ashes from their hair,
and though that night was splendid rare,
was the fire gleaned from Heaven or Hell?
So mother told me not to tell
about that night the sky was lit
and nothing more was said of it.
,
For Wordle 557 the prompt words are: blackbird flame wind time cross me woman meek seem creed search earth Image by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 