Monthly Archives: September 2022

Familial One-upmanship

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Familial One-upmanship

My brother has a reputation for excessive lingering.
I think he has advanced degrees in mooching and malingering.

The black sheep of the family, the brunt of all our jokes,
at forty-three he still receives an allowance from our folks.

He ruins family dinners by being loud and brash.
His favorite interactions end up in a clash.

Discussing brands of vodka or motor cars or fashions,
he’s bound to expound at great length about his latest passions.

His family is his outlet for letting off his steam.
His exquisite taste in clothing dissected seam-by-seam.

We get no word in edgewise when conversing with this brother,
so when choosing a table mate, I veer toward any other.

There’s one in every family, it’s true right down the line,
but if you’ve one you’d like to trade, I’d gladly trade you mine.

Prompt words today are discuss, outlet, malinger, clashes, brash,allowance, exquisite and vodka.  (I took this picture but it is not my family.  I took it at a town reunion years ago and it is used for illustrative purposes only. I don’t have any brothers, so the guy  in the poem is fictional, but you might recognize him anyway.)

Sangria Punch for dVerse Poets

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Sangria Punch

Take strawberries, about a cup.
Disinfect, then slice them up.
If you are a liquor lover,
pour tequila in to cover.
Overnight, just let them stew,
then add sangria to the brew
and add fresh orange juice to it
and 7up, more than a bit.

Then slice more strawberries to freeze
and add as many as you please
to pretty glasses picked for show
and put them neatly, row on row
upon the freezer shelf to chill,
ready for your guests to fill
with fresh sangria punch to kill!

For dVerse Poets Quatrain “Punch” Quatrain prompt. Recipe below in non-quatrain form.

1 or 2 cups sliced strawberries and peaches, too, if you wish
2 or 2 cups tequila to cover well
Soak overnight in tall glass pitcher. In the morning, add
1 quart Kirkland Sangria, 1/2 quart fresh orange juice.
When ready to serve, add 1/2 quart 7up, mix and pour over
frozen strawberries places in glasses in freezer to chill.
Adjust for tastes. I do every time. Amounts are approximate.
Store covered in fridge. It improves in flavor as it sits.


HERE is the original dVerse prompt.

Floral Alphabet Challenge, The Letter “F,” and FOTD

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Fuchsia Arete
Frangipani
More Fuchsia
Firecracker plant

Cautionary Tale

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Cautionary Tale

Before a flower you chance to pick,
pick a flower without  bees.
Bees sting painfully and so quick.
So, quick, you need to get the wound
wound tightly to dispel the pain.
Pain  you’d never have felt if only,
only you had looked before.

For the Murisopsis My Name Scavenger Hunt prompt–A Daisy Chain Poem

In Life Not as in Art

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In Life, Not as in Art

Those who have a fondness for surreal modern art
might often hitch their horses behind their apple cart.
Which might lead to dropping apples up and down the road.
Which, of course, will lead to losing half your load.
So, if Pablo Picasso is your aesthetic saint,
My advice for beginners? Don’t practice what you paint.

Prompts for today are cart, beginner, fondness, abstract, drop, modern . Image is Picasso’s la fenêtre ouverte.

Floral Alphabet Challenge, The Letter “E,” and FOTD

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European Michaelmas Daisy
Euphorbia

If you choose to play along, please enter your link in my Floral Alphabet Challenge as well as in Cee’s FOTD.

Zoe, My Teenage Terror

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Rearranging the rug
Editing mom’s latest manuscript
Eating the plants?
Mom’s? Zoe’s coasters
Fighting over the bone
ingesting Mom’s favorite Trahumara basket
Shredding the handmade basket Mom made
No respect for mone
Caught in the act
Discovering toilet paper. Guess who?
Distracting the Masseur
Waking up Mom
Attacking the cat
Stealing plastic bags
Tussling with Yolanda
Dragging the mop from the kitchen to where it belongs–her bed.
stealing Jesus’s socks
Turning on the tap?
Bye-bye Forgottenman’s childhood photo
Forgottenman restored

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/17/opinion/dogs-puppies-adolescence.html?smid=em-share

This brilliant article was sent to me by my friend Laurie. You may not be able to read it unless you subscribe to the NY Times, but if you can read it and have been reading about my puppy Zoe’s recent behavior, you’ll see it describes her to a “T.” 

I had more naughty photos, but WP thought it was appropriate to erase my entire blog after a half hour’s work collecting the photos, so I had to start all over again. Is anyone else having problems like this? I was updating and saving… then all vanished.

Stick-in-the-Muds

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Stick-in-the-Muds

Obtuse folks with fondness for traditions of the past
consider a rendition that has a modern cast
as an indication that culture will not last,
confining their appreciation to their yesterdays,
designating mod designs as just another craze.
They sink into their easy chairs to mouth a loud “Ahem!”
not realizing  that their folks thought just the same of them.

Prompts for today are design, culture, fondness, obtuse, sink, rendition and indicative. IIlustration by Tim Kilby on Unsplash

Floral Alphabet Challenge and FOTD, The Letter “D” Sept. 18, 2022

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It always astonishes me how beautiful dandelions can be when viewed close up. Here is one, along with a handful of the common daisy. Laid-back “D’s.”

Also for Cee’s FOTD

(Should handmade flowers count? You decide.)

Quilting Bee

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Mask quilt by Deanna Taylor
The good, the bad and the ugly. All part of life’s crazy quilt.
Pieces ready to be joined
Broken thoughts
African motif quilt by Deanna Taylor
Detail from mask quilt
This is a lovely poem written by my friend Isidro and painted on my wall. It is his version of a story I’d earlier written entitled “In Mexico There is Always Music.” We all keep contributing to each others’ stories.

(Click on photos to enlarge and to read the rest of the story.)

Quilting Bee

I chop my life up into bits, incongruous and varied:
struggles, victories, tragic loves, the day that I got married.
Clashes create beauty as pains mix up with cheers,
making a lovely pattern as each new piece appears.

In stories as in patchwork quilts, all bits are not roses.
Part of the beauty comes from the pain that it exposes.
We put our art together, fragment after patch
and no pattern emerges if all the pieces match.

A convenient truth of works of art as well as that of life:
beauty’s found in perfection, but also found in strife.
Sweet berries come with brambles and each rose has its thorn.
Both great passion and great pain predate the time we’re born.

Perhaps pain is the awful price that we have to pay
to experience the pleasure of when it goes away.
So with the ugly fabric that finds a place to fit
when contrasting beauty is stitched in next to it.

Life is a lovely story, but not all of it is writ.
Why were we created if not to add to it?
In taking all the pieces we’re provided with,
We take part in creation by adding to the myth.

 

 

Prompts today are patterns, chop, clashes, cheer, incongruous, convenient and brambles.