Monthly Archives: November 2023

Locked Rooms for Thursday Inspirations, Nov 30, 2023

Locked Rooms

My thoughts live in a mansion, restrained to just ten rooms.
When the unused rooms grow cobwebs, they must sweep them out with brooms.
They cannot see their pleasures, for they enter with eyes shut.
Sealed chambers filled with many things, but we do not know what.
It is exhausting just maintaining all these extra spaces.
No wonder that I lose my keys and forget most new faces.

No telling when we’ll let our thoughts roam free in other rooms.
For all these years they’ve been sealed up like dark and unused tombs.
Perhaps we’ll find they’re portals to other times and places.
Perhaps they lead to other worlds in intergalactic spaces.
They might allow a journey into the minds of others.
Would extrasensory perception make us enemies or brothers?

I’m sure the reason that we use small portions of our brain
is because if we knew of them, we’d use them all in vain.
We’d journey through the cosmos to plunder other spheres.
React to them like enemies, guided by our fears.
If there is any entity guiding how things go,
perhaps they recognize that Earth’s evolving sort of slow.

Our energies put into things instead of who we are.
Instead of love? Investments. Instead of aid? A car.
If perhaps we aren’t allowed the full use of our brains,
it is because we have not learned to use them for our gains.
How we look’s important. How much it costs the point.
We’re ruining our planet by cluttering up the joint.

Our brains we use for warfare. Weapons we can’t control.
They wind up in a child’s hands or on a grassy knoll.
They’re used for entertainment on a computer screen
in games that build aggression. We win by being mean.
Shows they call reality prefabricate each role.
The lowest denominator seems to be their goal.

True, other things are in our mind: poems, music, art,
dance and social functions, a few of them with heart.
So we stage elaborate galas to raise the money for
children who are hungry, adults chewed to the core.
And yet some of us still balk at giving health care to the ill.
If they are not wealthy, they must chew the bitter pill.

No doctors and no dental care. No succor for the poor.
If they worked, they’d have health care. Complaints are such a bore!
These things we fill our minds with. There’s no need for more brain space.
In the ten percent of brain we use, new thoughts we cannot face.
This E.S.P. is hogwash, and U.F.O’s are fiction.
Even the thought of universal health care causes friction.

For every room within the mind that’s used, there are nine more
filled with mysteries we won’t know until we try the door.
Some enter and return to tell of wonders they have spied.
Yet unenquiring minds respond by saying they have lied.
We’ll never leave these sealed up rooms unless we learn to dream.
Let creative thoughts flow out in an uncensored stream.

To seep beneath closed doors into our mind’s more spacious realms.
Be adventurous voyagers standing at the helms
of ships of mind that sail the wilder seas of consciousness
regardless of the ones who try to censor and to hush.
Turn off the TV sets and games of war and violence.
Let Honey Boo Boo slip back into former innocence.

Lay Kim Kardashian to rest, pull out your skeleton key
that just might let you in to all the rest that you can be.

For the Thursday Inspiration: Key

“Giving” for dVerse Poets, Nov 30, 2023

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Sacrifice

Some people give their lives to it,
And others never do––
Conditions never calling for
Rash actions to ensue.
I’ve held onto my life because
Fate never asked me to
Immolate myself to save
Child, soldier, Jew,
Ensuring that I remain 
Securely in life’s queue.

I don’t think sacrifice has been anything I’ve had to do much of in my life, short of occasionally knowingly giving someone the last pork chop or the biggest piece of cake.  Perhaps this is because I had no children.

I can think of only one big potential sacrifice I made in my life and that is something I will not speak of–mainly because people it might affect are still alive. So, in lieu of writing a personal essay or poem on this topic, I invite you to read an article about the top ten most inspiring self sacrifices.  You can go  HERE to read it.

 

For dVerse Poets: Giving

Let There Be Light! For CFFC

Okay, I couldn’t resist. My husband Bob Brown and I used to make lamps so they seem to be naturals to show for this prompt. To see more of our lamps, go HERE.

This is the only one that I still have. Bob did the wood and stone. I made the paper and formed the spiral shade.

For CFFC: Any type of light fixture

Stages of the Silk Floss Tree, For FOTD Nov 28, 2023

 

Click on images to enlarge.

We have one of these trees at the end of our block which finally allowed me to capture it in all of its phases.  When the flowers fall off, this very large pod develops.Called a fruit, it is not edible but actually eventually falls off to reveal the large white fiber ball which is 
kapok,used to stuff pillows and cold-weather clothing as well as life preservers.

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Round and Round, for Sunday Stills

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

For Sunday Stills: Round