Monthly Archives: April 2024

After 15 Years, for dVerse Poets Apr 25, 2024

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If this poem left justifies, click on it to get it to center as it is a shape poem!

After 15 Years

Your memory                                                     cuts so sharply
through my dream’s beginning that I wake,
gasping like a fish on the sand
left by some fisherman
too intent upon his next catch
to end it cleanly.

In its tight skin,
I gasp for air,
rise as it cannot rise
and like you cannot rise
out to that night sea air
which is the only coolness
in a month of burned days.

My memory, curving round,
pulls in the memory of you
like gills seeking to understand
the waterless air.

Landed by some bigger fisherman
whose bait you couldn’t resist,
“Oh,” you said, just “Oh,”
before you took the hook,
slipping from my grasp
as I held on, held on,
let go.

 

This is one of the poems in my book of 50 years of love poems  titled
If I Were Water and You Were Air, about to be published on Amazon.

Posted in response to the dVerse Poets Open Link Night.
See how others responded to the prompt HERE.

Happiness: NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 25

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“Too much happiness or too much unhappiness render us
oblivious to any good or bad changes around us.” 
—Alka Girdhar

 Balance

Happiness, like sadness, takes up too much room—
like a greedy house guest usurping our closets with their excess.
What bride notices the homeless on her bridal route?
What new mother thinks first of the starving hidden half a world away?

Sadness, like happiness, eats up our world.
The hungry yearn first for bread,
the ill for surcease from pain.
Who feels the thorn may overlook the rose.

Life is balanced, not within each,
but within the all.
What seems unfair to the single eye
is perfect harmony for the all-seeing.

So much easier
for the fortunate to feel worthy of their lot.
to feel, somehow, that their place in the  world
was created just for them.

Do the cursed feel equally singled out for hunger, cold, pestilence and misery?
Does a master mason have an intended place for every stone?
Does a baker single out a single speck of flour for inclusion?
Is a bee instilled with life to pollinate a certain flower?

What kind consciousness could have borne the guilt
of thinking through a plan more specific than the overplan–
the functioning of the grand machine of the universe
wherein happiness and sadness
swing like a pendulum
that somehow balances all.

 

For NaPoWriMo: What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Plumeria, for FOTD Apr 25, 2024

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My plumeria tree is now in full bloom.

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Kalanchoe, for FOTD Apr 24, 2024

4 Replies

For Cee’s FOTD

The Ticket: NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 24

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The Ticket

Because I could not stop for death,
three times it  let me pass,
but the reprieve it granted,
sadly will not last.

Frequently, it beckons,
choosing friend after friend
in a sad progression
I know will never end.

One day it will summon
and I can’t refuse to go.
I only hope that when it comes,
my passing won’t be slow.

Let us go then, you and I,
forgoing futile censure,
traveling without regrets
into this new adventure.

 

  • “Let us go then, you and I,” from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
  • “Because I could not stop for Death, Emily Dickinson
    For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 24

Bougainvillea and Succulents, For Cee’s FOTD Apr 23, 2024

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For Cee’s FOTD

For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 23

1 Reply

The NaPoWriMo prompt was to create a new Superhero. This is my response.

No Can Do

Who needs another superhero? Aren’t there enough? 
Thinking up another one is going to be rough.
Of Doctors, Bats and Green ones, it seems we’ve had our fill,
and Possum Girl or Rat Boy doesn’t seem to fill the bill.
All heroic adjectives have already been used.
“Incredible” and “Super” I fear have been abused.
So what’s a gal to do when asked to make a new one?
I think that I must answer, it’s impossible to do one!!

Just for the record, I actually did create a superhero poem a few years ago for NaPoWriMo. If you’d like to check it out, HERE is a link.

This is an alphabetically ordered list of superheroes from  Encyclopaedia Britannica and DC Comics:

 

For NaPoWriMo Superhero prompt Image is a Marvel Stock image

For Lens Artists Challenge #296, Abstract

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CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

 

For Lens Artists Challenge

“Nocturnal Shuffle” for RDP

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Midnight Minuet

Sneaking down the unlit hall,
we take turns answering nature’s call,
awaiting our own turn to sneak
to the john to have a leak.

In the darkness, we repeat
this rather tricky hourly feat.
Him, then her, then me at last.
So are our nightly ramblings cast.

It is not choice that brings us here
to void ourselves of pop or beer.
In fact, a full night’s sleep we seek—
our intentions strong, but bladders weak.

At eleven, twelve and one and two,
sleeping is what we’d rather do.
Instead, we do-si-do—just missing
the next sojourner bent on pissing!

 

This poem is dedicated to all of those over sixty who find themselves taking more nightly journeys down the hall than in the past. Perhaps, like me, you are a houseguest. If so, there is no avoiding the nocturnal shuffle if your hosts, like you, are of a certain age.

 

 

The Ragtag Daily Prompt is Nocturnal

Morning Glory and Bougainvillea, for FOTD Apr 22, 2024

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For Cee’s FOTD