Monthly Archives: June 2024

Reliquary, for RDP, June 20, 2024

 

daily life color241
Reliquary

On Sunday morning under orange bougainvillea,
Your picture spills from an old album.
You were on a verandah under purple bougainvillea,
drinking the hot noon from your coffee cup
as I drank passion fruit and watched Lake Tana birth the Nile.

Later, kneeling by the river, I made my hand into a cup,
but you called out that slow death swam the blood
of those who touched the river,
while behind you on harsh branches,
black birds barked stark music.

Now, on Sunday morning under orange bougainvillea,
half a world and half a life away,
I restore you to your proper place, remembering how,
when they laid you down to dream beneath the purple bougainvillea,
it was passionfruit’s sweet poison that flavored my life.

 

This is a poem from my book If I Were Water and You Were Air, to be published soon,
For RDP: Relic

Wheeeerrre’s Pasiano????

I swear these photos are not staged. When I walked around the garden to find a flower to photograph for Cee’s FOTD, I found these reminders of my gardener Pasiano, just as though he’d left a trail for me to follow.  And he had, of course, departed for the day. I guess picking up after him is easier than doing all my own gardening. Plus, he did fix the broken pipe my plumber never did come back to fix, so I forgive him his trespasses.

“Fancy Word” Addendum

For those of you who read my “Fancy Word” poem early on, I discovered hours after I published it that the last word of the penultimate line as well as the entire last line had been left off the poem!  Ironically, the second to the last word of the penultimate line rhymed with the two lines above it, so the deletion wasn’t obvious, but it is funnier with the last line, so  here is the poem with all of its lines.  I’ve also corrected it on the original, so if you read it later on, you’ve already seen this version:

                                      Fancy Words

Don’t we adore fancy words? Don’t we love to use them?
Still, it is annoying when some choose to abuse them.
When “geddouddahere” would do to tell pests when to go,
they use “begone!” to banish them in words more rococo.

Their need to parlay simple words, I fear I find most gruesome.
A tasty meal’s not good enough. They see repasts most toothsome.
While we argue, they asservateassiduously stating
things that all of the rest of us are fine with just debating.

They see themselves as bon vivants, most clever and most charming,
They complicate the simplest words at rates we find disarming.
A lady we call beautiful, gorgeous, lovely, cool,
they find pulchritudinous. Where did they go to school?

Piquant” they use religiously, though most of us denounce it.
Yes, we agree it’s pretty, but we just can’t pronounce it.
Slow music is andante, dark closets are aphotic.
As they rave on, each alloquy tends to get hypnotic.

What the rest of us get rid of, they alleviate.
They do not use contractions.  They don’t abbreviate.
They’re intent on gamboling while we’re just being silly.
They see the landscape undulating. We just find it hilly.

Forsooth, they have no wherewithal to get where they must go?
We’re all willing to chip in. We hope they don’t go slow!
They are extremely irritating, though they do not know it.
It’s not easy dealing with a friend who is a poet!!!

 

For My Vivid Blog: Words

 

 

“Fancy Words” for My Vivid Blog

img_1492
Fancy Words

Don’t we adore fancy words? Don’t we love to use them?
Still, it is annoying when some choose to abuse them.
When “geddouddahere” would do to tell pests when to go,
they use “begone!” to banish them in words more rococo.

Their need to parlay simple words, I fear I find most gruesome.
A tasty meal’s not good enough. They see repasts most toothsome.
While we argue, they asservateassiduously stating
things that all of the rest of us are fine with just debating.

They see themselves as bon vivants, most clever and most charming,
They complicate the simplest words at rates we find disarming.
A lady we call beautiful, gorgeous, lovely, cool,
they find pulchritudinous. Where did they go to school?

Piquant” they use religiously, though most of us denounce it.
Yes, we agree it’s pretty, but we just can’t pronounce it.
Slow music is andante, dark closets are aphotic.
As they rave on, each alloquy tends to get hypnotic.

What the rest of us get rid of, they alleviate.
They do not use contractions.  They don’t abbreviate.
They’re intent on gamboling while we’re just being silly.
They see the landscape undulating. We just find it hilly.

Forsooth, they have no wherewithal to get where they must go?
We’re all willing to chip in. We hope they don’t go slow!
They are extremely irritating, though they do not know it.
It’s not easy dealing with a friend who is a poet!!!

For My Vivid Blog: Words
Must confess that I wrote this poem 7 years ago, but it seemed appropriate, so….

Jumping on the Bandwagon Late!

Click on Photos to Enlarge

Elephants

Fifty-six years of elephants in my life. The first photo—Tsavo Game Preserve in Kenya, Second—riding a timbering elephant in Sri Lanka. First it tried to pull down this tree. Next it went lumbering down the bank of the river to cool down in the water. An exciting ride.  Third—a crocheted mama and her baby created by a woman in my village in San Juan Cosala, Jalisco, Mexico. My life has tamed down a bit since those first two photos.

Just three months late, For CMMC: Word with E and A 
And for My Vivid Blog

The Bread Train for dVerse Poets

The Bread Train

When you hop aboard the bread train, there’s no negotiation.
Folks aboard the bread train become a congregation.
It’s a happy wagon, a life-fulfilling ride.
Everything comes easy when you are inside.

Don’t bother about lowlifes who wait along the tracks.
You can’t be responsible for everybody’s backs.
This trip through life is better if you have some dough.
These folks who have an easy ride everywhere they go?

That there may be enough for all is what they do not know.
They want no interference with the status quo.
If folks don’t have what they do, it’s just because they’re lazy.
Those who think the bread train crowd will feed them are just crazy!

Every riff-raff wannabe can’t have what he wants.
If he can’t afford the bread train, let him eat croissants!!

For dVerse Poets: Train
Go HERE to read more train poems!

About Time!!!!!

Biden to Give Legal Protections to Undocumented Spouses of U.S. Citizens

Undocumented spouses of American citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship, according to officials briefed on the plan.

Listen to this article · 3:52 min Learn more
President Biden, in a dark blue suit and striped tie, standing behind a lectern with his hands partially raised in as he speaks.
President Biden is also expected to announce new ways to help people in the DACA program, known as Dreamers, gain access to work visas.Credit…Rod Lamkey Jr. for The New York Times