Curling her palms around her usual potion, Robin tried to seal her ears to the bombastic recitations of the exploits of the geriatric uni-cyclist seated on a barstool to her right. Friday afternoon club was less fun in one’s seventies.
The words for “Can You Tell A Story In––” are: Curl, Potion, Robin, Uni–cycle and Bombast, and the word limit is 40 words:
I drove up the hill to my house following this pickup. I was so tempted to follow it to its destination to ask what its story was. Now I’m sorry I didn’t. Can you furnish a story for me? HERE is the pingback to include with your post to make sure we all see it..
Every Wednesday, I will publish a photo. Please publish a poem or short story inspired by the photo and link to this blog in the comments.
I loved this song that came out the year I turned 6 years old. Seems to still be having an effect.
My childhood dollhouse was a helium balloon,
caught in a tornado with a flock of flying squirrels,
equal novices in these midnight adventures
soaring out into the world away from horses,
wheat fields, henhouses and unpaved roads.
Escape was a constant theme in that jumprope, hopscotch life
where costumes were for Halloween and dreams kept silent under wigs.
Sailing rainwater rivers down deep ditches,
wearing vestigial vernix as protection against inevitable dunkings,
my uncle’s porkpie hat my umbraculum against hot prairie skies.
The only exit from that world I escaped in time was too often an ossuary:
tunafish Catholics buried under Papal supervision in one part of the cemetery,
Methodists in another, lily-white in their observance of the rules:
Sunday morning church a prerequisite for Saturday night dances.
Jazz nights under covers, Jesus Loves me in the light of day.
Inner tube boats traded for planes and ocean liners,
orange juice traded for absinthe, I sailed and flew into the world.
Using my first world as a grounding place,
I seized chance’s fortune as well as its mistakes––
to venture out and earn a life.
Matin
What kind of a world
does a bird feel itself a part of
that prods it to such a joyous song
in celebration of her beauties?
Sun barely risen,
air crisp and cool,
not a breath of air stirs the
vibrant golden hibiscus
to cause the fall
of one palm-sized petal
onto the dew-damp grass below.
No clouds obscure
one puff of steam
rising from the distant volcano
that peeks over the
hills above the lake––
not one ripple on its calm surface.
I lie on my bed,
apart from this still morning,
making lists––
only a glimpse
of that bird’s world
on view through my window’s parted curtain,
as I listen to this constant oration
of its joy over being born
into this world.
I somehow in the editing erased the prompt for this poem and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. If it strikes a chord with you and you think you know of a prompt it might have been written for, please put a link in comments. I am definitely losing it, folks!!!
Image by Alireza Dolati
Divine Providence
The wings of destiny are stilled, waiting for our play.
Astonished at our slowness, confused at the delay.
Disappointment in mankind by now’s a usual thing.
What new human horror will the future bring?
We’ve poisoned oceans, sullied air and burdened earth with junk.
Enough to put Ma Nature in a perpetual funk.
She balks and sends out warriors to try to curb our lusts,
but still mankind continues to turn shouldn’ts into musts.
She now sees she was misguided in creating human fools,
with all of their excesses flaunting all her rules.
Soon she’ll find another way to try to clear her slate of them
as destiny stands waiting to see what is the fate of them.
For dVerse Poets, we were to choose a Spanish term to use for the subject of a poem. In Spanish, Divina Providencia means destiny with choices and spiritual interventions. My poem is about how mankind has unfortunately chosen to respond to that divine providence.
The Passenger
I see her back her car outside.
She never offers me a ride.
I go the same way she is going,
but she passes, still unknowing.
After ten long years, I stand
making no sign with head or hand.
My legs are tired. My back is bent.
My footsteps follow where she went.
It takes two minutes to go by car.
I take an hour to go that far.
If she knew, perhaps she’d say,
“Would you like a ride today?”
She would have rolled her window down
to offer me a ride to town.
I’d dust my clothes and step inside,
grateful, at long last, for the ride.
And at the bottom of the hill,
as though, perhaps, she’d had her fill,
She’d say, “I’m turning left from here.”
And I’d assemble all my gear,
and give my thank-you, even though
I need to go where she will go.
Charity goes just so far,
I think, as I exit the car.
I live about two-thirds of the way up a very tall mountain in Mexico, and often as I drive down to the main road, I give a ride to whomever I encounter walking down the cobblestones—especially the women, most of whom work as housekeepers in the houses in my fraccionamiento. But now and then when I am in a hurry or when I see a man suspicious-looking or dusted by his labors, I drive on by. Then I wonder what he is thinking as I guiltily observe him in the rear vision mirror.
The Word of The Day Challenge today is passenger. Forgottenman found this poem I published long ago and suggested I used it for this prompt. He knows I am exhausted. Sweet, sweet man. Here it is.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #72” Today’s number is 193. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and post a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. Here are my contributions to the album.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Davy Jones Locker: Davy Jones’ Locker is a metaphor for the bottom of the sea: the state of death among drowned sailors and shipwrecks. It is used as a euphemism for drowning. Silver coins spilling from a pirate chest seem to be doing these victims of shipwreck at sea no good at all. I collected all of the shells and sand used in this piece from various beaches in Mexico. Even the plastic cup, once claimed by the sea, washed ashore covered in coral.
(Although I created the piece above for an exhibition 5 years ago,
the poem below is new, created for this prompt:)
Davy Jones Locker
Storytellers tell the tales of underwater realms
where sunken ships lie buried with sand up to their helms.
They lie countless fathoms beneath the emerald foam
of oceans only beasts and serpents of the sea call home.
There saints of the underworld have made more novel choices
other than announcing their presence through their voices.
Silver coins rolled to the beach, bones smoothed by ocean tides,
give hints of those deep regions where Davy Jones resides.
His ship now razed by currents that drew it to its death,
the ocean mist still carries vestiges of his breath.
He has become that element that once he sought to best––
a part of that great ocean that was his lifelong quest.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle # 706 the prompt words are: underworld realm beasts raze maps storytellers saints emeralds hood voices serpent mist
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 