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Rainy “No Kings” Protest Rally in Ajijic, Mexico
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Monthly Archives: June 2025
Under the Snow Moon, for RDP June 14, 2025
Under the Snow Moon
Moon of Snow, Moon of Sand.
Under a bleached white moon I stand.
Starless night, all alone.
Cold as ice. Cold as bone.
There you spin, far above.
Prompting wonder, prompting love.
Why is your light a different sort
Causing fierce creatures to cavort?
In the forest, eyes shine bright,
intent to tear, intent to bite,
but here at continent’s far rim,
with moon as bright, our passions dim.
Here the sand crabs burrow deep.
poem predators to stir their sleep.
Light of moon and light of sun
are the same. Their light is one.
Your light reflects some foreign day.
I look once more, then turn away.
I take its memory to keep,
turn out the lights and go to sleep.
For RDP the prompt is “predator.”
“Evil Eye” for Word of the Day, June 14, 2025
Evil Eye
It floated off to the side,
disappearing when I turned to face it head-on.
It hadn’t his features, really,
but I felt his presence a dozen times after—
something floating just off the corner of reality.
Then, weeks later, in the bedroom—a bat.
It flickered against the white curtain and then disappeared.
Moments later, there it was again.
I jerked my head quickly around, flipped the curtain out,
examined its other side.
Moments later, there it was again.
Then a circle floated across to join it.
A hair floated down from above and stuck, center-vision.
A few hours later, the fireworks started—
flashing corollas of light just to the right of me,
like subtle flashbulbs going off.
This was when I decided I needed to see a specialist.
Yes, a retinal detachment, he agreed,
but not yet perforated.
Now, my movements curtailed,
I await that new cloudy ghost
that will be a harbinger
of surgery.
Every tope, every cobblestone
brings a new flash of light—
a signal to still myself.
No jumping. No Zumba.
No jogging. No lifting.
I wait, inactive, watching floaters
move to the center of my vision
and off to the side again.
I practice various levels of exertion,
waiting for the flash that signals rest.
I wait for words to float
across my vision,
to rend my inactivity
and prompt me
to pin them to the page––
to stitch them together
into a clearer sight
of what is there, invisible,
inside me, waiting for the tear
to let it out.
They are the ghosts
of the future
and I am the one
who seeks to gather them,
to mend the tear
and anchor
these slippery ghosts.
The Word of the Day prompt is “specialist.”
Ask First! for SOCS, June 14, 2025
Ask First!
I don’t drink milk and don’t drink tea.
Water and coffee do for me.
When it comes to booze, I’m picky.
Tequila’s fine but Scotch is icky.
Pineapple juice or orange is fine,
but tomato’s out of line,
so bloody Marys aren’t the thing
that I’d like for you to bring
to wet my tongue and slake my thirst.
I request you ask me first.
For SOCS, the prompt word is “drink.”
For Fibbing Friday, June 13, 2025
For Fibbing Friday, the Questions are:
1. Who sang “Is This a Kind of Magic?” My mother, the day my sister finally cleaned up her room.
2. Who sang “Somebody’s Watching Me?” Taylor Swift, feigning humility.
3. Why do we blow out birthday candles? To abolish the flame.
4. Why do we associate red and green with Christmas? Because those are the colors most of the decorations come in.
5. What do Little Elves supposedly cause? Little traffic jams.
6. Why do some people hold their breath when passing near a cemetery? Because there are so many within in need of it and they fear having it stolen.
7. Why is finding a penny considered good luck? Because it will soon be a collector’s item.
8. Why should we not rock an empty rocking chair? Because if it is empty, we are not in it to do so.
9. Why do people hang Dreamcatchers? Because it is a capital offense.
10. Why is flipping a loaf of bread unlucky in France? Because the French are known for having poor coordination and too many loaves ended up on the floor.
Downpour
Finally, after a year of practically no rain, a downpour!!!
Downpour
I love the cadence of the rain
on paving stones and windowpane.
One slight percussion, then a profusion
blending into a confusion
of drops that interrupt and drown
the sounds of others coming down.
Each new drop joining with them all
to imitate a waterfall.
“Rote Learning” For the Three Things Challenge
Rote Learning
As education
takes a vacation,
alas, we know
that even though
thoughts that astound
may well abound,
thinking aloud
is not allowed.
The three words for the Three Things Challenge are: ALLOWED
ALOUD ASTOUND
Trump administration considers slashing federal education money.
Goodbye Old Paint, for the dVerse Poetics Challenge
Old for New
Goodbye Old Paint
What have you eaten that we have forgotten?
What lost earring resides
in the deepest recesses of your front seat?
What coins shaken and pushed into your crevasses?
And do you remember the song made up on the spot
and sung just once, then left forgotten in Nevada?
Do you still carry the dust of Tonopah
or that yearning to actually see something extraterrestrial
on the Extraterrestrial Highway?
Do you carry shards of his boredom while driving
mile after mile of Utah beauty?
Do you still carry her expectations
of sharing the giant faces of Rushmore
and echoes of the fact that he expected more?
What of molecules of the Mississippi crossing
or dreams of the memories of Hannibal?
What sweat from those Mississippi hours
waiting outside the B.B. King Museum?
Salt grains and crumbs of chocolate
and DNA of those few souls who rode along in you—
all parked in a parking lot waiting to be bought
by someone who will never know the hidden you.
Just like the rest of the world,
frequented by interlopers.
Only we, leaving you, will murmur “Goodbye Old Paint”
and know that although you neither hear nor answer,
somehow our past is locked up inside of you
and there a part of us will stay
while we depart without it.
The dVerse Poetics Challenge is: to write a poem that conjures a view (whether from your travels or everyday life, whether from desire or experience) that is colored by the emotion of the moment. This poem was originally written in answer to This blog by Forgottenman. I had totally forgotten it, but when it popped up in another context today, it just seemed to meet this prompt so well that I had to repeat it.
Tell Me a Story #5, June 11, 2025
I’ll tell you about this photo later if you will tell me a story about it now. Either tell me your story below in comments or put a link to your story in your blog.
Empty Hearted, for dVerse Poets, June 10, 2025
Another lost heart and someone in the background who looks like she could have been its model. SCULPTURE BY ISIDRO XILONZÓCHITL.
EMPTY HEARTED
All those long years ago, it was you who begged me to give you a chance to prove how much you loved me. In the end, I did, opening my heart against the advice of everyone we knew. And when I surrendered that very last part of it, opening myself fully, you proved them right and left. For fifty long years, I have been feeling the lack of your love. “Find someone else to give your heart to–someone worthier than him,” my family and friends have been insisting all that time. But I have no heart to give. When you took back your heart, you took my heart with it. To hurt is to steal.
The dVerse Poets prompt was to write a piece of flash fiction or other prose up of up to or exactly 144 words, including the line “to hurt is to steal” from the song “Mysterious Ways” on U2’s studio album Achtung Baby.
Go HERE to see flash prosery written by others to this prompt.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 