Author Archives: lifelessons

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About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

Sijo for NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 28

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Click on Photos to Enlarge.

White Owl

All these years, I ‘ve done without your heavy breath and gentle touch.
My mind turned to other things. Sounds in the night, the call of birds.
But it’s time. The owl asks “Who? Who?” Leaves me to find the answer.

The prompt for NaPoWriMo today was to write a Sijo. This is a traditional Korean verse form. A sijo has three lines of 14-16 syllables. The first line introduces the poem’s theme, the second discusses it, and the third line, which is divided into two sentences or clauses, ends the poem – usually with some kind of twist or surprise. I reblogged a poem I wrote to the same prompt  three years ago.

 

Rough…for CFFC

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For CFFC: Things That Are Rough

Crossroads, for NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 27

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Please click on this post to center the poem.

Crossroads

You and I are at that place where roads cross—
a new place made by the need for things
going in

d
i
f
f
e
r
e
n
t
d i r e c t i o n s

to meet.

How lonely if all roads
veered off on their own,
solitary,
never coming to a junction.

It might have been thus, but for
a thousand small decisions
that led to this particular meeting,
here on this corner
of
your
road
and
my
road

Here in this location not uniquely either of us,
where we meet and mingle
and become one
for as long
as we both decide to stand
talking like neighbors,
each of us having veered halfway
away from private territory
to come to the spot
here in the middle
where we become two parts
of a center.

V
e
c
i
n
a
neighbor,
l
o
v
e
r
husband, wife
s
i
b
l
i
n
g
grandparent
f
r
i
e
n
d
daughter,son
a
c
q
u
a
i
n
t
a
n
c
e
interloper
b
y
p
a
s
s
e
r
s
or strangers when we
m
e
e
t

So
many possibilities
in
the
crossed roads
of
our
lives.

Variegated Bougainvillea, FOTD Apr 27, 2024

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For Weekend FOTD

Morning Glory and Bougainvillea, For FOTD, Apr 26, 2024

3 Replies

 

For FOTD

Showing Up Late for Happy Hour at the Corner Cantina, For SOCS Apr 27, 2024

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Showing Up Late for Happy Hour at the Corner Cantina

DSC09815

Showing Up Late for Happy Hour at the Corner Cantina

I’m late because of accidents and countless little slips
like toothpaste down my shirt front, hair caught in my zips
and a seat belt that was caught and wouldn’t span my hips.

So bring out all your arsenal—your bludgeons and your whips.
I deserve your censure, your curses and your yips.
Perhaps it is my fault that you’re in tequila’s grips!

By looking at the tablecloth and counting all the drips,
It seems that all the salsa’s not contacting your lips,
and all your margaritas aren’t winding up as sips.

I’m making the assumption you might need more chips,
and more salsa fresca and guacamole dips,
which means our busy waiter must make some extra trips.

He doesn’t seem amused by all your clever quips
which increase with the frequency of your little nips,
so I’m hoping the aforementioned will earn him larger tips!

For SOCS: The prompt word is “Show”

4 A.M. for NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 26

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full moon morning, jdbphoto 2017

4 A.M.

It is too early to be stirring, the world is still asleep.
The sound is all still slumbering, the darkness is too deep.
No dayness stirs the nightness. No touch is reaching out.
No stirring and no blowing. Not a whisper. Not a shout.
When I wake before the world does, it seems the end of things
instead of the beginning, when the whole world sings.
Sun rises and the birds demand. The dogs whine for their feed.
All the world around me awakens to its need.
But for now, they are all sleeping. It is a lifeless world.
Its eyes and ears and mouth closed, around me densely curled.

for NaPoWriMo we are commanded to write a poem making use of alliteration, assonance and consonance.

For Fibbing Friday. Apr 26, 2024

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For Fibbing Friday, today’s enticements are:

1. Who do you associate with ‘green fingers’? The Jolly Green Giant, of course.
2. Who or what was the Red Baron? The Scarlet Pimpernel’s exercise trapeze.
3. What was the significance of yellow ribbons around oak trees? So they could tell the girl trees from the boy trees when trimming out the hedgerows and thus guarantee the next year’s acorn harvesting.
4. Why did Alice follow the White Rabbit? Because she was next in line.
5. Who was The Black Knight?  Balthazar, earlier in his career.
6. What is a Blue Moon? A crude gesture by the guy who sat in the blueberry pie during the picnic.
7. Do brown cows produce coloured milk? Nope, but they are definitely British or Canadian.
8. Why was the Pink Panther pink? Embarrassment.
9. Why are pandas black and white? Mixed panda marriages.
10. What is a Silver Shadow? The effect of sunlight on one of grandma’s best forks borrowed by her grandkids and left sticking up vertically in the sand pile.

Judy’s Advice on Preparations for the Afterlife

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Judy’s Advice on Preparations for the Afterlife
(For Jim)

Do you get a discount
or will there be none
when your time on Earth
will finally be done?

Whether it is better
to be raw or roasted well
depends on where you’re going.
Is it Heaven or to Hell?

 

I received this request for a poem from Jim Anshutz:

Some of my thoughts on cremation. 1. I will ask if they give senior discounts.. 2. I will also inform them that I sit out in the sun each day and get quite sunburnt. My question is, “do I get a discount for being pre-cooked? You can take it from here, Jude. Please make this a very humorous piece of poetry. Hit it, Jude🔥🔥🔥

 

 

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.