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.

Big Rock Candy Mountain

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Big Rock Candy Mountain

Have you heard the allegory of enchanted mountain
with its chocolate boulders and raspberry soda fountain?
Snow on the top is ice cream, but beware, for it’s precipitous
and only accessible to the most felicitous
children who the lessons of politeness have well-learned.
Children who are naughty and selfish will be spurned.
If you think this is impossible and just a silly story,
remember that I told you that it is an allegory.
The wisdom that it teaches is good manners are rewarded,
and though there is no list in life where they are all recorded,
still life tends to give back to us exactly what we give.
If you desire sweet things, that’s what you have to give.

 

Prompt words today are mountain, spontaneous,
allegory, felicitous,  ice and enchanted,

Unlove Spell # 2

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Unlove Spell #2

I don’t swallow your poetry, it’s lacking rhyme and meter.
You fancy yourself as a bard, but you are just a cheater.
Your words are all disposable. I’ve heard them all before.
Your melody discordant as you walk out the door.
I have a little fetish that I stick needles in.
They say it’s made expressly for expunging faithless men.

Prompt words today are  bard, disposable, fetish, cheater, swallow and melody. Joke folks. Not autobiographical.  If you want to read the original Love Charm, go HERE.

Rosebud, FOTD Jan 19, 2023

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This is the one surviving rosebud from my Christmas bouquet, almost two weeks later.

For Cee’s FOTD

Lake Chapala Sunsets

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The sunsets here are almost always striking, but over the past few weeks there have been some particularly stunning ones. Here are photos of a few of them:

“When Old Dames Get Together” Now Available on Amazon

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The book is now available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BSJBWX37/Y

 Also available Lakeside at Diane Pearl’s Gallery, Viva Mexico, Jesus Lopez Vega’s Gallery
and from me at jubob2@hotmail.com.

You saw it here first! The book inspired by poems I wrote for prompts on my blog is now available on Amazon. It is an adult coloring book with poems by me and illustrations to color by Isidro.  Above and below are the front and back cover.

Here is a sample of the title poem and its illustration. Get out your colored pencils!  I wouldn’t recommend felt tip markers as they bleed through. Don’t try to color it on your computer screen or phone, though. The book is now available on Amazon!!!! You can find it HERE.
Also available at Diane Pearl’s Gallery, Viva Mexico, Jesus Lopez Vega’s Gallery and from me at jubob2@hotmail.com.

Puppy Antics

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Tussling with Yolanda
Discovering toilet paper. Guess who?
ingesting Mom’s favorite Trahumara basket
Zoe goes after Jesus’s socks
Then his shoe
Bye-bye Forgottenman’s childhood photo
Shredding the handmade basket Mom made
Mom’s? Zoe’s coasters

Puppy Antics

With her instinct for mischief, my puppy is remarkable.
Every falling leaf to her is an occasion barkable.
Her sister and her brother and sometimes even me
are all her dupes as any looker-on can clearly see.

She steals her brother’s food and he just lets her be,
his look displaying an expression of futility.
She steals Yolanda’s dusting rags to stage a tug-of-war,
then drags her mop when she’s not looking, clear across the floor.

She must reconnoiter each bare ankle that walks by.
First she licks it wet , but if you wait, she’ll lick it dry.
Then she’ll tug your pants cuff or masticate your shoe,
investigating with her tongue each tasty part of you.

She’s ripped to shreds four pairs of pants, my duvet and my tote,
my tarahumara basket, a two-hundred peso note,
the corners of two cabinets and my poetic papers.
No exposed object’s sacrosanct from her destructive capers.

But when I lock her in her pen for moments of reflection,
she greets her isolation with such whines of pure dejection,
It’s lucky for my puppy that she is so gol-darn cute
that each threatened sentence I’ve chosen to commute.

Prompt words today are mischief, remarkable, futility, dupe, instinct and dry.

Bad puppy videos below. Unfortunately, Youtube will try to take you off in a different direction after each one so you’ll need to come back to this post to see each of the others.

 

 

More bad puppy videos:

 

Clearing off my Desktop

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Click on photos to enlarge.

These are all photos that I was going to do something with but didn’t. They are, however, favorites lurking around my too-full desktop, so here they are for you to deal with! I won’t explain them here but if you have questions, ask.  

Leftovers: FOTD Jan 18, 2023

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these are the remains of two other bouquets I’ve had for 11 days. I combined them to make a new bouquet. Good old mums and Gazanias. The sunflowers and roses have all expired.

For Cee’s FOTD

Procrastination

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Procrastination

The imminent future seems iffy at best.
The door to tomorrow reveals a dark test.
Have we rationed our resources, saved for tomorrow?
Will deviations from reason cause future sorrow?
Spatially crowded, our cities all choke
in the fumes of their progress—nature’s cruel joke.
We write words like ECOLOGY large, in italics,
hope it will protect like the arms of a calyx,
think it will create a healing reaction,
and yet it will not, ’til we put it in action.

 

Today’s prompt words from six different sites are imminent, door, spatial, ration, deviation and italics.

My First Poem Ever

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I have been going through three big cartons that among them contain every letter anyone has ever written to me in my life and even a number of my own that my mother saved as I was traveling around the world in my younger wilder years.  In the very bottom of one box, I found  a card I made for my mother when I was six years old with the very first poem I ever wrote on it.  It’s pretty beaten up but Forgottenman insists I should share it here.  I’m including photos of the different pages. The cover is a doily with three dimensional flowers on it but consider that it has been rattling around in my mother’s top junk drawer or in a box with a ton of other paper things for 69 years, so its condition reflects this.  Here it is. Click on each photo to enlarge and read the poem: 

What is the very earliest example of your writing? Wanna share with us? If so, please link in comments below: