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.
Your hair, tangled in the breeze, streams wickedly away as though that breath that moves the clouds has you in its sway. The seeds of love that you have sown grow branches that deceive, for as I try to climb them, they offer no reprieve.
The song you cast upon the wind is no boon to me, for as I climb ever higher in affection’s tree, the effort steals my breath away and in my lovelorn greed, both hands and heart are pierced by love and begin to bleed.
That mouth that bestowed kisses earlier on the heath, as you turn to chart my progress, has suddenly grown teeth, and as I recall your kisses, no matter how sublime, I decide that their rewards are, alas, not worth the climb.
For The Sunday Swirl Wordle 559 the prompt words are: tangle breeze stream clouds sway reprieve teeth bleed seeds climb branches boon. First image by Adrian Fernandez on Unsplash. Second image by me.
Unearthly nutrition is on its last legs. How often have you been served deviled eggs? Ambrosia they say was the food of the gods,
but to be served it now? Just what are the odds? And only when faith causes us to unleaven are we ever gifted with mana from heaven. Heavenly hash and devil’s food cake are dishes that only a cougar would make to lure her young lover into her lair. Wherein she’d seduce him with her angel hair pasta to help him to bolster his energy— her clever plot to improve their synergy! But, if you’d like to start a new trend, by reprising old recipes, then read on, friend. A *karma cocktail or a **devil’s brew? Now and then it won’t hurt you to have one or two.
*A karma cocktail is made with Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, Triple Sec, Orange Juice, and Lemon Lime Soda!
To make a**devil’s brew : In a shaking glass, add vodka, triple sec, melon liqueur, peach schnapps and lime juice. Shake well. 3. Gently add ice to serving glass and strain mix over before layering ever clear on top and lighting.
The first photo was taken by my friend Brad Brahe from his angle at the table. The second view was taken by mefrom mine. The paparazzi were out in full measure. This is the same nosegay that I published a photo of from a different angle yesterday but since then Brad sent his pic and I thought it deserved a viewing.
“Halo everybody, Halo. Halo is the shampoo that glorifies your hair, so Halo everybody, Halo!” The remnants that dangle on the edge of memory when I awaken from a barely-accessible dream are not ones that my conscious mind sees fit to shove to the front of the crowd of past retorts, compliments, taunts, scraps of poetry, lines from old movies and musical ditties that upon occasion drift across it, but when the word “halo” is also repeated as a prompt in the first blog I look up to gather my prompts for the day’s poem, it seems too much of a coincidence to be coincidence.
This terrific Internet roadway that has led me to a worldwide circle of friends, combined with the scrap of memory from my dream, has led me backwards in time to an early morning seventy years before. My dad is long gone, out to feed the cattle or survey the wheat crop, my older sisters have vanished across the street to their classrooms at the first pealing of the school bell, my mother sits in my dad’s deserted rocker with coffee, toast and the morning paper, and I lie on my stomach in front of the Victrola, switching on the radio.
It is that time of the morning when Mother and I are content to let the morning languish away for awhile. It is a terrific time of freedom for my mother, who often insists she is lazy at heart but who in fact makes sure there is always a meal on the table, skirts hemmed, sheets ironed, Christmas presents piled under the tree in time for them to be admired for a week or more before Christmas, Easter eggs hidden just carefully enough in nests that peek out a tiny bit from beside the sofa or the bottom edge of the curtain.
And for me, it is a time when I have total control over what station the radio in our console record player/radio will be tuned to. Every morning, the Halo Shampoo song issues cheerily out into the morning air and already, in the dawn of media commercials, I have been influenced by what I hear. I have persuaded my mother to invest in our first bottle of Halo shampoo, and although I am five now and old enough to know the difference between metaphor and truth, still some part of me imagines the halo that will waft lightly over my head next Sunday as I flip my hair at the corner before setting out to cross the one street between our house and the Methodist Church. God will know the difference, I am sure, and at lunch after Church, when Mother serves Devil’s Food Cake, I have convinced myself that the former will surely cancel out the latter.
Mankind has been no bargain. They’ve scorched the living earth, determined to exploit it to improve their worth. Bargaining for diamonds, drilling for fossil fuels— with each new excavation, proving they are fools.
They release noxious gases into the atmosphere, and with each new admonition, shift to a higher gear. Who will console our children as they forge ahead following our example after we are dead?
We leave them with a dying world, and who is to blame? First, off, those politicians who see it as a game to increase their power in spite of consequences, building up their war toys, strengthening defenses.
Extending greedy fingers, needing ever more. Selling off our future, profiting from war. While the wise men warn us, who in power listens? Too busy filling pockets with everything that glistens.
Tree of Love
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 