I can’t resist reblogging this blog that I wrote 11 years ago and because I liked the comments as much as the blog, I’m reblogging them, too. This reblog is published for Esther’s Writing Prompts because this week’s prompt is ‘Signs.” If you want to publish your own response to her prompt, a link to it is given at the end of this post. Thanks, Esther.
For Esther’s Writing Prompts, the prompt word is “Sign.”
Broken Concentration
The words packed tight within my mind
seek the empty page.
They fly like hummingbirds and hawks
escaping from their cage.
But when all my empty places
I seek to fill again,
too many words rush in at once,
creating such a din
that nothing can be made of them.
I cannot restore order
in these alien syllables
that flood across my border.
I did not think these previous lines.
They just crept up on me.
I place words here upon the page
and thereby set them free.
They have no place within my head
where I had plans to write
a solitary love poem.
Instead, they spar and fight,
one trying to beat the others
to the front line of my mind.
Love words elbowing their way,
lined up in back of “pined.”
So “heartsick” steps on “passion’s” toes.
“Adore” runs out of steam
trying to reclaim the place
where words like it must dream.
I no longer know the purpose
that I set out upon
I fear the mood is broken,
my concentration gone.
The thought that any love poem
will come is now absurd.
Minutes ago I was in love,
but now I have been cured!!
The dVerse Poets prompt is “broken.” We have broken vows, broken systems, broken expectations, broken agreements, broken communication, broken societies. Especially right now in this world, many of us know “broken”. Will we be able to repair the divisions? Can we put the pieces back together? Can we recreate a better world?
Three days a week, I teach Spanish here in my house to Yolanda and Pasiano’s children as well as Yolanda’s nieces and stepdaughter. Her daughter Yoli was so sleepy during lessons today that I asked if she wanted coffee or a caffeine pill and she said no. I asked if she had to go to school and she said no she was on vacation and I asked if she could sleep when she went home and she said yes.
While I was driving her home, I asked why she had trouble sleeping and she said, “Guerra” (War) and then Donald Trump. She is so worried about the threat of a nuclear war that she can’t sleep! I talked to her and said it helped me to listen to podcasts and she said she listened to them but they were all about Trump and his actions. It just breaks my heart.
I told her I couldn’t sleep for the same reason and I decided I just needed to do what the Mexican people have always done under repressive regimes–– Spanish, French—even the Aztecs. To pull in to contact with family and friends and to do as much for each other as we can to make a different world for those around us. She has no power to change Donald Trump. She can only affect the world around her and try to get as much joy from it as possible.
Then I sobbed all the way home after leaving her off at her house and had to go to the bathroom mirror to catch sight of myself and take myself in hand. If I can’t even do it, how can I expect a 14 year old girl to do so?
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #78” Today’s number is 199. To play along, go to your photos file folder 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.
For Sunday Stills, the theme is Sunrise/Sunset.
Long Before
Long before our years began,
before the mind of nature had conjured man,
the artists of the universe,
(artists that they were)
that started it all,
started imagining a combination of science and art,
imagining its form and actions and its thoughts.
Its beginning a particular straying of atoms,
beginning that parade
that at its tail end––
at its possible tale’s end––
its greatest creation or its
greatest, perhaps, mistake.
Perhaps that last thing that ended its own being,
that humanity-declared champion of creation:
Humanity.
(Would that we had lived up to our name.)
Please go HERE to read ForgottenMan’s poem that introduced the prompt.
Forgottenman has just reposted an intriguing poem and issued an interesting poetry prompt. See it HERE. I’m going to try to write to it tomorrow when my mind is a bit less groggy from being bombarded for hours with LOUD!!!! music from celebrations down in the town. It is now 3:48 and they have finally put it to rest, so I need to try to get back to sleep. See you at his blog in the morning…Hope you beat me there so I have other poems to read that were written to the prompt.
Getty image War Games
Peaceful visions stream into space and speed along their way
as our president plays war games, deciding its the day
that he’ll become a soldier, bone spurs a lesser grief––
his soldiering tasks much easier as Commander in Chief
sitting in his desk chair, pushing buttons that
could bring about a world war (wearing his MAGA hat.)
These seeds of war he’s planted grow roots that quickly spread
around a breathing living world so easily turned dead.
Our freedom’s being stifled, the body of our nation
brought down by the curatailment of our health and education.
As this child plays his war games, are his minions listening
for the sounds of bombs in the sunlight swiftly glistening
speeding toward their targets in the good old U.S.A.
perhaps trained on the cities where your children play?
The Bible gives the message of an eye for an eye,
so as you hear the bombs they’ve returned swiftly going by,
will you finally admit that this man that you’ve elected
is one you might more wisely have summarily rejected?
Tightrope: Talking to Myself in the Mirror
Life is a delicate balance–just toe in front of toe.
Make too grand a gesture and down you’ll surely go.
Tormented thoughts may enter but they’re sure to also pass,
so do not let them spill you onto your impetuous ass.
Try to think before you speak angry words and cruel.
Too often, though they’re warranted, they’ll make you out a fool.
Try to strike a balance between what’s kind and true.
Your mouth is way too tiny to accommodate your shoe.
Diplomacy’s not lying, it’s just choosing the right word.
To spill out everything you think will brand you as absurd.
Of course we’re only human and of course there will be slips
from time to time from angry, hurt or tactless lips.
But, no matter how chaotic the thoughts are in your head,
it’s best that you don’t follow them everywhere you’re led.
It’s one thing to say words that are weak, untrue and truthless,
and another just as bad to tell the truth in manner ruthless.
We can all be poets in choosing the right way
and time to say the things that we feel we have to say.
As much as it’s important to say what’s on our mind,
The world works so much better when we’re also being kind.
The RDP prompt is “tightrope.”
Luck’s not the chooser. You are.
The prompt for Six Word Story was “Luck.” I found this image in dozens of spots throughout the internet so not sure who to credit it.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 