For Cee’s FOTD
Tlaquepaque Mexico, 2019 jdb photo Click on any photo to enlarge all.
For Xingful Mama’s Pull up a Seat Challenge. Week 36
Information Overload
I garner information in the library from books.
Determine facts from faces––from grimaces and looks,
antagonistic letters and notes pinned up on fridges,
in the garden, piles of dirt and lawn pushed up in ridges.
But all the little signals the world puts out today
are more complicated than they were in Grandma’s day.
Emails, texts and messages sent us through the air
sometimes are just more than one person’s meant to bear.
In light of all this input, I’m afraid I’m going to snap,
so I think I’ll grant me clemency and go down for a nap.
Skype, WhatsApp and Facebook can’t intrude upon my sleeping.
I’m safe away from “to do” tasks and all the world’s sad weeping.
Sleep gives retreat from telephones and all that information
that’s leading me to bouts of excessive consternation.
It’s the one place left to hide, or so, at first, it seems
until I get there and I have to put up with my dreams!
The prompt words for today are library, clemency, antagonistic, garnered and continued.
This rather huge millipede stands out like a many-faceted jewel atop the devastation he has wreaked upon this leaf.
For the AOTD prompt.
Uprooted
“Can you get even closer to the tree?” he said—so I went inches from the trunk of the tallest of the trees, crowding the fern that reached tentative tentacles from the tree’s shade into a ray of sun that escaped the fast-collecting clouds. “I’ll protect you,” he had said years ago, when we declared our union. But now, in this time of the approaching storm, I wondered about both tree and one who over the years had been in turn protector and threat. In times of gentle rain, a shield. In times more volatile, that sudden bolt that left bruised places easily hidden. I saw the tree’s scar, devoid of bark, burned at the edges––that place now easily overlooked in the shadows. And I moved away from the tree, walking with new confidence to the car. Uprooted, finally, after so many years.
Italicized line is from Sharon Olds’ poem, “Pine Tree Ode.” For the dVerse Poets Pub prompt–to develop a prose piece of 144 words making use of a line from another poet’s poem about a tree. Go HERE to read what other writers did with this prompt or to participate yourself.
Image from Pinterest.
Dental Intermissions
There’s nothing quite so fundamental
when it comes to matters dental
as the fact that teeth gone missing
mar the esthetics of kissing.
It’s doubtful that a dental gap
would land a lass upon the lap
of any lad whose reminiscing
will be done with s’s hissing.
Potential lovers tend to hate
suitors of the toothless state.
Better they should duplicate
those teeth that happened to vacate
those facial places deep inside
the mouths wherein they should reside.
Teeth should be natives of the jaws
that reside within the maws
of suitors that might deign to woo—
to hug and kiss and bill and coo.
In short, what lass does less than censure
a suitor who forgets his denture?
Prompt words today are missing, duplicate, native, fundamental and doubtful.
For Cee’s FOTD prompt.
Storage
I’m not your typical hoarder. I don’t save balls of string.
Five foot stacks of newspapers really aren’t my thing.
Boxes of garage sale items do not line my halls.
Jumbles of castoff treasures do not obscure my walls.
My collection is more upbeat and easier to store.
I have thousands of them and room for plenty more.
And lest you think my hoarding is of objects more absurd,
I’ll tell you my obsession is simply for the “word.”
Those who have collected them all throughout the ages
are lexicographers and scribes, poets, writers, sages.
Sometimes they swirl around my head and leave it in a fog,
so when I run out of room, I store them in this blog.
Words like ships floating around, looking for a moorage—
I simply help them out by arranging for their storage.
Got a bit mixed up with my prompts today and used two from yesterday, so here is another poem with additional prompts from today: jumble and upbeat.
