Afternoon Under Cats.
I’m feeling lethargic, no gumption or drive.
If you saw me now, you would doubt I’m alive.
I’m flat on my back in a bit of a bind,
looking for energy that I can’t find.
So though I need coffee to wash down some Bayer’s,
my cats are on top of me, piled in layers.
Obstinate creatures, they simply won’t move.
They laze around daily with nothing to prove.
And what must be giggles just come out as purrs.
I need me some whips and I need me some spurs
so I can herd cats from their comfy position
that they have adopted as part of their mission
to make sure that I do not deign to stir,
remaining inert under bundles of fur.
Prompts for today are gumption, layer, giggle, obstinate and find.
Several violent rainy sessions have lacerated these little anthuriums, but they still have a certain tattered beauty.
For Cee’s FOTD
Collecting Myself
My juvenile aspirations were not like any others––
my idols not my parents or my sisters or my brothers.
I wanted to be different, intrepid and exploring
regions and activities less mainstream and less boring.
I felt my whole identity tied up in what I did,
but my friends had just a glimpse of me–for most of me just hid,
waiting for a time when the world would want to see
all that biggest part of me that was really me.
When it finally happened, I came out bit by bit,
each part coming into view as I discovered it
through doing and by trying, by traveling and proving.
It seems I only sloughed off walls as I kept on moving.
Parts of me found here and there in every varied clime.
I’m still finding parts of me up to the present time.
Daughter, friend and lover, writer, artist, wife––
to discover all of them is what creates a life.
Today’s prompts are intrepid, differ, glimpse, juvenile and identity.
I couldn’t resist one final closeup of this hibiscus that by tomorrow will be fallen and swept away. Beauty can be fleeting in this world, but so far, we can be sure it will be replaced by another of its kind.
For Cee’s FOTD
Finches
Each year the nest more delicate, nonetheless they return,
my faithful little finches, watching it by turn
until the eggs all hatch and the nestlings start their squeal,
prompting parent after parent to fly off to find their meal.
In the rafter near the kitchen, they continue serenading,
keeping up their clatter as their folks go promenading,
in search of constant aphids and seeds that are their food,
creating angry nestlings, demanding in their mood.
Of all of nature’s visitors, these finches are the best,
although I’m glad my kitchen is not my place of rest.
Their insistent chirping is not the stuff of dreams.
Their continual conversation begins with the first beams
of morning sun, continuing all the long day through,
like living in an aviary at my private zoo.
Nature all around us reminds us of our place.
It humbles with its beauty and slows our human pace
to take notice of her cycles and her stubborn repetitions,
planning out each life form in particular renditions.
I cannot be but humbled as I cook up my creations,
listening to the chorus of my avian relations.
Prompt words today are return, nest, delicate and humiliate. Also, Granny’s Bird of the Day prompt.
What Can One Man Do?
I’m feeling sort of creepy. I’m feeling sort of weird.
Everything is happening as I’ve always feared.
Each heroic patriot is spinning in his grave
observing how politicos are choosing to behave.
Opportunists rule the day. Liberty is dying.
If our founding fathers saw ,it would be grounds for crying.
Rights of free assembly are brutally curtailed
by countless senseless massacres, no sooner one man jailed
than another slaughter comes across our screen.
When did our land of immigrants turn so crass and mean?
What god puts kids in cages, rips a mother from her baby?
What scripture teaches brotherhood tempered with a maybe?
One hundred thirty million of her native sons
slaughtered by our founders is how the west was won.
Our history books rewritten by a kinder pen
Mass lynchings in Arkansas? A secret way back when
history was written. Only now we know the shame.
Even at our founding, “more profit” was to blame.
If we are tired of hearing of greed and violence,
perhaps its time that more of us climbed down from the fence
and let communal voices be heard above the din
of Game of Thrones and other dream worlds we live in.
These films of gore and violence with which we are suffused
make us numb to how real people are abused.
We must take off our blinders and see the truth at last.
It’s time to break these heartless molds in which we have been cast.
Speak with your pen. Bring change about by changing those in power.
Do not turn to fantasy. Do not cringe and cower
in your homes for fear of guns. Ban assault guns for a start.
Show that real Americans have a kinder heart.
Cut our country’s cancer from where it’s gone to fester.
Remove our gallery of fools, starting with its jester.
Each one who sits upon his chair thinking his votes don’t count
votes to keep the status quo. One after one, they mount
a ship of fools who think that politicians are the same—
that refusing to make choices makes them without blame.
So thought the men who saw the tree with bodies hanging slack
and overlooked injustice because the men were black.
If your God is one of mercy, does he not view all?
Does he not see even the smallest sparrow fall?
Would he sanction kids in cages, mother ripped from baby?
Does the God who loves us all temper justice with “maybe?”
What can we do about it? Take up pen and make a check.
Vote out the opportunists. Seize injustice by the neck.
Protect our dying planet. Seize our final chance.
Don’t think that fate is ruled by impartial circumstance.
Looking for a solution for what one man can do?
Take pen in hand. The answer, my friend, is simply you!
Prompts for the day are weird, creepy, and memorialize.
