Water Fetish
From my time of birth up to my years septuagenarian,
if it were my choice, I always chose to be riparian.
I hate the sound of silence, for I find it rather static,
but I love the sound of water, be it tidal or erratic.
A little water rushing by or falling from a height
is lulling to my hearing and pleasing to my sight.
It contributes to my happiness, creates a sense of calm—
a sensory diversion that serves me as a balm.
So to add to my contentment, no need for feast or cake.
Just plant me by a river or a waterfall or lake.
There is only one thing that you need to know.
If you want to make me happy, just provide the H20!!!
Click on any photo to enlarge all.
The prompt words today are erratic, feast, riparian and contribute. Here are the links:
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/12/fowc-with-fandango-erratic/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/wednesday-rdp-feast/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/riparian/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/contribute
The dVerse Poets prompt today is to take something we’ve written on September 11 of another year and to take a word or idea from that piece and write a new piece. Here is my Sept. 11 essay from 2015 that I am going to draw from. There is a link at the bottom of that post that will bring you back to the poem I’ve written today based on that post from three years ago. Wow. Complicated. Here is my present-day poem based on the word “handwritten.”Panned by Hand
Words slowly written out by hand
will in future years be panned
as much as petroglyphs in stone
carved out by flint or sharpened bone
are an anathema today,
now that we have a simpler way
to write with pencil or with pen.
Will kids remember way back then
when moms and grandmothers and dads
wrote out notes on legal pads,
or will they only go to see ’em
in a history museum?Cell phones don’t run out of ink,
spew words as fast as you can think,
don’t use up paper, wood or lead,
just use up gigabytes instead.
Thus handwriting’s a bygone art—
i’s carefully dotted with a heart,
those flourishes at ends of lines—
those curlicues and hearts and vines
scribbled in the margins? Vanished.
All our doodlings soon banished.It is the truth that progress brings
technology to replace things
dear to our hearts we thought would be
carried on by progeny.
But, alas, it is not so.
Typewriters were the first to go,
then cursive followed recently,
and soon I’m sure the powers that be
will decide all writing’s out,
and soon technology will tout
communication via brain
and then my friends, once more again
the means we’ve used to share our thought
will be outmoded, no longer taught
by school or university.
Mere ESP will surely be
worked out so we need only blink
to transmit all that we might think.Imagine, then, the problems caused
by thoughts inadequately paused.
Words penned in ink can be crossed out,
or crumpled up and then tossed out.
Not so words received as we think them—
flirtings known before we wink them.
So long, subtlety and tact.
Hello, naked glaring fact.
No thoughts scrawled or written with care.
All meaning caught in truth’s harsh glare.
The truth is, friends, that each advance
may neither further nor enhance.
Some advancement only fetters.
All in all, I prefer letters!Here is the link to dVerse Poets Tuesday Poetics in case you want to see what others did with this prompt: https://dversepoets.com/2018/09/11/poetics-on-a-loop/
We Fill in the Blanks
I write notes three times weekly in my limping Spanish for Yolanda, not because I won’t see her, but because I probably won’t remember by then what I need to tell her. She has asked me to order more vacuum cleaner bags from the states. I use the words I know, and tonight the word for vacuum has escaped my memory. So I leave this note on the kitchen island, taped to a filter I’ve found in the laundry room:
“Is this the bag for the machine for clean the floor?”
Es este la bolsa para la machina para limpiar el piso?
Then, taped to the stove top:
I’m sorry, Yolanda, but a potato broke in my oven and it is very bad! I worked for one hour and a half but it is still bad now.”
Lo siento, Yolanda, pero una papa romper in…
View original post 142 more words
Click on first photo below to enlarge all and to see captions on some of the photos..
For: https://ceenphotography.com/2018/09/11/cees-fun-foto-challenge-red/
Excuse # 2
Quick, take my hand before I float off
on a breeze or a sigh or a sneeze or a cough.
No telling what currents are swelling today
to pick a girl up and float her away.
Oh, excuse number one?
Hand holding is fun!
For DVerse Poets: https://dversepoets.com/2018/09/10/quadrille-64-quickwrite-something/
Click on first photo to increase the size of all and to read captions.
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My mother was the hero of Christmas. Decorated waste paper baskets from the church bazaar, that “Skunk” game I’d been begging for, played once and never again, that one last doll when I was eleven, purchased more for her own nostalgia than my need. The tree went up as the orange and brown of Thanksgiving was disposed of, and the jubilation of Christmas stretched on until New Years, when the tree came down.
For my dad, however, the end of Christmas was never quick enough. The tree lights hurt his eyes, he said, but I always wondered if there was more to it than that: some sparsity of the Christmases of his past that had broken its spirit in the heart of a young boy raised on a South Dakota prairie that furnished few rewards, let alone extravagent Christmases, but still expecting more, perhaps, than an orange in the toe of his sock. A pony, maybe, or a stick of hard candy, a jaunty new blue winter stocking cap or simply a mother more given to Christmas than his own busy midwife of a mother, always off to somewhere else.
In our mad months of enthusiasm over tinsel, ornaments resurrected from the attic and the mystery of wrapped boxes, we overlooked the remnants of that little boy’s pain, but some part of each of us, detecting it by some subconscious radar, never gave up trying to heal those hurts of former Christmases with tiny Black Hills Gold tie tacks, new wallets and papier-mâché sculptures meant to prod him from his apathy. It never quite worked, except for that sculpture, ugly in its craziness, laughed and pondered over, then left to age and weather on their unroofed patio until its demise, giving one small hope of reviving a small boy’s wonder over Christmas and the unexpected. His forbearance over the years made him, perhaps, another subtler hero of Christmas, just in his putting up with it.
The prompt words for today are orange, game, hero, jubilation and quick. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/rdp-tuesday-prompt-orange/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/11/fowc-with-fandango-game/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/hero/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/jubilation
https://dversepoets.com/2018/09/10/quadrille-64-quickwrite-something/
“Wake up, wake up, my buttercup, my flutterdown and flutterup, my painter and my cutterup, your sleepy time is done.” So begins this silly rhymed storybook by Judy Dykstra-Brown that takes a child from waking up to a go-to-sleep-lullaby, chronicling in between a day full of activities and then the bedding down of the child along with a recap of all the creatures they have encountered during the day at their grandparents’ farm, the zoo and in storybooks. “Humpa, humpa, haravan, the camels in their caravan and puppies on the spare divan are falling fast asleep . . . like the foxes in their lairs, with the fleas down in their hairs. . . . Like your playmates, your teacher, and every living creature.” Sunup Sundown Song takes a child through the entire busy day and lulls them to sleep. Charmingly illustrated with fine details by artist Isidro Xilonzochitl. Meant to be read to children of all ages.
https://riberasauthors.com/2018/09/02/attracts-writers-like-moths-to-light/
Street Mural on wood viewed in Guanajuato
Stemming the Rage
To seed grace and stability in these tempestuous times,
try not to retaliate in your tweets and rhymes.
Simply state the truth as you continue to perceive it.
If you do not stir angst you’re less likely to receive it.
Choose not to participate when small minds rant and bray.
Just find a saner audience you’re likelier to sway.
This isn’t always easy. Ghandi led the way,
and he moved the British at the end of day.
Whether Trump or Kim Jong-un, Hitler or Pol Pot
could be swayed by passive resistance? Perhaps, or perhaps not.
But surely there are other souls—even ones of note
who might be nudged to change their minds and even change their vote.
If you can curb your anger and respond with facts and sanity,
perhaps you’ll find a route to chip away at their inanity.
Please take with a grain of salt this lesson that I preach.
Actually, I must admit, it’s me I’m trying to teach.
Word prompts for today were: grace, stability, tempestuous and retaliate. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/rdp-monday-grace/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/10/fowc-with-fandango-stability/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/tempestuous/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/retaliate
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