Author Archives: lifelessons

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About lifelessons

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.

Sales Resistance

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Sales Resistance

Be careful of, suspicious of, and just a little wary
of people who are talented in speech extemporary
who arrive with suitcases filled with cash-and-carry
items, be they vacuum cleaners or a dictionary.
Their conversation humorous, their prattle light and airy,
their smiles may be luminous, and they may be so very
congenial and friendly, their demeanor downright merry,
and yet, my friend, I recommend that you take care to parry
their sales attacks. Before you buy, please take the time to tarry
and muster up your sales resistance so you purchase nary
a single item from this flam-flam Tom or Dick or Harry.
Just shoo him from your doorstep and off to Tucumcari!

 

The Ragtag prompt was extempore

Plumeria: Flower of the Day, Jul 18, 2018

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For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Away

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Away

I write through early morning, long before the day
intrudes upon the shadows, intent to have its say.

Words birthed in the nighttime never seem to quit.
They come like half-tamed horses, chomping at the bit.

They seem to have a power and meaning all their own,
where they complete their foaling before the seeds are sown.

Truth is there behind us before it ever shows—
like words before they’re spoken, and wind before it blows.

Before the morning opens, memories fully lit
are brought to life in wondrous tales, straining at the bit.

Brought swiftly to these different worlds to live a life apart—
far from the one who made them, like a horse without its cart.

I like to set my words free to canter on their own,
to feed upon the prairie grass that grows where it has blown.

The Ragtag Prompt was open.

Fandango’s prompt was memory.

Dusty Miller in the Rain: Flower of the Day, Jul 17, 2018

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Dusty Miller.jpg

 

For Cee’s Flower of the Day

First to the Gate

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First to the Gate

If you were born to innovate,
your one desire to create,
take care you don’t equivocate,
for if you do, I fear your fate
will be that you react too late.
Someone will beat you to the plate!
So if you don’t desire this fate,
Act boldly, friend, and do not wait!!!

The Daily Addictions prompt is innovate.

This is an Hilarious Spoof of our Esteemed POTUS

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Thanks, Forgottenman, for bringing it to my attention.  There may be a brief ad at the beginning you can cancel after a few seconds.

In the Open

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In the Open

The day is balmy
with segmented clouds.
The African tulip tree
spreads its boughs wide
over the seated ones
as well as the one who stands in front of us,
leading us to ground our feet,
relax our arms with hands palms up
and to go inside ourselves
to watch our breath
and be in the now,
in the state that she calls openness.

To be in the future is not openness, she says,
and to be in the past is not openness.
Only the now is really living.
And it occurs to me
that when I think I want a cup of coffee
and leave my studio to go in search of it,
then, in the kitchen,
can’t remember what I’m there for,
(and the reason why so many
friends my age are doing the same)
is because we are in this state of openness
more frequently
as we get older.
Wanting a cup of coffee is in the future,
and remembering we wanted a cup of coffee
a few minutes ago
is having to remember the past.

Standing here in the kitchen
listening to the baby birds’
loud cheeps
from their nest in the kitchen overhang
is being in the now.
And so it is that all of us, as we age,
are in the deepest stages of meditation
most of the time
and should not worry so much
about Alzheimer’s or dementia,
because we are where Tibetan monks
and ladies leading meditiation
would have us be.

Open. Living the now
with increasingly
less memory
for what was
or was to be.

 

The Ragtag prompt today is open.

Knees

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Knees

Knees, knees, folks have knees
from Katmandu down to Belize.
In Peru, where they ride llamas
they still have knees in their pajamas.
Further north, up where it freezes,
even Polar bears have kneezes.

Knees, knees, folks have knees
to ogle, fondle, pet and squeeze.
(It’s easy when they’re under kilts.)
Some knees on roller skates or stilts
are scabbed and scaly, skinned and sore
but still they know what they are for.

Knees are great to bounce a baby,
to kick a soccer ball, or maybe
to bend in prayer when they’re in church,
or form a perfect sort of perch
for swains who fall on bended knee
to say, ‘I’d like to marry thee.’

Knees, knees, folks have knees.
In sun they burn, in snow they freeze.
Yet  knees can cross and knees can knock.
Knees can jog you round the block.
Knees are handy and dependable.
And aren’t we glad that knees are bendable?

 

The Daily Addictions prompt today is convenient.  I ask you.  What is more convenient than knees?

Hot Virginity

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Hot Virginity

I must have said no a hundred thousand times
as we enacted first-love’s mimes.
Parked breath-heavy in the summer night,
how we would tongue and rub and bite
at those cloth boundaries as, at love’s height,
he asked if we might,
whereas I, preferring passion’s flight,
turned on the light.

 

Fandango’s prompt today was memory.

Grass-Dwellers: Flower of the Day, Jul 16, 2018

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Click any flower to enlarge all.

These gorgeous little flowers were growing by the road. The largest was no more than 3/4 inch wide. Those are grass spikes behind them, if you want to guage their size.  I’m holding the lower part of the stem so you can’t guage their size by my fingers as they are closer to the camera. My friend couldn’t understand what I was bending over and doing as I photographed them. Lovely miniature posies.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.