Impromptu Gallery
This tennis fact you might observe
when a certain lady goes to serve:
each man who passes tends to swerve
to watch neither her skill nor verve,
but her body’s line and curve––
(each one a visual hors d’oeuvre.)
They keep their thoughts well in reserve,
for no observer has the nerve
to risk the censure he might deserve
in revealing himself as a perv.
And thus can Mel and Chuck and Irv
their conjugal harmonies conserve.
The WordPress Daily Prompt is observe.
For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.
Cruel Question
It bothers me, I must confess.
What happens to a wedding dress
after it’s had its opening day?
Is it simply packed away?
If so, you’d think once time has passed
they’d finally reappear at last
in church bazaar or resale store
or other places where things of yore
emerge from attic, basement, closet
or other area of deposit.
(In whatever dark place they’ve all lain,
thinking they’ll be used again.)
There should be rooms filled with selections
of these nuptial confections.
Warehouses stuffed full of them,
varied in neckline, cut and hem.
Why do we not see huge barrages
of wedding gowns sold from garages
along with strollers and kiddie toys
cast off by grown up girls and boys?
Surely every aging bride
has a wedding dress inside
a trunk or closet—way up high.
What happens when their wearers die?
Garments of satin or nylon net—
what could be the etiquette
that guides a family in such matters?
If the gown is not in tatters
and worn away by age and mold,
surely it would be resold.
If so, where are the warehouses
where gowns bereft of brides and spouses
lie stockpiled awaiting chances
for other wedding vows and dances?
Where is the wedding gown museum
where we might journey to go to see ’em?
I’ll now chance being thought abrupt,
unsentimental, cold, corrupt
by saying what I have to say.
Do families throw these gowns away?
Buried under hills of trash
is there a wedding veil or sash?
Satin bodices and trains
diminished by decades of rains?
Do gowns once virginally snowy,
and spectacularly showy
now lie buried like their dreams,
slowly decaying at the seams?
These images, you might guess,
seem calculated to depress.
Who wants these pictures in her head
as her wedding vows are said?
This poem is meant for crones like me,
bent of back and stiff of knee,
who’ve run out of memories to ponder
and so must journey over yonder
to the macabre side of pondering
for their mental wandering.
That said, past brides, will you confess
what happened to your wedding dress?
The prompt today is abrupt.
Nyctophilia
I love the night. I love the night.
So personal and sparse of light.
Naught to stay my straying feet
in their journey towards a late night treat.
No one to interrupt my thinking
or to disapprove my drinking.
No one knocking at my door.
No one to put a bra on for.
I love the darkness and the calm
of blackness spreading like a balm
cushioning the obligations
and the constant consternations
of the cluttered daylight world
with all its busy fuss unfurled.
Though daylight’s pleasures you may recite,
Still, stubbornly, I prefer night!
Click on first photo and then arrows to see enlarged photos with captions.
The men were here for the past two days sanding, chipping and scraping all the weather coating off the huge dome that forms the roof for my bedroom which essentially means there is just one layer of bricks with a thin layer of cement between me and the weather. So, of course, what happened tonight? The rainy season descended a month ahead of schedule! Pounding rain, thunder and lightning. So far I don’t see any drips in the bedroom, but the living room is another matter. Water is dripping down from the cracked skylight. Thus, a major rearranging of furniture and placement of beach towels and bowls to catch the water. The rest of the roof is scheduled for the same treatment. Must check the weather.. Oh oh.. electricity just went off!!!!
Annie is bored with it all and is yowling for me to come to bed.
Who brought the rain? Of course, I did!!!!
“Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”—Wm. Shakespeare
Ravel can mean either to combine thread or to separate it (in linguistics, a word like this is called an auto-antonym). In the sense that it means to combine, unravel developed as a true antonym.—reddit.com
Unraveled
The pain of love unraveling? No one knows it better,
for she wears her heart upon her sleeve, knit into her sweater.
Each day her heart unravels and lies tangled down her arm.
They say it cannot harm her. Loosened hearts cannot do harm.
But she’s a prisoner of these tendrils of love that’s come undone—
the truth of it revealed to her each day by a new sun,
while each night in her dreams, sleep knits it up again
and the ardor of her lost love once more draws her in.
She forgets the present and relives what she once had—
what she imagines in her slumber cancelling out the bad.
This unknitting and reknitting can’t be what life is for.
She must search for her dream’s exit. She must try to find the door.
Cast her old garment on the flames. Burn up that raveled sleeve.
Real love stays firmly knitted. A true love doesn’t leave.
The prompt today is sleeve.
Same bouquet, different angle! Fresh, fresh.
For Cee’s Flower of the Day. See her spring lilacs HERE.
Pariah
His classmates found him bookish and his siblings found him odd.
There were no other similar peas within his pod.
Nobody understood him—not his parents, not his teacher.
He found no ally in his doctor nor his preacher.
Oftentimes the acts for which they should have been astonished
were the ones for which he had only been admonished.
They flunked him out of chemistry for blowing up the table
by concocting an explosive that was something less than stable.
They called him just a “ne’er do well.” It seemed he wasn’t able
to do what other kids could do and so he earned the label
of klutz and geek and doofus. He could do nothing right.
He couldn’t chug a beer down. He couldn’t win a fight.
He never ever dressed right. He was fond of oddball hats.
Other people shunned him. His best friends were his cats.
Even as an adult, bad luck didn’t abate.
He remained a pariah. He couldn’t get a date.
He failed at conversation and he was a lousy dancer.
His single social skill was that he found a cure for cancer!
The WordPress prompt today was astonish.
