Category Archives: Daily Prompt

A Small Adjustment at the Fairy Ball

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A Small Adjustment at the Fairy Ball

Her gold tiara, finely pearled,
came undone as she danced and whirled
and across the room was often hurled
as the hair that held it came unfurled.
Then her attendant tightly furled
her fairy hair as they fussed and girled.
For the rest of the night, she bowed and twirled,
for now that her hair was tightly curled,
all was right in the fairy world.

The Prompt: Easy Fix—Write a post about any topic you wish, but make sure it ends with “And all was right in the world.”

Daily Duty

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The Prompt: What are the things you need to do within 30 minutes of waking up to ensure your day gets off on the right foot? What happened the last time you didn’t do one of these things?

Daily Duty

When I wake up—early or late,
each day I feel I have a date.
The thing I need to do the most
is to check The Daily Post;
then, to write until I’m done—
sometimes drudgery, sometimes fun.

Today it’s just a little ditty.
This waste of time is such a pity,
but superstition drives me to it,
for I feel if I don’t do it,
that I’ve committed a major sin,
and that I’ll never write again.

Sunset Story

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The Prompt: A Moment in Time–What was the last picture you took? Tell us the story behind it.

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Sunset Story

A year ago, friends from our old neighborhood in Boulder Creek, CA, had come to visit me.  I hadn’t seen them in the twenty or so years since they had decided to retire early, sell their house and take off to sail around the world in their boat.  They’d asked us several times to come visit them on the boat, but we’d put it off for too long.  By the time we, too, retired and bought a house in Mexico, thinking we’d meet up there, they had sailed on to more southern climes and then very quickly, Bob took the biggest journey of all and I ended up moving to Mexico alone.  Twelve years later, Lach and Becky had moved back to land, to her old home town in Washington.

When they emailed to say they’d like to come visit me, I was happy to renew the old bonds, happier still when they liked my new home town so much that they decided to buy a house in a nearby small town, and did—on that first visit.  They had returned to the U.S. to wrap up old business and now they had returned.  As they awaited the arrival of boxes of necessities, they were once again staying with me, newly arrived home after two months at the beach, where I’d watched 60 magnificent beach sunsets in a row—each uniquely beautiful.

But home sunsets had their own glory: the magnificent Mt. Garcia with Colima Volcano peeking over its side, the lake below reflecting the colors of the sunset, the domes of houses down below giving foreground interest.  As I glanced up from my dinner preparations, I knew this was yet another of a thousand unique sunsets I had previously captured.  I even knew where my camera was—a wonder after days of unpacking and putting away piles of the car full of home necessities I’d lugged with me to the beach.

I snapped dozens of pictures from three different levels of the terrace and garden. Then, spying the hammock in the gazebo on the lowest level, I decided to swing for awhile and watch the progress of the sunset.  Since my house is on a mountainside, I was still far above the lake with lots of sky to view as well.  As I neared the hammock, I saw Diego—my youngest and blackest and most mischievous dog—gnawing on something that sounded like a bone.

I tried to see what it was, but he moved off quickly.  I knew the crunch of bones, however, and was sure one of the friends who used my house while I was gone had supplied him with a bone which he had promptly buried.  Then I remembered that the dogs hadn’t been there while I was gone, but had stayed with a friend in his house.  But occasional uprooted flowers or succulents give testimony that my yard is in fact a graveyard for buried and un-resurrected bones.  Diego had probably just unearthed one he’d been dreaming of for the two months he’d been separated from it.

I had my swings in the hammock, a little shut-eye if not sleep, supervised the sunset, and then decided Lach and Becky would soon be back from a foray to their house, a few miles away in Chapala.  It was to be our farewell dinner tonight as they were moving to their own digs tomorrow.  I climbed the short pathway up to the house, noting as I approached it, that both the grillwork and screen  between the terrace and living room were open, even though I remembered very distinctly having shut them on my way out of the house.  I slid both shut behind me as I moved to the kitchen to finish dinner preparations.  Two pans of veggies stood in their steamers on top of the stove, mashed potatoes were covered and ready to heat up in the microwave, apple cake covered on the counter, six pork chops —(not) nestled in the skillet ready to be browned.

It became immediately clear what Diego had been munching down below.  As I snapped photos (including these) he had slid open the slider and deftly purloined six raw pork chops without even moving the skillet, which stood in exactly the same position on the stove where I had left it.  Bad dog!  I shouted off into empty space, as he probably lay on the dome of the house—both dogs’ favorite spot in the house—accessible by first a set of stairs that ran up the side of the house and then a small leap to to ledge around the dome and a fast scramble up its smooth sides.  I imagined him up there, licking his chops (literally, in two regards,) enjoying the sunset.

That night, we dined on chicken.
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Rocky Balboa and Uriah Heep Meet on Rodeo Drive

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The Prompt: Write a post in which the protagonists of two different books or movies meet for the first time. How do  they react to each other? Do they get along?

I was a witness as Uriah Heep just happened to stumble upon Sylvester Stallone gazing at his reflection in the front window of a chichi little shop on Rodeo Drive.  I admit that I loitered nearby, eavesdropping. I knew this was going to be good!

Rocky Balboa and Uriah Heep Meet on Rodeo Drive

Uriah sidled closer to get an autograph,
but he was intercepted by a member of Sly’s staff.
“Please do not loiter here, sir,”  the officious flunky said.
Her expression was most haughty. Her eyes just cut him dead.

Uriah’s voice was cloying as he said, “My esteemed sir,
I’m just an ‘umble man. I didn’t want to cause a stir.
But it would be so gratifying for a worm like me
to get to touch the pants hem of a real live star like thee!”

Sylvester spun upon his heel, surveyed the quivering mess.
“It won’t hurt to please the little man one time, I guess,”
Sly thought as he bestowed a smile meant to relieve the tension,
at the same time, putting out his hand with condescension,

thinking he might kiss it, but instead that low man’s knee
was brought up to make contact with Sylvester’s fabled vee,
causing his pitch forward ’til in the street he lay.
And this is what Uriah said as he walked away:

“I may be sly and unctuous–a real pain in the ass,
but even a lowlife like me still has a little sass.
My humble’s spilling over ’til it doesn’t seem quite real,
and so I thought I’d show Stallone some of what I feel.”

How the great man is brought down to eating humble pie.
For once Uriah can look down to meet him in the eye.
As he writhed in agony, the star made not a peep.
Now Uriah is the Sly one while Stallone’s become a heap.

Note: Okay, I’m sorry. For the poem. For the sick pun. Everyone has an off day now and then.

Unopened Rooms

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The Prompt: Brain Power–Let’s assume we do, in fact, use only 10% of our brain. If you could unlock the remaining 90%, what would you do with it?

Unopened Rooms

My working thoughts live in a mansion, restrained to just ten rooms.
When the unused rooms grow cobwebs, they must sweep them out with brooms.
They cannot see their pleasures, for they enter with eyes shut.
Sealed chambers filled with many things, but we do not know what.
It is exhausting just maintaining all these extra spaces.
No wonder that I lose my keys and forget most new faces.

No telling when we’ll let our thoughts roam free in other rooms.
For all these years they’ve been sealed up like dark and unused tombs.
Perhaps we’ll find they’re portals to other times and places.
Perhaps they lead to other worlds in intergalactic spaces.
They might allow a journey into the minds of others.
Would extrasensory perception make us enemies or brothers?

I’m sure the reason that we use small portions of our brain
is because if we knew of them, we’d use them all in vain.
We’d journey through the cosmos to plunder other spheres.
React to them like enemies, guided by our fears.
If there is any entity guiding how things go,
perhaps they recognize that Earth’s evolving sort of slow.

Our energies put into things instead of who we are.
Instead of love? Investments. Instead of aid? A car.
If perhaps we aren’t allowed the full use of our brains,
it is because we have not learned to use them for our gains.
How we look’s important. How much it costs the point.
We’re ruining our planet by cluttering up the joint.

Our brains we use for warfare. Weapons we can’t control.
They wind up in a child’s hands or on a grassy knoll.
They’re used for entertainment on a computer screen
in games that build agression. We win by being mean.
Shows they call reality prefabricate each role.
The lowest denominator seems to be their goal.

True, other things are in our mind: poems, music, art,
dance and social functions, a few of them with heart.
So we stage elaborate galas to raise the money for
children who are hungry, adults chewed to the core.
And yet some of us still balk at giving medicine to the ill.
If they are not wealthy, they must chew the bitter pill.

No doctors and no dental care. No succor for the poor.
If they would work, they’d have health care. Complaints are such a bore!
These things we fill our minds with. There’s no need for more brain space.
In the ten percent of brain we use,new thoughts we cannot face.
This E.S.P. is hogwash, and U.F.O’s are fiction.
Even the thought of universal health care causes friction.

For every room within the mind that’s used, there are nine more
filled with mysteries we won’t know until we try the door.
Some enter and return to tell of wonders they have spied.
Yet unenquiring minds respond by saying they have lied.
We’ll never leave these sealed up rooms unless we learn to dream.
Let creative thoughts flow out in an uncensored stream.

To seep beneath closed doors into our mind’s more spacious realms.
Be adventurous voyagers standing at the helms
of ships of mind that sail the wilder seas of consciousness
regardless of the ones who try to censor and to hush.
Turn off the TV sets and games of war and violence.
Let Honey Boo Boo slip back into former innocence.

Lay Kim Kardashian to rest, pull out your skeleton key
that just might let you in to all the rest that you can be.

Answered

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The prompt: Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow. (The book nearest to me and its quote is given below:)

What happens to someone like her as she gets older?
–from Luck, by Joan Barfoot

Answered

She loses her balance, starts to fall.
Once in the kitchen, three times in the hall.
Finds it harder to remember, spends more time alone.
Speaks her mind more freely, less likely to atone.
She starts attracting cats that come inside and do not leave.
Wears frays in her clothing–hemline, neckline, sleeve.
Starts forgetting passwords–sometimes the names of friends.
Her search for keys and glasses never really ends.
Starts waking in the nighttime to contemplate her death.
At midnight, has to go outside to try to catch her breath.
Counts the years before her instead of those behind.
She could live to one hundred if fate is being kind.

Will she live her last years with sister, lover, friend;
or will animal companions help her meet her end?
Will anybody mourn her? Does she want them to?
Will she be remembered by a poem or two?
Will anybody read her after she is dead?
Will all her future poetry die here in her head?
Will her blog named “lifelessons” finally cease to be?
Will they give the name away for a modest fee?
Will they erase her blog spot, burn her files of poems?
Cause a glut on EBay of her leftover tomes?
If she sells a book or two every other year
where will Amazon send the money when she isn’t here?

One day in the future in three thousand two
will Zee, (some bored teenager, with nothing else to do)
go onto the internet connected to her head,
close her eyes and throw herself backwards on her bed
and stumble on an errant line that floats through cyberspace,
and Google it to try to find its author, time and place?
“What happens to someone . . . ?” are the words that Zee has found.
Her fingers start to twitch as she is driven to expound.
The printer prints the words she says without her further action.
Tied into her speech and thought–spontaneous reaction.
” . . . like her as she gets older?” is printed on the wall.
For there’s no paper in the world. No paper left at all!
Her face is flushed, her eyes dilate, her eyes first squint, then blink.
This random line floating in space has provoked her to think.
First she’ll finish cyber school, then link her living pod
with a blowout sort of guy with a gorgeous bod.
They’ll make links with other blogs and party with their friends
for a couple hundred years before they meet their ends.
She thinks back on the interbrain to look for thoughts and links.
Lets her mind go soft as into cybermind she sinks.
Looking for her future job. She knows it’s there to see.
Time being just a concept to wander through for free.
She plops onto a webpage from two thousand fifteen,
all the information still there and easily seen.
The line Zee thought jumps out at her. She sees it’s not her own.
It’s been used two times before and now it seems it’s flown
into her thoughts to sort her out and give her a direction.
As she reads on, she catches on to this writer’s inflection
in every word she writes and when she gets to the post’s end,
she goes on reading through her life and starts to make a friend.
After two days of reading, she winds up at the start
knowing every detail in this blogger’s heart.
Then she goes back to where she started and sees her doubts and fears.
It’s then that she fast-forwards to the blogger’s final years
and sees the truth of everything that’s going to transpire.
The failing health, the hopeful mood, the ad, “Wanted to Hire
an interesting friend to talk to while I fall asleep.
One capable of caring and thoughts that wander deep.
Someone to be there some nights when it seems that I might leave
for one last time this life that’s loosening its warp and weave.
No heavy lifting needed–a weighted thought or two
is all that I find necessary. Weighing thoughts will do.”

Zee zoomed back to the entry that had drawn her thoughts at first.
The very sentence that had caused her gloomy thoughts to burst.
January was the month and 14 was the day
The year 2015, when she’d been second to say
those fateful words and now Zee, too, was thinking just the same–
moving to the comments to add her words and name.
“Dear Lifelessons,” she’d say to her, and then add her assurance
that everafter she would be her safety and insurance.
That she would never die alone or be bereft of friend
for Zee was vowing here and now she’d be there at the end.
She’d looked ahead and so she knew that she would keep this pledge.
She’d known the center of this life and now she knew its edge.
She knew the dates that she’d be needed in the years ahead.
She made a list and filed it in a clear spot in her head.
And then she went on thinking what those words meant in her life.
Would she be a scholar, an actress and a wife?
Would she produce children and would they be there for her?
That sentence found in cyberspace created quite a stir.
But all her dreams it prompted came true enough, what’s more
she kept her date with Lifelessons in 2054.

                                                                            –Judy Dykstra-Brown, Lifelessons, 2015

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Connect the Dots.”

Leavings

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Photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Leavings

Do I walk the long kilometers of beach
to look for the next shell
or stand stable, like that woman
casting and recasting her hook,
patiently waiting to pull her world
in to her?

I’m gathering things
that I’ll collect into stories–pinning them down
to use like words.
Nothing wrong in finding meaning
through a piece of driftwood, a stone or shell.
Objects are only things
we cast our minds against
like images against a screen–
a shadow glimpsed crossing a window shade.

My shadow cast in front of me
is such a different thing
from one I cast behind.
In the first, I am constantly hurrying
to catch up to what I’ll never catch up to.
In the other, I am leaving behind
what I can only keep by walking away from it.

I take this place along with me
in clear images–
not as they were,
but as my mind has cast them;
so every picture
taken of the same moment
is different,
each of us seeing it through our unique lens.

We cast these things in bronze or silver-gelatin,
stone, clay
or poetry.

A grandma
holds out pictures of her children
and her grandchildren.
See? Her life’s work.
And then this and this,
without further effort on her part.

I share stories of children I don’t know
who gently unwind fishing line from a struggling gull,
hearts found on the beach
or other treasures
nestled in a pile of kelp.
I find my world in both these findings and departings;
the leaving each morning to go in search of them
the part I find most exhilarating–
perhaps teaching this
woman of the death-themed night-terrors
not to worry.
That longer leaving is just a new adventure.

People who do not remember
let me slip away
when I would have held on,
given any encouragement.
Yet fingers, letting go, flex
for that next adventure.

Life is
all of us letting go
constantly–
taking that next step
away from
and to.

A white shell.
I have left it there
turned over
to the brown side,
so someone else
can discover it, too.

Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Image Search—Pick a random word and do Google image search on it. Check out the eleventh picture it brings up. Write about whatever that image brings to mind. (Although the eleventh image was of a shadow on a beach, I’ve elected to reproduce my own photo here.)

Thanks Be to Sara Lee

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I just couldn’t get going using today’s WordPress Daily Prompt—someone else’s first line—so I elected to follow another prompt, now that we have this option. In response to The Daily Post’s earlier writing prompt: “Thank You,” I am reposting a parody of “Pied Beauty” (better known by its first line, “Thanks be to God for dappled things.”)

“Thanks Be to Sara Lee for Appled Things” was the irreverent first line that I wrote for its parody for NaPoWriMo in April of last year. I think this was before most of my followers knew who I was, so I’m hoping you won’t be too put out by it.

By way of explanation, I will tell you part of a story—that story being that I actually read a poem to one of my favorite authors of all time today. I won’t interfere with her privacy by naming her or revealing how I happened to meet her, but it was scary and thrilling at the same time. This is how I have come to be sitting here at 4 PM, still not having posted a blog entry for today. This time I can’t blame it on the lack of a computer or the presence of a computer that speaks a different language. It is just me, still a bit dazzled from meeting this very nice, down-to-earth friendly lady who possesses one of the finest minds of our century. So fine that for today, at least, I feel unable to write. All I am thinking is that yes, she liked my poem. (I read “The Ways I Do Not Love You” which was also posted earlier as a NaPoWriMo poem.) I just couldn’t bring myself to read one of my silly ditties in front of someone whose writing I respect so much, fearful that she would think this was all there was to me! How can it be that at this age I still care what people think of me? At least it is to my credit that it was my words I was worried about, not my hair or my weight or what I was wearing. I guess I’ve made some advancements with age. “What are you, sixteen?” my super-critical alter-ego is whispering in my ear right now. “Exactly!” the real me shouts, and wishes it could fit a swim in before dinner.

Okay, here is the NaPoWriMo prompt: Our prompt today was to write a curtal sonnet in the style of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ famous poem “Pied Beauty”. This form consists of a first stanza of six lines followed by a second stanza of five, closing with a half-line. The rhyme scheme is abcabc defdf. I chose to make it a parody of “Pied Beauty” as well.

Here is the original:

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

And now, my version:

Pied Beauty II

Thanks be to Sara Lee for appled things—
For pies, for apple fritters and for thin-rolled strudel crust;
For pastries of the fruit of Eve and sauce it swims within;
Fresh-cooked in ovens, how their sweet juice sings;
The sugar clotted and pierced—place it on plate we must;
And all taste, for how can tackling it be such a sin?

All things made of flour and Crisco and of apples sweet;
(How can they by nutritionists be so sorely cussed
With words professing they won’t make us thin?)
With their tart flavor are sure our lips to meet;
And meet again.

—Judy Dykstra-Brown

Voice

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “In Good Faith.” Describe a memory or encounter in which you considered your faith, religion, spirituality — or lack of — for the first time.

Voice

The stranger on an airplane in the seat right next to me
never said a single word, and so I let her be
until our arrival, when I prepared to stand
and she produced a paperback—put it in my hand.

“It’s time for you to read this,” she said, then went away.
I didn’t say a word to her. Didn’t know what to say.
That book, however, changed my life and attitude and choices—
encouraged me to listen close to interior voices.

Buscaglia, Jampolsky and all of Carl Jung’s books
drew my mind away from appearances and looks
and into that finer world of instinct and of mind;
then drew me westward to the sea and others of my kind.

After a writer’s function, a stranger sent to me
“The Process of Intuition,” which I read from A to Z.
I read it twenty times or so, then sent it to a friend.
Then bought up every copy left to give as gifts and lend.

I don’t remember talking to the one who sent it to me,
but if I need a proof of faith, I guess that this will do me.
For I believe there is some force that draws the next thing through me
and if I follow instincts that hint and prod and clue me,

they are the truths that guide me on the path towards the new me.
The signs are there in all our lives if we choose to see.
No, I don’t believe a God guides our destinies.
I don’t believe in lifelines or spirits within trees.

I don’t believe in any faith that has a name or church.
I do believe, however, that I’m guided in my search
by something that unites us and sets our pathways right
so long as we listen to our own interior sight

that urges us to follow the right side of our brain
even though those choices are logically inane.
I know that it takes many types of brains to run the world,
but for me it’s intuition that when carefully unfurled

guides me best—towards art and words and unplanned days and oceans
and prompts me make a Bible of what others may call notions.
And so to simplify I’d say that I must have faith in
that voice we’re all a part of that speaks to us from within.

No Pain, No Rain

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The Prompt: When was the last time you shed tears of joy?

No Pain, No Rain

I am always the first to cry
when loved ones move away or die.
I sob when I read tragic books
‘til those around me give strange looks.
Sad movies also create gushers
as all around me, folks turn hushers,
then call out management or ushers
to warn me that I’ll have to go.
so others can enjoy the show!

I shed tears of hot remorse
at friends’ breakups and divorce.
Western music? Love gone wrong?
I sob at every single song.
In my times of great frustration,
restraint just takes a short vacation
as I shed tears of consternation.
Yes, anger makes me spring a leak.
I mop my eyes; I blow my beak.

When I lose my glasses or my keys,
bump my elbow, skin my knees—
yes, I cuss and then I cry.
It’s just the way that I get by—
relieve the tensions, curtail pain.
To stem my tears I try in vain,
knowing it’s a bit inane
for folks my age to use their tears
to express anger, sadness, fears.

It’s not appropriate to sob
when I burn the soup or botch a job.
Yet tear my favorite blouse or pants
and remain tearless? What’s the chance?
There’s just one time that I get by
and do not feel the urge to cry—
when I need not dab at nose or eye
with handkerchief or sleeve or nappie.
I do not cry when I am happy!

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Vero, age 3, lives at La Ola girls’ home in Jocotepec, Jalisco, Mexico, and the only time I’ve ever seen her unhappy was once when she was taken up for a nap. She was asleep the minute her head hit the pillow, so the tears didn’t last long.