This post has been removed as a stipulation for submitting it in a poetry contest.
The Prompt: Middle Seat—It turns out that your neighbor on the plane/bus/train (or the person sitting at the next table at the coffee shop) is a very, very chatty tourist. Do you try to switch seats, go for a non-committal brief small talk, or make this person your new best friend?
My ladies writing group is classy—never crass or gaudy.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I found they can be bawdy!
Just one impromptu potluck and a few bottles of wine
turned their metaphoric minds to matters far less fine.
For Jenny had just mentioned that a friend had lately lent her
a rather naughty film that nonetheless had really sent her
off into the paroxysms of unbridled laughter—
the kind that take you wave-on-wave and leave you aching after.
I’d been needing that for months—my life had been sedate
since my old gang had moved away and left me to my fate
of no last-minute games of train and late-night jubilation,
for though I still have good friends here, I lack that combination
of friends that I enjoy who all enjoy each other, too,
enough to create silliness to make my nights less blue.
“Bad Grandpa” was the film we watched, and though I must admit
I watched behind spread fingers for at least a fifth of it,
still the antics had us all just rolling on the floor
—starting with a snicker and then ending with a roar.
Scatology is not my thing, nor are pratfalls or shtick,
yet still I must admit to you, I got a real big kick
from this film filled with all of them, and so did all the others;
so as we watched, it felt like we were all sisters and brothers.
And as they left, I think we knew we’d shared a priceless treasure,
for there’s nothing that unites us like a mutual guilty pleasure!
The Prompt: When was the last time you watched something so scary, cringe-worthy, or unbelievably tacky — in a movie, on TV, or in real life — you had to cover your eyes?
The Prompt: From the Top—Today, write about any topic you feel like.
The daily prompt, “write what I wish?”
That’s like ordering the fish
and having the waiter bring a hook
and once you catch it, a pan to cook
it. This is one that I’ll do poor on.
This “prompt” is just an oxymoron!!!
How I (Don’t) Lay Me Down to Sleep
At 2 AM, when others sleep,
computer solitaire I keep
in front of me on lap or chest,
for part of me decrees it best
to put off sleep an hour or so.
That precious time I often blow
on playing Spider Solitaire.
At my computer screen I stare,
moving little clubs or hearts
here and there in fits and starts,
trying to beat my own best time,
this silly game becomes sublime.
I know not why I love it well—
and so I cannot really tell
why I prefer it over all.
Deluxe Free Cell can be a ball,
In fact, I play it hours on hours
trying to deplete those towers
of mismatched cards, quickly I bring
them from below, from Ace to King.
Card by card, I pile them high—
my laptop balanced on my thigh—
until the cards become hypnotic,
my moving of them now Quixotic.
Too sleepy to beat my own time,
my need for rest becomes sublime.
Then sleep fills up my empty cup
till seven or eight, when I wake up
to spill night’s cards clear of my screen
so this day’s daily prompt is seen.
And this is how I start my day.
This time, it’s words I choose to play!
The Prompt: Now? Later!—We all procrastinate. Website, magazine, knitting project, TV show, something else — what’s your favorite procrastination destination?
This big fella appeared on my steps last night—perhaps a harbinger of what I was going to write about today. He’s the first tarantula I’ve ever seen at my house—four inches across, he is a formidable addition to my garden menagerie!
I just have to add a postscript. This reply to my today’s post was just sent to me by my three- months-a-year housemate. I feel a bit like Jeanette MacDonald to his Nelson Eddy! Ha. I absolutely love it, by the way. This is what he posted on his blog this morning:
To your addictions I can attest.
You’re clicking, clicking. You need your rest!
“Sleepy time,” I do proclaim,
And you reply, “Just one more game.”
And so I roll upon my side
and let your clicking, clicking guide
me off to sleep, to dream, to waken
to morning to find that you’re makin’
words to poems to fill your blog.
Keep writing, Dear. I’ll feed the dog.
I was running from the time I woke up this morning until about 10:15 tonight. My guests have now gone and I’ve had 45 minutes to work on this prompt. It certainly isn’t my favorite, but I felt compelled to finish the assignment, lest it be the first day since April 1 that I failed to post! So, for what it is worth, here’s my near-answer to today’s prompt!!! Please note that much as you might feel you see yourself in this poem, the characters are purely fictional!!!
Today’s Prompt: Long Exposure—Among the people you’ve known for a long time, who is the person who’s changed the most over the years? Was the change for the better?
Our world turns and all of us
without much fanfare or much fuss
change constantly from day to day
in such a subtle sort of way,
we barely notice we have changed
until we find we are estranged
from those once near who now are far,
reaching for a different star.
While once we shared the usual aim
of husband, family or fame,
each thinks the other achieved less
though neither one could ever guess
that each achieved just what she wanted
sailing through her life unhaunted
by regrets of what she’s missed:
the shore unclaimed, the cheek unkissed.
One scored the ring and husband first.
The other sought to quench her thirst
for travel and remained unmarried
satisfying interests varied
from what most others chose to do—
each year her world began anew.
No little hand in hers, no need
to clothe and comfort, wash and feed
anyone except herself.
She sat alone upon the shelf
of life, unchoosing and unchosen—
well-preserved and slightly frozen.
The other birthed, lifted and carried
in a life both full and harried.
With kids and husband in her home,
she was rarely there alone.
Kept busy by her obligations
to neighbors, friends and her relations,
her life proceeded till near its end,
she chanced to come upon her friend
from long ago and tarried there
while both of them let down their hair.
Each found the place where she belonged
and neither feels unduly wronged.
One found her place in family—
contented in their company.
The other is quick to aver
she found her place inside of her.
It is the difference between that present handed to you
by a person who says, “It’s only a tie,”
and a package under the tree
squeezed and prodded at—perhaps a corner loosened
or a hole poked in through supposed accidental handling,
pondered like a good detective show.
Who wants these mysteries revealed before their time?
What value in the present whose contents you already know for sure?
The magic of Christmas for some is that faith that the girl,
untouched by human lover, gave birth—and it is that sort of faith
that “saved” the world. If we knew the whole truth of that story
would all it prompted fall into the hole covered all these years by mystery?
The whole world seems to be standing more on what we don’t know
than on what we absolutely know empirically—what we can prove.
And so I look at the picture of my young mother
in her cotton housedress and saddle shoes
holding her baby in front of her in her stroller,
whole contraption, child and carrier,
a foot or two above the ground,
and there is mystery in the reveal.
I do not hear what transpired to cause this pose.
I do not know if my father caught her carrying me
from the porch to sidewalk and said,
“Here, Tootie, turn around,” and snapped the picture,
or whether my older sister planned the pose.
Or whether some movie star was snapped in a similar scene
and my mother and sister, like two conspiring fans,
planned the shot to steal the glamor formerly reserved
for “Photoplay” or “Look” or “Life.”
There would be no reel-to-reel
in any normal person’s life for years.
No movie camera to tell me exactly what my mother was like
or my sister or me before my memory took hold and even then,
my mind’s remembrance
more like reflections in a lake that color and change
depending on the clouds or rain,
distorting the light like moods.
My Aunt Peggy’s house,
always remembered as feeling like
the color chartreuse,
and I will never know why.
That smell of a friend’s house that became associated
with her memory more than any concrete proof of reel-to-reel
or spinning film of movie camera.
I do not know my mother’s voice at thirty.
I did not witness myself since birth
by either sound or sight.
There is a different mystery
to a past caught
in boxes of Kodacolor prints
curling and yellowing in a closet
than one documented like a science experiment
with every event taped and filmed.
Where does the mystery of you reside when you see yourself
so clearly, as others have seen you all along?
What does it leave for you to try to discover?
No tapes.
No film.
No Internet.
No Skype.
No YouTube.
No home movies.
All of our pasts were once wrapped up forever.
Only our fingers poking in the edges.
Only our voices asking,
“What was it like the day when I was born?”
What do you remember about the day when. . . .?
The Prompt: Can’t Stand Me—What do you find more unbearable: watching a video of yourself, or listening to a recording of your voice? Why?
The Prompt: Frame of Mind—If you could paint your current mood onto a canvas, what would that painting look like? What would it depict?
Many Me’s
If I should have to paint a picture of my present mood,
I’d be walking down a staircase, and I’d have to do it nude—
My many selves preceding me and coming fast behind—
for there would be not one of me, but many of my kind.
This scene is a mere copy of Duchamp’s solution to
a person who perhaps has found she has too much to do.
My list of tasks is growing, though I’ve dealt with one or two;
but how I’ll deal with everything, I fear I have no clue.
And so I guess my canvas style would simply have to be
like Marcel’s (though not cubist, still with more than one of me.)
That way I’d send off each of me to do what must be done.
They’d do all my labor while I went to have some fun.
While self 1 wrote my daily prompt and self 2 cleaned my shelves,
I’d go out to the water park with all my other selves.
We’d climb up all the ladders and slide down all the slides
and play a game of tug-rope where I would be both sides!
We’d go out to the ice cream place and have a cone or three
and they’d get all the calories with none assigned to me!
We’d take my bad dogs for a walk and I would be so free
Two other me’s would hold the leashes, not the actual me.
I’d loll here in my hot tub, swing in my hammock, too,
while selves from 1 to 9 would do all that I have to do.
They’d figure out my microwave instructions all in Spanish.
They’d sort out all my photographs and clean my loo with Vanish.
Agreeable to every task, they’d never mention “can’t.”
They’ll pick off all the yellow leaves from every drying plant.
They’ll organize my studio that is a horrid mess.
(It’s been that way for many months—a fact I must confess.)
They’d sort out all my closets and organize my drawers,
then go into my Filofax and sort out all the bores.
They’d shape my canned goods into rows—sorted from “A” to “Z.”
which makes it difficult for them, but easier for me.
And though my other selves keep warm from their activity,
my idleness seems not to create any warmth for me.
So although I like my colors and my brush strokes strong and bold,
I wish I’d put some clothes on us, ‘cause I am getting cold!!
The Prompt: Reviving Bricks—You just inherited a dilapidated, crumbling-down grand mansion in the countryside. Assuming money is no issue, what do you do with it?
They were five in a chain from truck to rooftop,
each throwing the piles of adobe bricks
in stacks of four, from hand to hand
up from the bottom of the truckload
now nearly emptied.
Two of them waved me on
when I tried to park near,
my trunk full of heavy wall sculptures
to deliver to a gallery just half a block away.
And when I tried to park farther along the block,
again and again, they waved me away
until I was a block away and safe, I guess,
from straying bricks or errant cars that swerved
too far to the right to avoid the bricks or truck that held them.
They were a cheerful lot, and when I passed,
walking towards the gallery
carrying one sculpture after another,
they waved, and on my final trip back to the car,
again, the man second in the chain
who stood balanced on the highest level of the brick pyramid
that remained within the truckbed,
seemed to intuit my purpose, waving from me to them
as I drew my camera from my purse.
They all posed for minutes, miming their labor
as I tried to get them to actually throw, as before,
those piles of bricks, hoping to catch them
flying through the air between two pairs of hands.
Finally understanding, they threw and threw,
asking me for a prompt to help me catch that flight
I feared I’d never catch.
(more)
Minutes later, I turned to leave
and they, cheering and smiling in their fame,
turned back to that labor which is an art in Mexico:
giving bricks wings before mortaring them
into a permanency that holds them rigid for lifetimes
until they crumble back into that soil that was their nativity.
This poem should be a metaphor for something
and probably is.
Some future day, when I am moldering in my grave
like some lesser Ozymandius,
some graduate student or scholar of mediocre
Twenty-First-Century poetry might publish a treatise
revealing it.
And they will dig this website from the rubble
of the Internet and find
I wrote it as a daily prompt
and if such records still exist,
find how I hired those men to build a monument
from that crumbling manse of brick
that was my prompt on the Daily Post
and tell how they spent their lifetimes restoring it
and how their children and their children’s children
have benefited from catcalls
and instructions to move on down the line
and the clicking of a camera lens
and from one who follows blindly
where each prompt leads her.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 